I'm going somewhere with this, so bear with me.

One of the things you do as a pastor is go to church growth seminars.  As you probably know, most of the mainstream Christian churches are getting smaller.  As a result, an industry has developed around church growth.  There are all kinds of "experts", all of whom have written a book or produced DVDs or go around speaking at seminars.  The format is pretty much the same.  Each of them tells you that if you just go home and do A, B, and C, your church will grow.

It's amazing to me how many pastors fall for it.  You leave one of these seminars, and there's a whole bunch of pastors all fired up.  They're convinced that they've found the secret.  They go home and immediately try to implement A, B, and C, convinced that once they do, their church will grow.

So, they go home and implement A., B, and C and--the church does not grow.  Sometimes, it even gets smaller.  And they can't figure out why.  They get frustrated.  They get upset with their congregation.  And then, after a while, here comes another church growth seminar, and they go to that one, convinced that this time, they really will find the secret, and this time their church really will grow.

It's not that the ideas you learn at these seminars are bad, necessarily.  It's just that--well, for example, a few years back the hot idea was that you had to have a praise band that could lead worship.  And a bunch of pastors went back to their churches determined to form praise bands.  Now, there's nothing wrong with a praise band.  In fact, it can be a really good thing and enhance the worship service--if you have people who have the ability to be in a praise band.  But you can't just put a bunch of people on stage, hand them guitars, and call them a praise band.  It's not going to work.  In fact, if you do that, you may end up driving people away, because they're tired of hearing this so-called praise band butcher the same worship songs every Sunday.  It's not that the idea was bad.  It's just that, for the idea to work, you have to have people who have the ability to make it work.

The way the Twins are being run this year, it's like Gardy, Terry Ryan, and Rob Antony went to a baseball seminar during the off-season and heard, "The key to winning baseball games these days is roster flexibility.  With twelve or thirteen pitchers on the roster, you don't have much of a bench.  So, the guys on the bench have to be able to play multiple positions.  You have to have infielder/outfielders and catcher/outfielders.  That's the way you win in the big leagues today."

And Gardy, Terry Ryan, and Rob Antony got all fired up about that.  They were convinced they'd found the secret.  They went home and immediately implemented this new strategy.  Now, there's nothing wrong with having guys on the bench who can play multiple positions.  In fact, it can be a really good thing and help you win--if you have people who can play multiple positions.  But you can't just put a bunch of infielders and catchers in the outfield and call them outfielders.  It's not going to work.  In fact, if you do that, you may end up costing yourself games, because these so-called outfielders are going to butcher a bunch of plays.  It's not that the idea was bad.  It's just that, for the idea to work, you have to have people who have the ability to make it work.

Did having Nunez and Santana in the outfield cost the Twins the game yesterday?  Maybe not.  If we assume they were only going to score one run anyway, then almost certainly not.  But it put them behind by two runs in the first inning, and that can change the entire way a game plays out.  We'll never know what, if any, difference it made, but we do know it put them in a hole early, and they were never able to climb out.

Now, apparently, Arcia and Willingham are back.  Neither of them is exactly a Gold Glove candidate, but at least they're actual outfielders.  I'm sure we haven't seen the last of our infielder praise band, though, because this still leaves the Twins without a backup center fielder.  We will almost certainly continue to hand a guitar to Nunez and Santana and call them outfielders, and we'll continue to be frustrated when it doesn't work.

In any event, the Twins now return home to play the Texas Rangers.  The Rangers have been hampered by injuries this season and are a .500 team so far.  They'll throw Nick Tepesch, who was a below-average starter last year but has made two good starts this season.  The Twins counter with Kevin Correia, who was an average starter last year and has also made about two good starts this season, but in his case it's two out of nine.  That means, of course, that he's due!  Tonight's game will propel the Twins to a season-ending one hundred fifteen-game winning streak!  We'll just have to settle for 138-24!