This is another installment in a series on Ministry in Moments of Crisis. This week we’ll consider the crisis of Being Fired. It’s rather common in USA sport, and I’m sure around the globe, to hear of a coach of a team or a manager of a club being fired by the university or ownership of the club. Most of the coaches I know do their best to be philosophical about the situation and to says that it’s a part of the business. They act like that takes the sting out of the process, but I know there is more going on than what they will easily acknowledge.
Having experienced the loss of a job, I know bitterly the feelings of failure, separation and even shame which accompany the unwilling termination of one’s employment. Even when the coach shows the strong face and confident posture, in his heart there is a terribly personal loss which is felt deeply. In public, she may look fine, but in her quieter moments she’s devastated.
It’s much the same for the player who is cut from a team because of roster limits, for the team management professional who hears, “We need to go in another direction,” and for the aging player whose salary and contract restrictions make him a more costly asset than the young, first year player.
In all these cases, the source of the pain is the grief of separation. Being fired is like a couple being divorced. The relationship is severed, it’s often accompanied by emotional confrontation, accusations and raised voices. People on all sides of the broken relationship begin to take sides and to place blame on one or both parties. Eventually the open wounds heal over, but there are often unresolved and acrimonious attitudes left to fester under the skin. It’s an ugly process and full of pain.
As I write, my mind is full of memories, mostly painful ones. I recall sitting over coffee with a coach who was about to negotiate her resignation so she wouldn’t be fired. I remember desperately trying to contact a coach who was fired and then avoided anyone associated with his former program, even those of us who loved him. He’s still avoiding us. I can still hear the silence on the other end of a phone call when I called a recently fired Offensive Coordinator for a high profile college football team a few hundred miles from my home. All I could think to do was to offer my love and to pray for them over the phone. I was thrilled months later when I saw him and he said that his family had kept my phone message for months and would periodically bring the whole family into the kitchen to listen to the “Roger call” as I prayed for them and their future.
The brutal truth is that most of us in sport find our worth in our performance and to be fired is the ultimate indictment of our worth to the team. It’s as if the club is saying, “You are not worthy of being associated with us. You’re no good. Go away.” It cuts deeply into the fabric of our self-worth and gnaws at the soul.
As we serve the people of sport, we have surely encountered this in the past or we will certainly do so in the future. It is no less painful for us, if we care deeply for the people we serve. Our natural tendency will be to take offense for the coach (if we are strongly attached) or to run away from him (so as to not be tainted by the firing) or possibly even to be among those who pile on with the discontented fans (“I wonder what took so long? He was terrible.”). We would be wise to do none of the above. Just like when my friends get divorced, I simply refuse to take sides and seek to love everyone involved. Those separated by the firing are not just the coach and her team, but everyone on the coaching staff, the support staff including physios, equipment managers, office personnel, media and more. We must pursue our relationships with all of the above in extravagant love and understanding.
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