Practice that pays off…

I coached YMCA basketball for a few years while I was in High School.  Two of the years we won the championship.  It wasn’t because of my coaching, I had the three best players in the league!  Several of the games they would get so far ahead, so quickly that I told them they had to make five passes before shooting just to take up more time!  They were so good that I think we could have gone without practice all year and still won every game.  So my goal was to make practice meaningful.

One of the things I did was to work through drills at the beginning of practice then end practice with a scrimmage.  To keep score, rather than count each basket, you only got a point if the team used one of the skills we practiced before the scrimmage.  So for instance if I had them practice left handed lay-ups in a drill, when they scrimmaged they would score a point for each left handed lay-up they made.  Like most people they lived for the scrimmage and hated the drills, but as the season went on, I could see that they took the drills more seriously, knowing they count when we played at the end of each practice.

On Sunday I gave you all homework.  I wanted you to practice telling someone “Three Stories That Matter” – God’s Story, My Story (My – being you own) and Your Story (yours – being someone you know).  Many of you are like the players I coached, very talented people, but just like my team, practice made good players even better.  I know that if you work at telling these stories in a clear, concise, and compelling way, come time to share others – you’ll be ready to make a difference in the life of someone you love!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 11:33 AM and is filed under Sermons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.