How Established Churches Are Becoming Like the NBA's Knicks and Lakers

Last updated on: May 6, 2016 at 7:02 am by Josh Daffern

How Established Churches Are Becoming Like the NBA's Knicks and Lakers 2016-05-06T07:02:41-06:00 Josh Daffern

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WARNING: You should have at least a cursory knowledge of the NBA to understand the illustration you’re about to read. In honor of the NBA playoffs, here is a basketball-centric way to look at the church.

Growing up in California, I was a Lakers fan during some of the golden years of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Twenty years ago, something simple was understood among the basketball world: the best players wanted to play in the biggest markets. There was a quantum difference between playing for a small market team (like the Golden State Warriors or San Antonio Spurs) versus a big market team (L.A. Lakers or New York Knicks). The best players went to the biggest markets. L.A. and New York had a corner on the NBA world. That was simply a given.

Fast-forward twenty years, and technology (especially social media) has changed everything. The best players can play in small markets (like Steph Curry for the Warriors or Kevin Durant for the Oklahoma City Thunder) and still build their brand and their image. For the players, this changes everything. Instead of being forced to play in an established big market (whether or not the team is good or organizationally healthy), players can go and play for the best teams, period. New York and L.A. no longer corner the market, but they haven’t realized it. They continue to do things their way, refusing to adapt to a new world order because they still errantly believe that the best players will eventually come to them. So for the past decade the Knicks and Lakers (more so the Knicks) have wallowed in mediocrity and dysfunction, always assuming they would get the best players simply because of their legacy and their big market. The basketball world not only changed, it passed them by, and they didn’t realize it.

There are many ‘big market’ churches in existence today (hint: many of them have the word ‘First’ in their title). Big market churches have the best pedigrees, the nicest buildings, the best locations, the most decorated denominational links. For decades, these churches cornered the market. They got the lion share of church goers simply because of who they were. Big market churches over the decades had little to no motivation to change or adapt, because they never needed to.

But the church world has changed, and many ‘big market’ churches haven’t realized it. People (as always) are interested in spirituality, in God, in religion, but there’s no longer the dominating allegiance to the established big market churches. They want to go to a church that’s healthy, to a church that has life, whether that meets in a store front or a school cafeteria. The ‘big market’ monopoly on the church world has ended. New church plants have sprung up and within ten years have surpassed what established churches were able to accomplish in one hundred.

It’s a new day. Location, buildings, denominational ties and historical pedigree are being replaced by church health and life, regardless of location and pedigree. Here’s to the rise of the healthy, small market churches out there.

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