Believe it or not

There is a scene in the movie The Replacements when the football players are discussing the game that they just lost. The coach, Gene Hackman, asks them what they fear. There are various funny answers -- bees, spiders -- and then Keanu Reeves gets to the heart of the matter. He fears quicksand. He fears the point at which the game seems to reach a point when they are in quicksand -- loosing, with no hope of recovery. Bad things start to happen, and the players become convinced that nothing can be turned around.

In his Faith and Doubt book, Ortberg says that the critical value in healing is "whether the healer has faith that healing will happen." I was surprised by that. I would have thought that the critical factor is whether the patient believes that healing will occur. Not the case, says Ortberg.

But then, as I think about it, in a church situation, I think it might be important whether the leaders -- the pastors and the leading laity -- believe that growth is possible. Do you think that a church can reach a point when -- even though everyone is working hard to jump start a church to growth -- if those leading do not believe that the efforts will be successful that they have reached quicksand. Quicksand -- that point at which failure feels inevitable.

Do we have enough faith in God to believe that the work we are doing will be successful because of the involvement of God