Jim Mora, Jr. is the new football coach at UCLA.  He doesn’t yet get to take charge, but in his first week there as an observer, he found the seniors engaging in a nearly 30 year-old tradition of skipping practice.  Mora’s response?

“I’m not about making threats, and I’ll keep that between the players and myself, but I can tell you that my general feeling is that if they feel they want to skip out of practice and jump over a wall, then they might as well just keep going,” he said. “They’re not a part of what I want to be a part of.”

Bam!  A line in the sand.  Tough, reasonable, and just a little too brash.  I like it.  What makes it a bit of a surprising story is that everything about it is strange.  UCLA shouldn’t be in a bowl game because they had a lousy season.  Then the tradition they are doing is skipping out on practice: something they no doubt need.  Next year’s coach comes in and throws down the gauntlet for next year.  It all seems tailor-made for confrontation.  We’ll wait and see which seniors are stupid enough to try it next year because, you know, it’s tradition.  Or will everyone be sensible and say “Meh.  It was kind of stupid, anyway.”

This, of course, sounds just like church, doesn’t it?  We have plenty of traditions that ought to be phased out but we just can’t handle it.  Then when we’re confronted with a simple reality that what we are doing is counterproductive/ridiculous/bad for morale/inconsiderate/unprofessional/etc. by somebody new we find ourselves at a crossroads:

1. Do we stick to our guns and inevitably fail
2. Or take the risk and have the potential to fail.

The trouble we have is that most of the time we see these two options as equal, so it is better to just not rock the boat.  Except the inevitability of failure for the church and its leadership is so very rarely worth that tradition you’re so desperate to keep.  So is there really any other option?