Imagine the Church is a chessboard.
We tend to think of our leaders and pastors as the highly important pieces who make all the difference: the queen, bishops, or rooks. Some of us might consider ourselves a knight because a) they’re cool, and b) they’re capable of getting in on the action here and there.
But as we survey the board, it’s likely that most of us would identify more with the pawns. Pawns take small, simple steps forward, hoping to hang on long enough to share in the victory secured by the “important” players who do wild things like slash all the way across the board in a swift thrust, or jump in deep behind enemy lines.
Modern culture has equated the term “pawn” as a pejorative, which is a shame, because in chess they’re far from expendable. Every chess master understands that pawns are essential, and they quickly learn how to use pawns to drive their opponents nuts. Far from weak, pawns are strategic warriors.
“Pawns are the soul of chess: it is they alone that determine the attack and the defense, and the winning or losing of the game depends entirely on their good or bad arrangement.”
— Francois Andre Danican Philidor 1
You are the soul of the game. You matter. You have the power to make the game a living hell for the demonic forces on the other side. All of you.
You may have limited skills at this juncture; you may have only the simplest strategies for attacking and defending. That’s fine. God will use what you’ve got in the larger scheme and place you where He needs you when He wants to, even when you don’t fully understand how pivotal that role or that position is.
Another thing we as image bearers of Christ and warriors in the kingdom of God have in common with pawns: They’re always either attacking, protecting, or advancing. Pawns never retreat.
“Pawns, often overlooked as the weakest pieces on the chessboard, are in fact the backbone of the game. They control space, shape the battlefield, and ultimately determine the outcome…While their individual value may seem modest, a well-coordinated pawn army can create weaknesses for the opponent, open lines for attacking pieces, and pave the way for promotion into a powerful queen.”
— Magnus Carlson, currently the world’s highest rated chess player (Sept, 2025)
Pawns occupy the front lines.
When you first come to Christ, you might start off feeling like a pawn, and that’s okay; we’ve just established how important and powerful they are. As you advance and expand your knowledge, operating in your giftings in the Holy Spirit and learning your role in the game, you may find you get (to borrow another chess term) “promoted” within the body of Christ.
In chess, if a pawn gets all the way to the other side of the board unscathed, it gets promoted into a different piece of the master’s choosing. As We the Church grow, special skills are developed in some of us, abilities that others don’t have or don’t have a passion for (nobody wants me in charge of children’s ministry, or on the worship team). And some of us are perfectly comfortable with the limited role God has for us.
Others seek to expand their training and take on riskier endeavors. The Master knows best. God can use all of them; He wants to use all of them—all of us—in whatever degree we’re willing to offer ourselves up.
In the Master’s Hands
In 1984, Emil Josef Diemer sat across from chess master Thomas Heiling. Deimer began as most chess players do, with a standard pawn movement. What made this game significant in the annals of chess2 is that Diemer continued to move pawns, and only pawns.
Deimer made seventeen straight pawn moves before finally bringing out his queen, flummoxing Heiling with things he’d never seen and was unprepared to defend against. After a long series of complex, unprecedented traps—facilitated only as a result of those early pawn movements—Heiling eventually resigned the game3, admitting defeat.
We tend to disqualify ourselves all the time, from many different roles. Understanding that every one of us holds value and strategic importance is something that we need to relearn. It’s something good parents and quality teachers hammer home to us when we’re young, but very soon the enemy steps in and goes to great lengths to conceal it from us.
The enemy wants you to think of yourself as a lowly pawn in a rigged game, or perhaps an ineffective knight in a losing position.
Or perhaps the enemy will use a different tactic: pride. Perhaps the Accuser [footnote] will convince us that we’re the all important and powerful queen, and get us to scorn those lowly pawns as we turn our noses up at those inferior pieces.
Any fallacy will do.
God says differently. He says, I made all of them the way they are, and I can use all of them in the game. As we move forward we’ll increase, and even transform into more dangerous foes, if we will allow Him to propel us forward.
Let Him direct you, and move when He tells you to move, even when it doesn’t make sense and you feel like a simple pawn on a board full of knights and bishops.
He knows our capability, and how to use it. Our only job is to keep moving in whichever direction we’re capable.
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1 Francois Andre Danican Philidor (Sept. 7, 1726 — Aug. 31, 1795) was a French composer and accomplished chess player. He is generally regarded as the best chess player of his age.
2 Sometimes known as The Pawnmower game, you can watch several YouTube videos breaking down the match and strategies, or a simplified step-by-step recreation of the full game here.
3 In chess, to “resign” is to acknowledge impending, inevitable loss. The player resigning will either tip over his King, extend his or her right hand to offer a closing handshake, or activate the Resign button when playing online, thus giving their opponent the win.