Get Out of the Huddle

I'm attending the Willow Creek Leadership Summit for the first time via satellite at my home church, Christ Memorial, in Holland, MI along with over 500 other people this week. Today's afternoon sessions were awesome and inspiring. In trying to decide which to blog about first, I decided I had to begin with our last speaker of the day, a black Baptist preacher from Detroit named Harvey Carey. I've never heard a black Baptist preacher before, but I could get used to it - he was powerful and definitely kept our attention! I'll try to summarize, but you really had to be there to hear it straight from him!

Pastor Carey's theme was "Against All Odds" and he shared how God can do the impossible and has brought about tremendous changes in his church's inner-city Detroit neighborhood with "the poorest zipcode - in the poorest city - in the poorest state." He reminded us not to base our ministry only on the resources we've budgeted, but to do ministry based on God's vision. Trust God to provide the resources. He told us that God is preparing to do a great thing in today's poor economy; people will give all the glory and praise to God when they recognize that they can't accomplish things with their own means. Follow God's call, guided by prayer, and be involved to make a difference in the world. Instead of merely focusing on what the church can do; focus on what God can do (through the church).

The analogy that really struck me dealt with a sports event. He told us to imagine we bought very expensive tickets to a ball game (say the Super Bowl). We'd be excited to see the team come out at the beginning and watch them go into their huddle. But imagine how you'd feel if they stayed in their huddle for 30-40 minutes and then left the field and went home. They never played the game. Then he compared that to the church. So often we're tempted to go to our church services and stick together (our "huddles") and we never go out into the community to "play the game." We need to get out and change the world. Our job is to be renewed in our church "huddles" but then to share what we learn; to get out in the world and play the game - share the good news of Jesus and live our faith among the unchurched.