FREE AGENCY

As a sports fan I hate free agency. I relish the days when players stayed with the same team almost forever, for better – the Steelers of the ‘70s, and for worse – the Pirates of the ‘50s. Yes, it was an owners’ market in those days. If you did not like the pay, too bad: we own you. Now, it seems, the shoe is on the other foot. The players dictate. Such is the free market, I guess.

   But sports is sports and the outcome of any sporting event has little or no effect on the rest of the world even if it seems the stock market rises and falls on which conference, the AFC or the NFC, wins the Super Bowl. Free agency may lead to better contracts. It has not led to better team loyalty. That does not exist any more, not as far as the players are concerned anyway. Why we fans put up with it is anyone’s guess.

   But this phenomenon of free agency in sports has carried over into all of life. I read a report a while back asserting that this generation of students will have five to seven careers before they retire: careers, not jobs. Talk about free agency. Job loyalty seems to be a thing of the past, for better or for worse. As with sports, so with every other profession, there are pros and cons about this penchant for moving on once the job gets boring or until a better offer comes along.

   What is somewhat frightening, at least to my vocation and me, is that free agency has also invaded the church and perhaps to a wider degree than the rest of society. My children do not feel in any way obligated to worship as adults as they worshipped when they lived at home, if they feel obliged to worship at all. And if and when they do feel some urging to try out a church, they may begin with the tried and true of their past. But if it is not of their liking, they are likely to go somewhere else that is much more to where they happen to be at a particular point in their lives.

   Brand loyalty is gone and gone forever, it seems. I don’t know if all denominations are like us, made up of more than half who were not born and raised in it. But they are all getting there. Like sports, so with church, the players are now in charge and not the owners. The owners (the clergy, although we never owned anything and the only authority we had [or may still have] was what was given to us by the players/people) have to listen to what the players/people want or else they will [have to] go somewhere else.

   That does not mean we take a straw poll, test the wind and see which way we will go next in order to bring them in. That only works until the product gets stale or someone offers something more enticing. The temptation, however, is to play to the crowd in these days of free agency in religious affiliation. The greater temptation is to abrogate responsibility in order to please. Given our fickleness as human beings what may be pleasing today may be just the opposite tomorrow.

   The old ways are not working too well and the new ways seem to be too much of passing fancies in order to please. Is it any wonder we’re confused and not sure just what to do?

                                                            WJP