A worship service works best when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it… The perfect church service would be the one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping… Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the god. A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant…There is really some excuse for the man who said, ‘I wish they’d remember that the chart to Peter was ‘Feed my sheep’; not ‘Try experiments on my rats’, or even ‘Teach my performing dogs new tricks.’
~ C. S. Lewis
The above quote by C. S. Lewis was introduced to me during seminary by my friend JD Walt. Although Lewis wasn't around to observe the contemporary mess that is protestant worship he hits the nail right on the head. I do believe that Novelty is the destroyer of meaningful worship services. As long as worship leaders and planners seek first creativity, uniqueness, and that which is novel, protestant worship services will continue to leave masses of Christian unfulfilled and longing for something deeper...something divine. My friend JD has been having this conversation over at his blog for as long as I've known him so if you're interested in this Protestant dialogue I'd encourage you to take a look over there because I want to take a step out of the world of worship and apply this quote to something completely different - Fantasy Football.
Just as novelty is the killer of liturgy and worship so it is also the destroyer of fantasy football drafts. In preparing for fantasy football one can find himself or herself wrapped up in an endless maze of stats and strategies. In this maze one can quickly lose sight of the practicality of it all and end up over-thinking every draft move. Sure there is advantage in having a well thought out strategy and plan for your draft but when these plans turn to trying to be sneaky, creative, and novel then one's team will quickly turn into a bag of sleeper picks that never materialize.
I speak these words from experience. About a week ago our HAG fantasy football league had our draft and at some points I succumbed to the draft death that is novelty. The desire to outthink everyone lead to me using my first round pick on a QB instead of taking a solid RB or WR. In an attempt to defend myself a little bit let me state a few things. First you should know that our league is a 12 team keeper league so all of top RBs were off the board by the time I got my first pick (#5 via trade). Secondly because of our scoring system QBs far outscore every other position in our league. For example the top QB in our league last year scored 452 fantasy points while the top RB only scored 335. Despite the difference in value the perceived value of RBs is much greater in our league and thus it was my attempt to outthink everyone that caused me to overvalue a QB and destroy my draft with novel thinking.
There is one thing that I neglected to take into account on draft day that would have saved me from succumbing to this novelty - ADP. ADP or average draft position helps people like me, who arrogantly think they can outwit everyone in their league, stay grounded and know when they should draft certain players according to the general consensus value. Sure you'll always have that person who doesn't follow the plan and takes a Defense or Kicker in the 6th round, but if I would have utilized ADP I think it would have checked my novel thinking and enabled me to get a better second string RB (aside from my keeper) and still have a great starting QB. All in all my team isn't totally destroyed but it's surely not as good as it could have been.
So there you have my thoughts on why novelty is not only a killer of worship but also a plague upon fantasy football drafts. Hopefully if you haven't drafted yet you can learn from my mistakes and use average draft position states to help you truly out-draft your opponents.
- Ben
4 comments:
Oh c'mon, you can't talk up your QB pick and then not mention who it is...
Sometimes I forget just how nerdy you can be....case and point ;)
Yes, this post was excessively nerdy. ;-)
While I'm a very casual fantasy football player at best (or at least I was until my competitive streak kicked in the other day), I do think you're right about the QB-first mistake. The problem in the end is that the QB position is actually horribly fantasy-deep, whereas the RB position particularly and the WR position as well suffers from having less in the way of "superstar power."
Really, as far as the RBs go, the tandem trend is making a clear distinction between tandem team backs and non-tandem backs. In the end, while this creates a vast pool of second tier backs, it does limit the number of first tier ones greatly.
Upper end QBs, on the other hand, can be had in spades, because the dropoffs are not nearly so dramatic.
Alright, Chuck. I'll put a post up about my fantasy team.
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