I have a soft spot for international hockey, probably a holdover from being raised during the heyday of the hometown 1961 World Champion Trail Smoke Eaters.

Following the Juniors recent 5th straight gold medal, I read a feature in the Vancouver Province newspaper about how the Canadian hockey system was rebuilt after 1981. The junior team was fifth at the world junior hockey tournament in 1979 and 1980 and seventh in 1981.

After this Murray Costello and others decided something had to be done. Calls were made, doors resounded with knocks and presentations were made. The result was the Program of Excellence. And Canadian hockey stepped back from the brink and towards excellence. The challenge of the changing global hockey context made us better. 

Leads me to wonder.

It is not difficult to paint a picture of The United Church of Canada standing on the brink, preconceptions and assumptions of entitlement shattered by a changing context. Players and leagues/presbyteries disillusioned. 

Oh, good players/leaders/congregations still exist across the country but we are far from excellence in leadership, congregations and thought that we could exhibit and need to demonstrate.

Are we fated to the slide? Is the church so ungovernable or mired in a preoccupation with process and righteousness-in-our-own eyes that possibilities for change are extinct? Can God save everything but the United Church? Or could we benefit from our own version of a Program of Excellence, a graduated and ongoing system of leadership identification, training and support?

I am not saying we should seek uniformity. One of our strengths is that a broad spectrum of theological and biblical views find home within our denomination. Leaders and congregations have different gifts and ministries. But could not those leaders and congregations be better with coaching and mentoring?

In many ways our approach to leadership resembles the law of the jungle. We leave it for the fittest to survive.

Our approach to recruitment and support has pretty much been that we take those who offer themselves. We do little to seek the best and expect the best.

Perhaps part of the reason we have grown shy in our recruitment is that we have lost focus and confidence. Our version of ecclesiastical street hockey may be fun but the opportunity to play on an excellent team, with access to superb coaching; now that might be worth the effort to make the team! We owe it to ourselves, and to God, not to quit.