I would be
shocked if there was an individual who does not know that it is time for the
biggest tournament in the sporting calendar- the world cup!!! The fact that it
is in the spiritual home of football makes it all the more a great spectacle. As
a soccer fan I am impressed by the football that is been displayed, entertaining,
exciting, and attacking with lots of flare. No wonder the goals keeping coming,
all I can say is more of the same.
And just
like any other world cup our African teams have failed to match up to the
standards, organization, and professionalism and indeed efficiency of the other
teams. Such that our dream of seeing an African team break into the semi-final
was dashed in the first round of knock outs. The stats do not make for pleasant
reading. The five African representatives played 15 games in the group stages
and only managed to win 3. They lost 9 and conceded 28 goals while scoring 18.
Clearly you cannot progress with such stats.
However, it
is not the football that bothers me, because quite frankly I never expect
African teams to excel at the world cup. It is the level of disorganization and
lack of professionalism coupled with petty politics that breaks my heart.
Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon all went on strike either before or during the
tournament due to lack of payments or disagreement on the amounts. We are not
talking about a small by the way tournament, it is the world cup and people
know way in advance if they are going to be part of the tournament, so what is
the problem? It is clearly not a lack of money because they are paid after
going striking. Ghana had to send an entire plane just take hard cash for the
boycotting players. Furthermore we heard of players assaulting officials, swearing
at coaches, fighting with each other and now some are being investigated for
match fixing.
Now I am
not in any way saying all these things are unique to Africans for they are
definitely global and are due to our sinful nature. But the disorganization and
lack of professionalism is a real problem on our continent and not just in
football but many areas of life. It seems to be common practice not to do
things well. We are normally not ready for meetings, we are often late, and
people want to be cranked to carry out their responsibilities. It is almost as
though we are allergic to excellence and therefore we try our best to not do
things well.
It is not
only in the area of organization where we struggle but also in being
professional. A simple definition of a
professional is a person having impressive competence in a particular activity.
I understand over generalizations can be dangerous but you will agree with me
that a lot of people appear misplaced and frustrated. Hence service delivery
and production is way below par.
Sadly this
attitude seems to be no different with us Christians. In fact in some cases we
appear more disorganized and very unprofessional in the way we do things. All
you have to do is compare the music of non-Christians with that of some of our
Christian gospel musicians and my point will be very clear. Shouldn't spiritual
things be done without a level of excellence?
Shouldn't Christians follow the example of their creator who said of
everything he did, that it was good? Christians ought to be different. The
labor of our hands should be excellent, it should be worthy of praise because
whatever we do is to the glory of God (1Cor 10:31) and whatever our hands find
to do we should do it heartily as to the Lord (Col 3:23-24)
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