There Are No NFL Recruiters at Field Games

Written by Rev. Dr. Heather Henson, Director of Quest

 

I am blessed to have the privilege of leading Quest at Green Lake Conference Center. Given my low tolerance for doing the same thing over and over again, we don’t have many traditions within the Quest program. However, we do have one very significant tradition. It is a field game we play every single year. While its origin story predates my leadership of Quest, I would never even think of ending the tradition.

It’s a game called Color Wars, and it is basically a complicated version of tag. Yes, you heard that correctly. It’s tag. But not just any game of tag! Campers paint their faces in elaborate ways. Some will have giant red handprints; others will have yellow dots running down their arms. Some will have green slashes across their cheeks and foreheads; others might paint giant purple hearts all over their faces. People are very attached to their team colors and will request to be assigned Green, Blue, or whatever their favorite color is. Sometimes, I think the paint is the part people like the most.

That thought disappears quickly as soon as the game begins! You’d be surprised by the frenzy that ensues. Each person has a flag, and the goal is to keep their flag. You see, in this game, each color is assigned another color to chase. Red chases Orange. Orange chases Yellow. Yellow chases Blue. Blue chases Red. If you are Red, you can only pull flags from the Orange team, but someone on team Blue might be coming to snag your flag, so watch out! The team with one person left standing at the end wins.

It is a simple but very important game for the campers. As you can imagine, after playing this game for several years in a row, it is something that the campers (and the Quest staff!) are deeply invested in. As a result, it is not only a fun experience, but also the game with the highest possibility of injuries! Everyone is all in. And with 150 people running around inside a circle, you could imagine the chaos.

To mitigate some of the chaos … and help people remember it is a game, I take some time each year to say a few words. Before we slather on the paint and lumber out to the giant circle on the field, we have to remind the campers and the staff of one very important thing. No NFL recruiters are joining us. No one is getting a college scholarship based on their performance in Color Wars. No one is collecting a prize. No one is making the news or going viral based on videos of their “d1 skills.” It is tag.

 

A Needed Reminder for Preachers

I think that sometimes the same reminder needs to be given to us as preachers. Obviously, we should take our roles seriously as ministers of the gospel. But sometimes we might get a little misguided with how we are approaching it. We can forget that no angels are watching and waiting with an “MVP” award (Most Valuable Preacher).

Jesus is not watching the scoreboard, chewing on his fingernails, hoping for a victory. The Holy Spirit is not sitting with your “admission into heaven” ticket, waiting to make a decision based on your performance. Your value to God does not rise and fall on the makings of your sermon.

Yes, preaching is valuable; just not in the way we often think it is. As preachers and ministers, we often think that our job is to do God’s work. Which is silly. God is more than able to do God’s work. We have the blessing of participating in the work God is doing.

• Our job is to follow the Lord wherever he leads.
• Our job is to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
• Our job is to bear witness to the mighty power of the Holy Spirit.
• Our job is to be the presence of Christ in the world.

 

What Really Matters

The art of preaching is valuable because we are being witnesses to God’s hope, love, peace, truth, and presence in this world. God may work through us, but our value does not rest in our ability to draw people into the kingdom. Here are a few reasons that matter:

1. Only God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, reconciles the world through Christ. We do not.
2. The work of shaping, molding, and transforming lives is the work of the Holy Spirit.
3. The most powerful thing we can do as ministers of the gospel is to be faithful to the Lord, to model the fruit of the Spirit in this world, and to grow in Christlikeness.

 

How different might our sermons be if we recognized that God is not sending recruiters, awards, or special accolades for those of us who preach? I think we would discover that real, transformational, authentic sermons are spoken by people who are not performing, but witnessing. People who are not striving to win, but are overflowing with what God is doing in them.

The pressure to win, to produce, to prove, to be the most valuable preacher in the room will always distract us from the real work. The real work is to be present to God, present to the people we serve, and present to the movement of the Holy Spirit. When we let go of the imagined scoreboard and set aside the pressure to earn something that God has already freely given, we begin to preach from a different place. A steadier place. A truer place.

A place where the preacher is not performing but, instead, walking alongside others.

A place where the sermon is not a competition but an overflow.

A place where the outcome belongs to God alone.

And perhaps that is where the most authentic, transformational preaching begins.