Thursday, October 05, 2006

Catalyst: Jeff Foxworthy

There was a surprise guest this afternoon at Catalyst.  Ok, the title of the post probably gave it away.  Jeff Foxworthy came out and was just hilarious.  Mark Batterson was actually able to catch some of his redneck jokes (he got about half of them, I counted 15...  Yes, I am a nerd counting jokes).

What surprised me more than anything about Jeff's talk was that it really was a talk.  there was some deep insight to go along with some incredible humor.  Here's what I took away:

Jeff defines a redneck as someone with a glorious absence of sophistication and education.  He knows them well because he's unsophisticated and uneducated.  Everyone in the room is the same way, or has someone in their family who is.

His main point came down to this though.  Every one we want to reach as leaders is going to be a redneck.  These are the people we need to build up as leaders.  They are the people who will be the arms of God, to bringing the good news of Jesus to the world.

These people aren't going to be the scholars of the world.  We won't be sitting behind a desk reading about how to save people.  We'll be out doing the work with the gifts God's given us to use.

These people aren't going to be sophisticated.  We aren't going to be at all of the posh parties.  We may have a "flyswatter in the passenger seat of the minivan so that we can reach the kids while we're driving". 

When you're looking for people to build the kingdom of god, it's not going to be the experts, it's going to be through growing the rednecks of the world into followers.

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