You may have picked up that Michael Carrick, Head Coach at Manchester United, has been sacked. It comes as no surprise to anybody who has followed football over recent years. It doesn’t really matter that he is only 10 months into a 2 year contract. The ongoing slump of the team, with the serious strop thrown by their mercurial star player, Bruno Fernandes, added to boot, the writing was on the wall. The whole thing felt less a case of ‘if’ than ‘when’.

There is lots we could say about that, but one thing football has become is very short-termist. If results are not quickly what they ought to be (as fans and boardrooms judge it), the most obvious thing to do is change the manager. Never mind what the issues with the players might be, forget the problems that may be coming down from the top, the manager is the simplest thing to change. Carrick’s 10 months is really not the most egregious example of short-termism (and I am not suggesting it is not ultimately the right move necessarily) but it is a far cry from the nearly 4 years before he won anything given to Alex Ferguson when he started and the four seasons given to Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool.

Football, of course, is not the only culprit. It would be hard to overlook the fact that we have had 7 different Prime Ministers in the last 10 years. Whilst they were unusual, Thatcher and Blair respectively were the only Prime Ministers in their 10 year tenures (though they were aberrations). The average length of Post-war Prime Ministers is 4 years, so 7 in 10 marks a significant uptick in short-termism. Given that trend for Prime Ministers generally, the age-old accusation that politicians are mainly concerned with short-term gains rather than necessary and long-term fixes is only compounded.

Short-termism can equally show up in the church. We can have a significant churn of people in some churches and a quick turnover of elders. Many pastors do not last particularly long either. This sort of short-termism can have implications for long-term ministry.

I don’t want to get into all the whys and wherefores of it here. There are lots of reasons why pastorates might be shorter than we may otherwise like. There are lots of factors that impact whether a pastor stays or goes. But we cannot ignore the fact that short-termism and regular turnover of personnel can militate against long-term thinking and necessary traction. Not always, of course. It is not inevitable. But it is more likely.

Perhaps in another post I will explore some of the reasons for short-termism. Suffice to say, unless we can get to grips with it and retain pastors for longer, we will inevitably find long-term plans a struggle.