Huddled to Scatter
In a sermon called The Power of God’s People by Tony Evans, he illustrates the importance of both being gathered and scattered…“In football they have a huddle, the goal of the huddle is to give you thirty seconds to call the play, that is why they give you a huddle. At a professional football game there may be 60,000 watching you huddle. They don’t mind you taking thirty seconds to call the play. They understand that you have to get organized, you have to know where you are going to go. The receivers need to know where they are going to go. The quarterback needs to know where he is going to go. The backs need to know where they are going to go. A huddle is a necessary part of playing the game.
But let me inform you if you do not already know, 60,000 do not pay all that money for a ticket to watch you huddle. See, people don’t come to football games to watch the huddle. They want to see if their team can overcome the opposition who is daring them to snap the ball and move down the field to score. What they want to know is does your practice work?
Now what Christians often do is get high on their huddles. We gather together on Sunday morning and Sunday nights and Wednesday nights and we go nuts over the huddle! We say, “Boy did we have a huddle!! My quarterback can call plays better than your quarterback. And boy do we go off on the huddle. But what people don’t seem to understand is, that the huddle is so that we can play the game. The effectiveness of your church cannot be measured by how well you do on Sunday morning. … The test of the church is what it does in the marketplace. What we need today is churches that are representative of Jesus Christ not only when gathered but when disseminated.”
(Dr. Tony Evans. “The Power of God’s People.” )
(Sermon, 1987 – Church Growth Conference,
Prestonwood Baptist Church, Dallas, TX)
If going to church is the measure of our Christianity, then this story has something to say to us. Many Christians have a “huddle” mentality because it is very comfortable calling the plays without executing them. But the world isn’t changed by calling a huddle. The world is challenged every time believers break from the huddle and execute plays. The enemy’s defense provides the barrier and resistance to our plays, but the goal of the offense is to overcome the resistance and score. The goal of the offense is to run over the enemy.
Has the church lost this basic strategy?
Tonight I’m going to show you the strategy of the church as it has always been. This is best illustrated by the life of Stephen. The church has always known its mission to proclaim Jesus, even at the risk of persecution. Stephen knew this mission and executed it well, even giving his life for the gospel. The church has always had a strategy in presenting the Gospel to a hostile crowd and getting the message across before the crowd shut its eyes and ears. Stephen strategically presented his message of Acts 7 to a hostile crowd and the strategy kept them listening until the knockout punch was thrown. This is Christianity at its finest.
Stay tuned…