In football, they have the huddle. The whole purpose of the huddle is to give the team about thirty seconds to call the next play. That’s it. Now, here’s what’s funny—sixty thousand people might be watching that huddle. And they don’t mind. They understand. You’ve got to get organized. The quarterback needs to know where he’s going. The ends need to know their route. The backs need to know their assignment.

But let me tell you something obvious: nobody pays between 250 and 1000 bucks just to watch the huddle. People come to see the team break the huddle, snap the ball, and move down the field against a defense doing its darnedest to stop them. The 60,000 plus Number 12s ("fans", for the uninitiated) want to know: did your practice actually make a difference? Will it work?

Now, here’s where we as Christians get into trouble. We get high on our huddles. Sunday morning, Worship Nights, Sunrise Services — we go nuts over the huddle. “Man, worship today was amazing!” “Our quarterback calls plays better than any other quarterback in the league!” We end up critiquing the music, the sermon length, whether or not people were friendly.

But the huddle only exists so we can play the game. The effectiveness of your church cannot be measured by how well you do on Sunday morning. It's when you get out there - in the world - in your own unique harvest field, if you will. THIS is what we see in the Book of Acts, chapter 8.

There are certain people in life who leave a lasting impression on you.

Spend enough time around someone and eventually you begin to sound like them. You start using their phrases, picking up their habits, laughing at the same things they laugh at. Sometimes married couples do this so much that they can practically finish each other’s sentences. Children pick up expressions from their parents without even realizing it. Why? Because proximity leaves its mark. Time spent together changes us.

That is exactly what happened in our text this morning.

Remember the old tv game show Name That Tune? Where you are given a certain number of notes and you have to figure out what song is being played? Well this morning I want to play a version of that game. We’ll call it Name That Person.

I’m going to give you some clues, straight out of Scripture, and you keep track of the amount of clues it takes for you to guess the person

“I am like one born at the wrong time…”

“I am less than the least of all God’s people…"

“I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin…”

“I know that nothing good lives in me…”

“For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…” So...who does that describe?

Alright, let’s shift the clues.

A man who breathed out threats and murder against the followers of Jesus…
A man who went from house to house dragging men and women off to prison to face possible execution…
A man who was on the scene approving of the lynching of first Christian martyr…

Name that person.

Same answer. Saul… who would later be known as Paul.

Do you see the tension? In the last set of clues you have a man who seems to be so confident of his convictions and commitment to doing the right thing. But on the other hand, you get this man who recognizes his brokenness - like the tax-collector in the parable who goes to the temple and can't even look up at God, he is so cognizant of his sinfulness. He is humble, he acknowledges his weakness, he is no longer self-righteous.

And somehow, those two realities live in the same person. Which raises the question: what happened in between? What made this self-righteous, confident persecutor of the church become a selfless, humble servant --- one who would actually go from NUMBER 1 persecutor of the Early Church to the NUMBER 1 missionary to the Gentile world?

The answer, of course, is Jesus. But more specifically, the answer is that Jesus refused to leave Saul where he was. And that really is what spiritual growth is all about.

Let me start with a confession. I like being independent. I really do. I like making decisions without asking for help. I like solving my own problems. And at times I see that tendency creeping into how I do ministry. I mean, I'm the pastor --- I should be able to do all these things on my own. It doesn't impose upon other people, it's just easier for me to do it by myself, me and God, man, we got this covered.

Sounds holy, doesn't it? Problem is… it's not biblical. It's not beneficial. And it's not sustainable.

Years ago, when communism fell in Romania, the world was introduced to something heartbreaking. There were thousands of children living in overcrowded orphanages. Their basic needs were technically being met — food, clothing, shelter — but they were rarely held. Rarely touched. Rarely spoken to. There was no consistent love. No family. And doctors began to notice something; they called it “failure to thrive.”

These children were alive… but they weren’t developing. Months would go by, even years, and they still functioned like infants. Not because they lacked nutrition, but because they lacked connection. They didn’t just need food. They needed family.

And in a very real way, the same thing can happen spiritually. A person can come to faith in Jesus… be genuinely saved… and yet, if they try to live the Christian life in isolation, disconnected from other believers, they begin to stall out. They don’t grow. They don’t mature. They struggle to persevere. They begin to experience a kind of spiritual “failure to thrive.”

So today, as we continue our CONNECT series, we're going to see that connecting to Christ is first—but connecting to each other is how we grow up.

There are moments in history when everything seems to be falling apart, and yet at the very same time, God is quietly at work doing something that changes everything.

You can see it in different places and different times. In the 1700s, both Britain and America were facing deep social and moral decline. Tensions were rising, and in France those tensions eventually erupted into violent revolution. But in Britain and in the American colonies, something very different happened. Instead of a political uprising, there was a spiritual awakening. A series of Christian revivals swept through the churches and permanently affected Christianity in the Protestant denominations primarily. Evangelicalism became a movement in many denominations and ordinary people began turning to Christ in massive numbers. Lives were changed. Families were restored. Society itself began to shift—not from the top down, but from the inside out. It became known as the Great Awakening.

