Church Voices

Arthur: So what are we doing tonight? Going down to the docks to see the fights?
Doug looks at him blankly.
Arthur: Isn’t it Friday?
Doug: Yeah, just not in the year you think it is.

Boxing used to be one of the premier sports in the United States. It drew hundreds of thousands fans to arenas, newspaper coverage guaranteed front page headlines, the most talented athletes poured into gyms to try to make a name and a career. It was such a big deal that Muhammad Ali didn’t just become another great athlete in a long assembly line of athletes, he became an icon who’s words still ring out in minds.

Since then boxing has dried up and blown away. The occasional big money fight still pops up from time to time, but there’s no sense of a future for the sport. There’s no excitement around. Fans don’t argue about it, it never makes the front page, hype doesn’t drive water cooler talk anymore. The conventional wisdom is that the rise of UFC and mixed martial arts in general pushed down boxing and took its lunch money. But the truth is that UFC didn’t kill boxing, it just filled the void left by a suicide victim.

The collective boxing powers that be decided at some point or another that the business model was to put everything on pay per view (PPV). If you wanted to see boxing you had to throw down $50 or more. And for awhile it paid off. A lot of people got very rich. But in the end the only people who will buy a PPV are the dyed in the wool, sold out, and paid up fan. Every casual fan left the sport, and no new fans were made. The walls that were put up around boxing to benefit the sport ultimately choked it to death.

Churches can learn something from boxing’s impending death. When you put up walls, the only people you will influence are those willing to climb those walls. You can forget about impacting, influencing or gaining the chance to be listened to by anyone who won’t go to the effort to overcome the obstacles put up by churches. Churches don’t put up the same sort of obvious, hard walls as boxing did. There isn’t a ticket sold at the door, or a PPV to buy, but make no mistake, there are subtle walls that churches put up that are just as real. It includes church-language that only those that are in with the in crowd understand, an unspoken dress code, a failure to communicate how and why we worship on Sunday morning, a failure to communicate where the coffee is and that we’re glad you’re here, and whole lot of other things that seem petty and small to those willing to climb the walls but seem huge and insurmountable to those who aren’t.

UFC was in a desperate situation in the 90s. They had been condemned as a vicious, uncivilized sport and had been kicked off of PPV. Part of this was self-inflicted as they advertised their PPVs as being extreme tests of athletes skill. Then new management took over, fought to get back onto PPV and then took the opposite strategy of boxing and put their product in front of as many eye balls as they could. They went so far as to put entire fight nights on basic cable (and likely would have put it on network TV if they could have) in a PPV format with commercials, and this attitude eventually culminated in an annual UFC reality show where contestants competed for a contract on weekly TV. The end result is that UFC filled the void that boxing left behind. They were able to create superstars out of their fighters, sell massive amounts of PPVs and create a generation of fans where there had been nothing before.

So the question I have is are our churches like boxing or UFC? Are we putting up walls that cuts us off, or are we putting ourselves, our ideas, and the gospel out there in front of as many eyeballs as possible in order to influence, and communicate to as many people as possible?