If you know me well, you might be surprised to see me writing a blog about tennis. I call most activities involving bats or racquets and any amount of sweating “sportsball” and usually tune out or poke some sort of fun on the rare occasion people think to talk about sportsball around me.
I’ve never watched a tennis match. I’m so woefully unaware that I have to guess any time the New York Times Crossword Puzzle asks questions related to tennis (or any other sport.) But when I was growing up, John McEnroe’s name was famous enough to break through my ignorance of all things sporty. So when I was listening to NPR last month and Terry Gross was interviewing him on Fresh Air, I knew enough to follow along with the conversation.
What struck me about the interview was how little there was about the actual game of tennis and how the focus remained on McEnroe’s personal experience being managed and coached. He was managed and coached by his father, and traveled from match to match only with him and maybe one or two other people at most. He still prefers to operate with a small circle like this. He compared this to modern athletes, who often travel with entire entourages including coaches, managers, personal assistants, media managers, psychologists, physical therapists, nutritionists, and other professionals who make it possible to survive the increased pressure of working in the modern era. The world has changed so much that performance on the court isn’t enough for someone to succeed. Almost every aspect of an athlete’s life has to be carefully shaped, or at least give that appearance, for them to be successful.
As I listened, it occurred to me that this truth didn’t apply just to athletes. The prevalence of social media and our constant availability by phone, text, and email increase the pressure on all of us to be “on” all the time. And as expectations of us change, our personal needs change, too. This includes our need to find ways to care for ourselves mentally, physically, and spiritually. For most of us, we have to do it without an entire staff of people surrounding us.
As a church, we, as staff, spend a great deal of time considering people’s spiritual needs. We look at what is happening in the lives of people in our congregation, and then in the greater community and ask ourselves what we can do to help. It isn’t always easy. Sometimes it means changing the way we worship or something in our building. We love our traditions and it is difficult to let go of things that have worked for us for many years or that we feel comfortable or that we remember with fondness.
As individual Christians, maybe we can consider this: what can we do to decrease the burden on each other? What can we do to lower the expectation of constant availability? What can we do to assist each other on our collective spiritual journeys? We might not all have a team of professionals, but we have all been called to surround each other with Jesus’ love.
Yours in Christ,
John Johns
Music Director