Although my status as a fan of the New England Patriots has waned a bit in recent years (not just because of the excessive losses; the danger associated with playing football is increasingly unsettling), I’ve been a very enthusiastic fan in the past. I’ve been an especially avid fan of the now former head coach, Bill Belichick. I’ve written at least a couple blog posts that involve the dour countenance of the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) coach in the NFL.

Among the qualities associated with the GOAT that I’ve admired: do your job, trusting that the team works best when each player is fully focused on their own job; do your job well, going above and beyond the basic requirements of one’s position; an understanding that sentimentality is often detrimental to the health of an organization; and, while there are lessons to be learned from the past, an organization that wishes to endure must always look to the future. These are good qualities to consider in a church environment as well.

One of Bill Belichick’s most famous (infamous?) post-game press conferences occurred in 2014. The Patriots had just been blown out of the water in a stunning, humiliating defeat, losing to the Kansas City Chiefs 41-14. Patriots fans, and non-fans, thought the season was over. During the press conference that followed that horrible game (for Patriots fans), Bill Belichick repeated multiple times, “We’re on to Cincinnati.” Coach Belichick didn’t want to spend time outlining the team’s faults, issues and problems. There were many and they were obvious to anyone paying attention. The Coach was ready to put the loss aside and move onto the next game, which happened to be against the Cincinnati Bengals. That season, the Patriots did more than simply move on to the next game. They won the Super Bowl.

There’s something to be said about learning when it’s time to move on, when it’s time to let go of something that has happened in the past—whether good, bad or neutral— and move on to the next thing. Congregations would do well to employ something along these lines. There’s a lot of “remember when” talk in congregations, especially among those that have been around for a long while and are now feeling distress in declining numbers. It’s not always a bad thing to talk about the past, except when visions of the past interfere with the present and the future. I think that’s what Belichick was trying to convey in his memorable comeback to the press in 2014.

Congregations, of course, are not professional sports teams. Still, there are lessons from team sports that make for good moments for reflection. While concepts of “winning” and “losing” are not easily transferred to a church setting, other aspects of teamwork ought to be considered, as a community works together to remain a vital congregation, actively connected to the Spirit. Vibrant congregations (regardless of size) are ones that, while appreciating the past, are not beholden to that past. In this regard, I cannot help but think of a congregational gathering at Old South in which one person was so outraged at the possibility that the congregation would put at least one of the buildings up for sale that she asked, “What do you think ______ would think about this? ______ would be outraged!” The person she was referring to is dead, and has been for several years.

We cannot keep looking to the past. The past may hold many wonderful and powerful memories, and moments of significant meaning, but the past doesn’t hold the future, or even the present. Especially for congregations that are shrinking, dwelling in the past is downright dangerous. We forget that the past had its own problems. Plus, remembering only that the past involved more people can cause us to fall into a sort of communal self-pity that leads to despair. Despair is not a constructive attitude for the life of faith. We may not exactly be “on to Cincinnatti,” but we are being led, through faith and trust, by our God who loves us more than we can imagine and challenges us always to live in holy relationship, open to the sometimes unexpected twists and turns that seem always to be a crucial element of the story of God and God’s people.