Drills

When I coached soccer I was always trying drills that I came up with in my head. I had an idea of what I wanted to strengthen in a player or the team and would develop a drill that I thought would appropriately address that weakness. The majority of those drills bombed. It was very apparent that they weren't going to work after just a few minutes. They were de-motivating and neither the players or I could see any hope for success. A few required significant tweaking and kind of worked. And a an even smaller number worked spectacularly. Even if they were hard players liked them because they could see how they were helping them be the players they wanted to become.

All drills fall into broad categories; passing, shooting, defending, transition, switching the point of attack, etc. But simply telling my team to go do a passing drill wasn't enough. They needed specific drills so if I did tell them to go do a passing drill, without any specifics, it was up to them to come up with something that would work. Most of my players had come from teams with decent coaching so they would come up with something most of the time. But what would happen if they hadn't had that kind of background?

I think this happens a lot with spiritual disciplines. We tell people they should practice spiritual disciplines but we just give broad categories. If we do go beyond that, the "drills" we give them are often inappropriate for their "skill level" or just bad drills to begin with. They don't motivate and they offer little hope for growth.

It turns out something like this. "Go develop a prayer life (broad category) by finding a quiet place where you can spend 20 minutes each day in prayer (probably a lousy drill)." The person is frustrated because it is is hard to find 20 minutes of quiet time because the kids are always wanting something and the actual praying part felt very much like a one sided conversation that was going nowhere. Day two lasted only 12 minutes and the actual prayer seemed an awful lot like day one's.

It's no wonder that thousands of people commit to reading the Bible, praying, practicing solitude, fasting, etc. only to fall off the wagon after a few days or a few weeks. Spiritual mentors need to learn to develop "drills" that inspire, motivate, and give hope for growth. It's not about making it easy, it's about giving the proper motivation.

It also seems that this needs to be customized. When coaching, I got a lot of ideas from coaching books, magazines, chat rooms, and other coaches themselves. But most drills had to be customized for the players I was working with. I had to simplify some drills and make others more difficult.

The problem for spiritual mentors is that such customization takes time and attention. But looking at the current state of North American Christianity I don't think we have a choice. It is time to let the creative juices start flowing.