The Team That Had No Stars

In the fall of 1979, coach Herb Brooks sat in a Minneapolis hotel room cutting players from the United States Olympic hockey roster. He released several athletes who were objectively more talented than the ones he kept. His assistant coach, Craig Patrick, questioned the decisions. Brooks answered with a line that would become legendary: "I'm not looking for the best players. I'm looking for the right ones."

Brooks understood something that puzzled the hockey world. He knew that twenty skilled strangers would lose to twenty ordinary players who had learned to breathe as one body. So he chose skaters who complemented each other, who covered each other's weaknesses, who would sacrifice personal glory for the man on the next line. On February 22, 1980, at Lake Placid, that collection of college kids defeated the Soviet Union — a team that had dominated international hockey for nearly two decades.

The Apostle Paul would have recognized what Herb Brooks was building. "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you'" (1 Corinthians 12:21). The church was never designed to be a collection of individual superstars performing side by side. It was designed to be a body — interconnected, interdependent, each member making the others better.

The Most High does not call the most talented into His church. He calls the right ones. And when ordinary people commit to one another with extraordinary devotion, the world watches something it cannot explain.