I apologize. I thought I was done ranting about the essay urging pastors to just “Run the Play” Jesus gave us. It’s the wrong play, and it’s not the one Jesus gave us!

Josh Howard, writing eloquently for discipleship.org, published “The 45-degree Shift that changes everything” on August 22, 2026. Please read it in its entirety. Here’s the idea: the 45-degree shift is changing a plus sign to a multiplication sign.

Here’s the heart of his blog:

Our team decided to make the shift—from addition to multiplication—and it changed nearly everything about how we operated:

• Our job description flipped. We went from players to coaches. Our job wasn’t just to do ministry, but to train everyone else to do it too.
• Our structure flipped. Leaders moved from the top to the bottom—lifting and supporting, not commanding.
• Training became universal. If you were breathing, you were being trained to share the gospel and make disciples who make disciples.
• Sunday morning changed function. Instead of treating our gathering as “the game,” we started treating it as the locker room—where the team gets equipped to go play the real game all week.
• We released control. And in exchange, our influence multiplied exponentially.

Note the fourth one: “Sunday morning changed function.” It wasn’t “the game” where we ran “the play.” It was “the locker room – where the team gets equipped to go play the real game all week.”

I rest my case.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 18.18 – 20, ESV)

Please note that “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” includes the command he just gave! And “teaching them to observe” is more than teaching the commands, it’s teaching them how to do the commands, i.e., training.

That’s “the play.”