Lessons on Managing Missions from Game Theory, Midwives, McDonalds, and the Wishbone Offense, Part 3

[Still on drugs for the kidney stone.]

“Mama wanted me to be a preacher. I told her coachin’ and preachin’ were a lot alike.” — Bear Bryant.

Okay, it’s time to talk about the wishbone, triple option offense. All Alabama fans understand this intimately, of course. And who’s not an Alabama fan? Nonetheless, on the off chance that an Auburn fan might be reading the blog (I do have pictures, so it’s possible), let me explain.

During the 1970s, Bear Bryant borrowed the wishbone offense from Texas and won a truckload of national championships with it. Ah … the memories! For our purposes, it’s enough to know that the wishbone in those days was a very effective running offense. Alabama could gain 500 yards rushing in a game — which is a lot.

However, it’s a pretty lousy passing offense. Part of the reason is that God didn’t make many quarterbacks who could both pass and run the option. Another reason is that the blocking techniques are way, way different. And really good wide receivers usually didn’t sign with a wishbone team, because they didn’t throw very much.

And so, the coaching staff always had a decision to make in game planning. The team was a great running team. But if they didn’t pass, the defense would put nearly all their players on the line and stuff the run. But if they were to pass, the quarterback would probably miss the receiver — or the receiver wouldn’t be open because he’s not very fast — or he’d drop the ball. Passing would be a disaster. Not passing would be a disaster. What do you do?

Well, as all UA fans know, the coaches had the quarterback throw, but not much. And sometimes the other team’s defensive backs weren’t very good, and the passing went surprisingly well. Or maybe the quarterback got hot. Or, as sometimes really happened, the other team was so surprised they just didn’t react as they should. I mean, you just don’t know until you try!

And a really cool thing happened with the passing. Because it was only occasional, the receiver often popped wide open and gained 50 yards! (If he’d been fast, he’d score a touchdown, but those guys signed with somebody else.) And so you’d wind up with statistics like 400 yards on the ground on 40 carries and 100 yards through the air on 2 completed passes out of 10 attempts. Ah, those were great years!

Now, the pass completion percentage was only 20%, which is abysmal, but it won football games. Lots of football games!

So what does this have to do with mission strategy? Is this the Oxycodone talking? It could be. We’ll see.

Suppose you have enough money to support a lot of missionaries. Suppose also that you’re the coordinator for the mission work of all US churches. Hard to imagine for the Churches of Christ, but try.

Now, you have a proposal from a church in east Tennessee suggesting that you put at least one missionary in every country in the world. And you have the budget and missionaries to do it! What a great headline that would be! And it would sound great at your funeral — here lies the guy that put a missionary in every single country in the world! Wow!

But you have another proposal, the being from Dallas, to send every missionary to India, because they are very responsive and desperate for the help. It’s a near certainty that every missionary you send to India will bring many people to Jesus! It’s a sure thing, an obvious call. Even an SEC referee can make that call!

Well, you’ve just been to a seminar on nurse practitioners, and you think the obvious choice is to put them all in India. You think to yourself: what’s the mission? A great eulogy? Headlines? No … it’s saved souls.

Or it’s not damning souls. How many souls shall I damn? you ask yourself. And the answer is easy: just as few as possible.

Then you remember: think outside the box. Avoid the obvious answers. Get over the easy, feel-good answers, but don’t go for the too-obvious answer either.

Finally, you make this decision: send 80% of the missionaries to India. How can you deny the obvious choice. The fields are white unto harvest. Let’s send some reapers!

The other 20% you scatter around the planet. But they’re experiments. But so are the India missionaries. India’s vast harvest may end. You may be able to replace them with native missionaries, who’d be even more effective.

As to the rest, you think: well who knows where the next India will be? If we don’t send anyone, we just won’t know! We’ll miss the chance to save millions! But you don’t have enough left to cover the entire world. So you make the best choices you can with the information you have. You guess if you have to.

When a mission fails, you pull the guy out and send himself somewhere else. It’s a little Darwinian, but Jesus himself said, if the town doesn’t respond to the gospel, shake the dust off your feet and go to the next town. This way, the towns that are most responsive get the most preaching.

You define success, not as establishing a congregation with an American missionary-bishop running it, but as, like Paul, establishing many congregations with native elders and the ability to plant new churches and send new missionaries. That’s harder, but it’s the only path to saving lots of people, rather than just being proud to have someone in a country.

Meanwhile, you stay in close touch with the missionaries, share ideas, pray together, and look for solutions. Maybe a country doesn’t respond because you need to recraft how you present the good news. Maybe you need a team of families. Maybe you need to buy a building. Maybe you should have talked to the village chief first. Experiment! Take notes. Talk. Use the internet to conference call with other missionaries. Brainstorm. Experiment. Don’t be afraid to fail.

But don’t throw good money after bad. Don’t waste the time and energies of great missionaries who are mismatched to the populace. And don’t pretend that everyone is equally receptive.

And forget the eulogies, headlines, and slogans. Forget about “countries” and other such human constructs. Think about souls saved and souls damned.

And, by the way, you’ll get it wrong lots of the time. It’s not a science, much less mathematics. But, neither is it pure sentimentality. Rather, it’s a place for prayer and courage. Kind of like football.

Coach Bryant also said,

Set goals — high goals for you and your organization. When your organization has a goal to shoot for, you create teamwork, people working for a common good.

Losing doesn’t make me want to quit. It makes me want to fight that much harder.

If you want to walk the heavenly streets of gold, you gotta know the password, “Roll, Tide, roll!”

Must be the Oxycodone.