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You probably don’t have to be told that high school football in Texas is big. Is there a more appropriate word we can use to describe it? Mammoth? Colossal? No matter which adjective we choose, it all feels like an understatement sometimes.
Earlier this season, the grandiosity that is Texas high school football was on full display in a booming town in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. It was homecoming at a large school, and a reported 4,000 students packed into a gymnasium to celebrate with a pep rally.
It looked like a concert. Air raid sirens and loud rock music blared over the speaker system. Drums thundered in unison as students waved lasers over their heads. Colored LED lasers beamed wildly around the room. Pyrotechnic cannons—yes, fire cannons—shot flames toward the ceiling.
It was big. Huge. Monumental. Videos of the pep rally made the rounds on social media, and even a couple of local TV stations picked up on the story.
The next day, a much smaller school in a much smaller town—Mabank, located about 50 miles southeast of Dallas—did something that also ended up garnering quite a bit of attention. At the Mabank High School homecoming dance on Sept. 21, students were caught on video doing something unusual—publicly and unashamedly praising God.
As the story goes, students submitted a list of songs to the deejay working the dance that night. The list included plenty of secular songs, but also at least one Christian worship song. When that song was played—Brandon Lake’s “Gratitude”—videos show many of the students lifting their hands and singing along:
So come on, my soul
Oh, don’t you get shy on me
Lift up your song
‘Cause you’ve got a lion inside of those lungs
Get up and praise the Lord …
The Mabank homecoming dance became the talk of social media and, like the pep rally in the Dallas area the day before, was even reported on by at least one local TV station. Several Southern Baptists of Texas Convention pastors also took notice. Michael Cooper, lead pastor of Grace Community Church in Mabank, posted on Facebook, “The gospel is present in Mabank ISD. From inviting ministers to pray at the beginning of the year, the Jesus club, to spontaneous worship at the homecoming dance, God is actively present.”
“Let’s go!” exclaimed Teddy Sorrells, lead pastor of Living Water Church in Gladewater, on Facebook. “If this doesn’t fire you up for the next generation, I don’t know what will!”
This isn’t a criticism of the spectacularly elaborate pep rally, but rather a celebration of what happened at the dance. It’s an encouragement—God is still working. He is moving among the next generation, and He is using things like homecoming dances out in the middle of nowhere to spread His message and lead people to faith in Jesus.
Who came to faith because of what happened in Mabank? Who knows? Our job is not results, but faithfulness, and that’s what a gym full of kids exhibited on a Saturday night a couple of months ago. As the world around them spins dizzily with football games and college pressures and a million other things, they elevated the name of Jesus in a space where His name isn’t often elevated.
And now you’re reading about it. Lots of people are hearing about it.
Isn’t it neat how God works?
