There’s something about the football mentality of Americans, particularly men, that makes us apply lessons learned on the gridiron to the rest of life, areas that do not compare in any manner whatsoever. The church, for instance.

“If we could just get us a pastor like Bill Parcells.” Bear Bryant. Vince Lombardi. Joe Gibbs. Fill in the blank.

“Well, all I know is that Tommy Bowden came into Tulane–always a doormat in college football–and within two years, had led them to an undefeated season and a bowl game and national ranking. Don’t tell me it’s not about the coach. And if you can do it in football, you can do it in the church. All we need is to find the right pastor.”

Take Sean Payton. First year coach of the New Orleans Saints. First year as an NFL coach, period. And now named “Coach of the Year” in professional football by the Associated Press. He received 44 votes, with the second-place coach, the Jets’ Eric Mangini receiving only 3. Pretty convincing. He is most definitely a leader, a general, a motivator of men, a winner.

But he’s not a pastor.

Several years ago Payton turned down the head coach’s job at Oakland in order to remain as Bill Parcells’ assistant in Dallas. “Not a good fit,” he said. A year ago, when the Saints came calling, he went to the master for counsel. Parcells thought Payton and this city would be a good match, but he had some advice. “Find out quickly what’s kept this team from winning, if you can, then make the appropriate changes.” Sean Payton says, “I think he also emphasized the importance of finding the right quarterback.”

When Payton assembled last year’s Saints team, the first thing he did was to cut from the team anyone with an attitude problem. Those with character defects, bad work ethics, and lack of discipline were sent packing. Payton wanted only winners on his team. I think fewer than a third of this year’s 10-6 team were on last year’s 3-13 team.

Training camp last summer was held at Millsaps College,in Jackson, Mississippi, a 3 hour drive up Interstate 55. The month-long experience is one the players remember with pain. The heat was oppressive, the coach was relentless, and the two-a-days were killers. Everyone grew blisters on their feet, callouses on their bodies, and grit in their brain.

Result: The team won their division, won a ‘bye’ from this weekend’s first round of playoff games, and won the right to have next Saturday’s game be played in the Superdome.

So, give us a pastor like Sean Payton, right?

The analogy does not hold. A new pastor cannot come to a church and fire members and bring in a new group of winners. Granted, they’d like to sometimes, but you don’t do that. You play the members who are there and try to reshape them into winners, a process that may take many years if it can be done at all.

The pastor cannot pull the members aside for a month of intensive training while closing down all outside interference. He has to work with people of all ages, gender, and conditioning who get up every weekday morning and go to work, who come home and cut the yard and help the children with homework and do a hundred mundane things, people who worry about paying their bills, battle health problems, and struggle with relationships with neighbors, inlaws, and each other–people who then try to fit additional churchwork into schedules already overstuffed in order to support the new pastor.

The new pastor cannot bully his Sunday School teachers and threaten his deacons or curse out his committees. He is a shepherd, not a Mussolini nor a Hitler. He is a shepherd, the kind who lays down his life for the sheep, not a CEO nor a czar, not an intimidator nor a tyrant. Shepherd.

In football, the coach inspires and motivates or abuses and manipulates his players–whatever he decides it takes–to win games. He does whatever the task requires. Regardless of his relationship with the players, if they win games the public is pleased, the owner gets rich, and the sporting world acclaims him as something special.

Inside the church, the pastor does not–most definitely does not–use, abuse, and manipulate his members to win anything–not games, not growth, and emphatically not souls. The object of his ministry is not some intangible something “out there” somewhere. The object is the very lives of these people with whom he is working. To become a winner himself, he has to turn them into winners.

Inside the church, the pastor’s aim is to turn the members into winners. As winners, they will work with other people and help them to become winners, too.

That’s the object, which is just another way of restating Ephesians 4:11-13. “And He personally gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the training of the saints in the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.”

The pastor’s job is not to amass great numbers, whether in baptisms, dollars, crowds, or accomplishments. It is not to impress denominational executives with his success. Not to write best-selling books, not to wow churches where he is the visiting speaker, not to achieve celebrity status. He’s a shepherd, which is precisely what the word “pastor” means.

A successful pastor may end up putting big numbers on the denominational scoreboard. Crowds may flock to hear him preach. He may indeed publish his sermons and invitations to speak may flood his office.

Or they may not. He can still be successful in shepherding the Lord’s people without any of these things which so impress the world and which we have for too long played the world’s game and used as measuring sticks for the Lord’s leaders.

Paul said, “Before one’s own lord, a servant stands or falls.” (Romans 14:4) Jesus will decide who is a success and who isn’t. Which relieves me of a tremendous burden. I don’t have to rank the pastors of the year. In fact–and this is the most liberating of all–I don’t get to judge even myself. He is Lord and He will do the judging.

The pastor is a shepherd and the people in the pews are his sheep.

Let the pastor reflect on those two realities before deciding to adopt the metaphor of football-coach-and-winning-team inside the church. He may decide another kind of image is better. There’s something about sheep that works against their becoming quarterbacks and guards and tackles. Their nature is to resist all efforts to turn them into rams (and Patriots and Packers and Falcons).

I suggest pastors who want to get it right stick to the metaphor the Lord Jesus employed a long time ago and apparently liked so much, we find it in both the Old and the New Testaments: “The Lord is my Shepherd” in Psalm 23 and “I am the Good Shepherd” in John 10.

“We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” That’s Psalm 100.

While we’re at it, we might just throw in “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way,” from Isaiah 53. Sheep would not take well to two-a-days at Millsaps, I’m afraid.

Several years ago while we were on a mission trip to England with our church’s youth choir, we were amused by signs posted in front of highway restaurants: “No Football Coaches.” We reminded ourselves that over there football is soccer and coaches are buses. The eateries were telling bus drivers not to bring soccer teams or fans there. Too rowdy, too destructive, too noisy.

Perhaps we need to erect similar signs on pulpits in American churches cautioning pastors against falling prey to the temptation to model themselves after football coaches. As in all the rest of the Christian life, the example of the Lord Jesus Christ–the original Good Shepherd–should be quite sufficient.