Travis Collins is pastor of Bon Air Baptist in Richmond and author of Tough Calls: Game-Winning Principles for Leaders Under Pressure. He draws on his experience as a high school football referee to draw parallels for congregational life. He is a great guy - except for a rather unfortunate attraction to the University of Kentucky ... Some fouls can be overlooked. Maybe a simple holding foul occurs thirty yards behind the run. I'm probably not going to throw a flag on the one who committed the holding foul; I'll warn the perpetrator, but a flag would be unnecessary. Maybe the third-string wide receiver is not lined up correctly, but his team is losing fifty-to-nothing with thirty seconds to play. I'm probably not going to blow the whistle and stop the clock because that player is technically out of position. If I were to do that at this stage of the game my fellow officials would give me the evil eye.
Not every foul deserves a penalty. Unsportsmanlike conduct, however, must be called, or else the official will lose control of the game. Football is an intense, aggressive sport, and a fracas is often one provocative comment away, lurking just beneath the surface. Thus officials have to be on top of confrontational situations.
...Trash talk on the field can seem harmless at first. But unsportsmanlike conduct can get ugly in a hurry, so it can't be allowed. The official must act decisively to prevent the escalation of conflict; if he ignores taunts and offensive gestures and other abuses of the rules, then that official becomes responsible for the game's deterioration. "What you permit, you promote," declared Gary Whelchel, a commissioner of officials in Arizona.
...So, for the sake of the organization you lead, you have to throw a flag when people act in a mean-spirited way. You cannot allow the bad behavior of a bully, or the monkey business of malcontents, to contaminate the whole. When you see disruptive behavior, you've got to call it for what it is. You cannot let your fear of the fallout, or your terror of the tyrant, prevent you from intervening when someone is causing trouble.
One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is the organization's "cultural harmony" as Max DePree puts it. You must protect those you lead from the disruptive acts of hurtful people. That responsibility cannot be abdicated and cannot be delegated. The health of your organization and the emotional well-being of employees hang in the balance. You've simply got to call "unsportsmanlike conduct."
Bon Air Baptist's Pastor Emeritus, Bob Cochran, told me a sobering story that drives home why need to nip incendiary practices in the bud. Many years ago, a young man stood on the grounds of the church where Bob was then pastor, put a gun to his head, and took his life. By the time Bob arrived on the scene the young man's body had been removed, but when the pastor went to the spot where the awful event had taken place he spotted an autumn leaf covered with that young man's blood. Bob immediately recalled Genesis 4:6, "The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground."
This young man, you see, had visited the church. They had his name in their prospect file. But they were too distracted to reach out to the young man. They were in the middle of one of those all-too-common afflictions of local congregations-a church fight. They were too preoccupied with the dissension to make the young man a priority.
Bob kept the leaf, had it pressed and framed under glass, and hung it on the wall opposite his desk. I have held that blood-stained, prophetic leaf. Decades later it still bears traces of that young man's blood and declares: We can't in-fight and out-reach at the same time.
The stakes in our churches and other Christian organizations are too great for us to allow someone's ruthless behavior to divide and distract us from our mission. I do not want to stand before God on Judgment Day and have Him say, "I gave you the opportunity to lead a great Christian organization, and you blew it by not protecting its fellowship."
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