There's a movie out right now in theaters that highlights the relationship between one of the major leaders of the revival - a man named George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin. Revival leaders like Whitefield and John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards presented a theology that changed people's hearts as they relied on the power of the Holy Spirit - which brought about a deep personal conviction of the need for salvation through Jesus, and a new standard, then, of personal morality.

It was an incredible movement - but it wasn't the first time something like that had happened.

The very first "great awakening" actually took place in the Roman Empire, in a small and seemingly insignificant corner of the world, in the city of Jerusalem. There was no political power, no cultural influence, no economic strength — it was just a small group of about 120 people gathering together in prayer. And yet within a couple of centuries, the message that began with that small group had spread throughout the entire empire.

That’s the story that the New Testament Book of Acts tells. It is the story of how God takes a small group of ordinary, often broken people, draws them into connection with Himself, fills them with His presence and His power, and then works through them to change the world.

There’s something in all of us that drifts toward making things about us, even when they weren’t designed that way. Have you ever noticed that? You go somewhere beautiful—a sunset, the beach, the mountains—and instead of just taking it in, what do we do? We pull out our phones. We take a picture. And then we end up looking at the sunset through the screen. And without even realizing it, the moment that was supposed to be about the beauty in front of us becomes about capturing something for ourselves. We end up looking at the screen instead of the sunset. And the crazy thing is, we can walk away and say, “That was amazing,” and never have REALLY looked at the real thing.

And I wonder if sometimes, without even realizing it, we can do the same thing with the church. Because the church is a beautiful thing. It’s meaningful. It’s powerful. It matters deeply. But it was never meant to be the end of the story. It was always meant to point to something greater. So the question I want us to wrestle with this morning is not just, “What does the church do?” The better question is, “Why does the church exist at all?”

You know, there are certain words in life that carry more weight than others. Not because they’re long. Not because they’re complicated. But because of what they settle.

Just a single word - or a simple phrase for that matter - can change everything.

A judge leans forward and says one word: “Guilty.” and everything changes.

A doctor walks into the room and says: “All Clear.” And suddenly, a family that’s been holding its breath for weeks can finally exhale.

A coach looks at the team and says: "We're in." And a small school gets their first shot at the big tournament.

At a wedding, two people stand before family and friends, and one simple phrase seals the covenant:

“I do.” And let’s be honest, that’s a moment where one word carries a lot of weight! Neither of those two people standing before the preacher in that room at that moment is thinking, “Well, we’ll just circle back in a few weeks and see how this goes.”

No, “I do” means something is settled.

Or even something as simple as: “Done," which is essentially what Jesus said at the end of his life there on the cross: Tetalestai. Done. Completed. Nothing more to add.

For some of you, the most powerful word you can think of is "Dinner!!" That’s a spiritual moment right there.

When you hear those words… you don’t ask a lot of questions - you just respond.

All these are small words or very brief phrases -- and yet they carry enormous weight because they bring certainty. They take something that was in question and settle it once and for all.

And then there’s a word we don’t use very often anymore, but when we do, it carries a unique kind of weight. That word is “Indeed.”

It’s not flashy. It’s not loud. It does sound almost British, I know. 🙂

But one thing is certain: it's final. It conveys truth. It says, "This is settled." It's no longer up for debate. Indeed. And for over 2,000 years, on this day - Resurrection Sunday - the Church has declared: “He is risen!” And the response has come back across generations, across cultures, across languages:

“He is risen… indeed.”

Not maybe. Not hopefully. Not metaphorically. But IN DEED (it's right there in the word!) Not in theory. Not in word. It's certain. It's true. Indeed.

There’s something about “last things” that just carry a different kind of weight.

If you’ve ever been with someone near the end of their life, you know what I mean. The conversations change. People don’t talk about trivial things anymore. They don’t waste time on surface-level stuff. They start saying what really matters. Sometimes it’s simple—“I love you.” Sometimes it’s clarifying—“Don’t forget this.” Sometimes it’s relational—“Take care of each other.”

I remember reading an interview with Billy Graham when he was 92 years old. He was being asked to look back over his life—decades of ministry, traveling the world, preaching to millions of people—and the interviewer asked him a simple question: “What would you do differently?”

And his answer was striking. He said, “I would study more, I would pray more, travel less, take less speaking engagements.” He went on to say that if he had it to do over again, he would spend more time in meditation and prayer, just telling the Lord how much he loved Him and how much he was looking forward to eternity.

And when you hear that, you realize—you’re not listening to a casual opinion. You’re listening to clarity that comes at the end of a life. You’re hearing what mattered most when everything else was stripped away.

That’s why we lean in when someone is speaking from that place, because we understand—this is what they want remembered.

And when we come to John chapter 13, that’s the moment we’re stepping into. Jesus knows the cross is just hours away. He knows exactly what’s coming. And so when He gathers His disciples in that upper room, He’s not filling space with random conversation. He’s giving them what matters most.

Not just something to remember… but something to live.