Holy Huddle

Recently I attended my former church in the Austin area while visiting. Pastor Mike Johnson always preaches a good sermon and this day was no exception. He made a comment that struck me and I filed it away in the “Points to Ponder” section of my mind.

His comment was about the congregation not being in a ‘holy huddle’ mentality. You can look around in any church and easily pick out the various ‘holy huddles.’ People tend to sit in the same spot Sunday mornings. Have a pot luck dinner and you find the same little groups sitting together time after time. These, Friends, are holy huddles.

There are variations of holy huddles. People find ‘their’ comfort zone at church and typically do not move out of it. Holy huddles are alive and well in church.

Jesus picked a diverse group as His twelve disciples. He later sent out groups of two. You might argue that his twelve could be considered a holy huddle, there were brothers among them and Jesus pulled His guys off together apart from the crowds. He did that for training and teaching purposes, not to exclude everyone else but to concentrate on preparing them for the time He would not walk among them. Our holy huddles today are based more on selective and mutual comfort zones than anything else. Sort of loses something, doesn’t it?

On their own, people are going to segregate into their huddles. They do it in serving God…they find a comfort zone and rarely venture outside of it. No one wants to be stretched or challenged or put upon to do something for the Lord that does not ‘feel right’ to them. So many times I’ve heard, “That’s just not me, I don’t _____ , I can’t _____, I won’t ____ …”

Sadly, we have fostered that mentality by allowing people to remain in their comfort zone either by themselves or in their holy huddles without daring to challenge them to do otherwise lest we offend. When this behavior abounds, it is no different than the rich young man that wanted to follow Jesus yet could not walk away from his money…or the man that wanted to become a disciple but asked to wait until he had his family business taken care of... or the multitudes that fell away because what they heard and saw was unfamiliar and uncomfortable to them. Do we really want to lump ourselves in with people that ended up not following Jesus just because we rather wallow in our comfort zone with our regular holy huddle?

News Flash…it’s not about you or me or how comfortable we choose to be. Jesus didn’t say, “Follow me if you have nothing better to do or it sounds like a grand adventure to you.”

Just a current events side note: Did you notice in the Super Bowl game that the teams did huddle for a short time to regroup but all the work was done outside of it once they each stepped into position. Think anyone would have won the game if they stayed huddled?

It’s not about you or me or how comfortable we choose to be.