My daughter recently took up basketball, which is nice for me for lots of reasons. It gives us something we can do together. She is only just beginning to learn the basics and is eager to learn. It’s also nice because it’s a sport I used to be quite good at once upon a time. Though, less happily, the emphasis is squarely on once upon a time. I was once quite good; now… not so much. I’m well versed enough to be able to tell her what she needs to do to improve, I’m just not much good at doing it myself anymore. But I was prepared to deal with that reality.

Some years ago, I started up a basketball game to engage with Chinese students in the city I was in. I love basketball and so do the Chinese, making it an easy way to connect. I hadn’t played – by which I mean I had literally not so much as even touched a basketball – for a good 10 years at that point. But I figured I’d be alright. My skills wouldn’t be what they used to be, but I thought I’d still be alright. I wouldn’t look like the all-star player I once was, but I’d probably be like a decent player you might see at the local courts who can hold his own.

So, the first game came and, well, let’s just say I couldn’t have been more wrong about the skills thing. I was awful. Not just a bit poor, but just rubbish. I knew what I meant to do, I knew how I was supposed to do it, but it turns out 10 years of not doing it all made me about as good as somebody who had literally never done it, ever. It was deeply embarrassing. Apparently, you really can lose it!

Something similar tends to happen when you learn a language. I have never been very competent at language learning, so there wasn’t a great deal to lose in my case. But I am told by those who were once very good, but now have little cause to use their language skills, if you don’t keep using it, you will quickly lose it. It even happens to the children of first generation immigrants. They may have their home language and may be able to hold onto understanding it longer than anything else, but spending all their time in school speaking English, and hanging around with English-speaking mates, soon their English outstrips their native language and their speaking and writing skills often go along with it. Even native languages, if you don’t keep using them, might be lost to you.

If these things are true of basketball skills and learnt languages (even native ones sometimes!), have you ever stopped to think that it is probably true of our local church skills too?

Of course, we don’t like to think in terms of ‘church skills’. We tend to prefer the language of giftedness and service. All well and good. But church skills exist. Nobody like to think of preaching as a “skill”, but it is one. Evangelism is as much about skills as anything else. We so often learn ways to do it that help us in the work of taking the gospel to the lost. If we ever speak the language of ‘training’, whether about preaching, evangelism or ministry more broadly, we are necessarily speaking about the development of church skills. Even less do people like to think of welcoming people, showing hospitality, loving one another and a bunch of other stuff as skills either. I know they are significantly about character. But they do involve skills. The kind of skills we often call ‘soft skills’ – which is a terrible name for them because they are pretty vital to doing almost anything people-facing well!

How do introverts become good at hospitality? Is it just a massive change in character from the hollow excuse for human beings that they were before? They just undergo a personality transplant and overcome their introversion? Of course not! And how offensive to think so of every introvert out there! They learn skills that help them to do hospitality and then deploy those skills to make people feel welcome.

How do crazy extroverts who want to spend all their time with people manage to do the hard work of study required for preaching and leading Bible studies? Do they just dampen down their overtly outgoing character? Do they have to stamp all over their unbridled desire to be those irritating people who cannot leave you alone because they can’t cope with their own company? Of course not! And how offensive to think so of every extrovert out there! They learn skills that help them not only understand how to handle the Bible, but how to maintain the disciplines required to sit on their own and actually work out how to put a sermon together.

And it’s not just the introvert/extrovert thing (I was trying to do equal opportunities caricaturing here), it’s every personality type under the sun. There are inevitably things in church life that some of us are naturally built for whereas other commands of Christ we find much harder. The things I struggle with you might find easy and vice versa. But we don’t get a free pass on the commands of Christ that we don’t like so much because it doesn’t suit our personality. Where I am not naturally built towards aspects of ministry, I have to develop church skills so that I can do them competently. They may not come naturally to me, but it doesn’t mean I can’t learn and find ways of making myself do it. Sometimes, with enough practice, we might even get quite good at some of the stuff we aren’t naturally inclined towards.

We all need to develop church skills. If you don’t think you can speak to new people and make them feel welcome, that is a church skill you need to develop. It won’t do to just let people stand around on their own and feel lost. No visitors are coming back if you never talk to them. If you want people to be welcomed and to stay in your church, whether you naturally incline to it or not, you have to develop that skill. The same is true for your preaching, your leading, your pastoral visits, your fellowship, your chit-chat. If we want anyone to come to our church, if we want people to be welcomed, if we want people to be loved, if we want to serve anyone at all well, we have to develop church skills.

Often, we do develop these skills. Many of us will have developed them without even realising it. You might not think you have church skills, but you almost certainly do. You will have developed ways of making conversation, showing interest in people, caring for them, serving in all sorts of ways and lots of other such things. But as with anything we have learnt to do, if you don’t keep using it, you will lose it.

If you don’t keep up with the evangelistic skills you developed, you will eventually lose your evangelistic skills. I spoke the other day about evangelistic skills I learnt 20 years ago that I still use today. That is just the regular upkeep of basic skills. But if you don’t do much evangelism, you can’t be surprised if your skills get rusty or depart from you altogether. If you don’t keep up with the exegetical skills of reading the the Bible carefully and the expository skills involved in sermon preparation, you will eventually lose them too. But even the softer skills of welcoming people, engaging with them, showing interest in them, unless you keep using them week after week, again and again, you will soon find yourself unable to do these things at all, or at least considerably worse at them than you used to be. You have to use them or lose them.

There is no shame in developing church skills. If you are awkward at talking to people, it is good to try and develop ways of being able to be a bit more natural with people. If you are shy, it is good to try and develop lines of questions and discussions that can help you engage with people and make them feel welcome. If there are areas of church life or commands of Christ that you find do not come naturally to you, it is good to develop ways you might be able to fulfil them. These are good things to do. And once you’ve developed these skills, you need to keep using them otherwise you will find yourself – much like I did when I tried playing basketball again – embarrassing yourself, wondering why what you could do years ago, and assumed would simply snap back into action, simply isn’t there anymore and you can’t work out what to do.