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A few years ago I moved from North Carolina to New Jersey. The culture shock was not too bad, but one of the things that made the transition worse was the prevalence of NASCAR fans in the Garden State. I thought I was escaping the redneck South only to find that racin' and rasslin' were really big among my new mid-Atlantic neighbors. The Yankees' accents may have been different from the southerners', but they loved Dale, Jeff, Rusty, and the boys all the same.

I don't care much for the sport, so at first the whole NASCAR-in-Jersey thing bothered me. But then I began to ask why the sport had broken across the Mason-Dixon and was taking over the civilized parts of the nation. My theory is that NASCAR has an inherent appeal to postmodern people. If true, then this means the church can learn a few things by paying attention to the distinctive aspects of NASCAR. I'm not saying you need to start watching the points standings or put a bunch of decals on your car, but maybe this will help you put some handles on our shifting culture.

So buckle up; here are five things I've noticed about NASCAR that may be of help to you and your church:

If I am a baseball fan, I pull for a club. So should the Braves up and decide to trade Chipper Jones to the Mets (I'm not trying to start a rumor, this is just hypothetical), I still pull for the Braves. Not so in racing. In racing, fans follow drivers. The driver's sponsors can change, the paint scheme on the car can change, and he might even start driving for a different owner—but who cares?? The fans' loyalties focus on drivers—on real people, not the organization behind the driver.

Today's humans are more loyal to other people (their friends, relatives, neighbors) than to an organization. Loyalty to government, company, and even church are secondary. This means churches must help people get loyal to Jesus and to each other rather than trying to build loyalty to the organization.

Face it, racecar drivers do something that each of us does every day: they drive a car. They are just whole lot better at something each of us does fairly well (actually, I am a much better driver than you are, but that is a different story). There is some kind of connection because of common experience. Few of us hit a ball with a bat in our everyday lives. With the exception of recreation leagues, none of us throw an oblong ball very often or try to sink a jump shot. But driving a car is an ordinary experience. And racecar drivers seem like real people.

Today's folks want to identify with someone who has flaws and shortcomings and is a real person, not somebody who might as well be from another planet. This really has impacted the way I preach and tell the stories of scripture. I used to feel that I had to hide the flaws of Biblical figures like David, Abraham, and Peter. But now I point them out and say, "Hey, these are real people just like us."

I also do the same with myself. I'm careful not to air too much of my dirty laundry in my preaching, but I am learning that God can use my everyday stuff to help move people forward in faith.

People really want to know that ordinary people have faith that matters in their ordinary lives. To foster faith involvement, church leaders must help people overcome the "saint syndrome" that creates the delusion of faith being only for a minority of top spiritual achievers whom God drafts in the high rounds—while the rest of us sit on the sofa and watch.

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