When the Boat Swings

In rowing, there is a phenomenon called "swing." It happens when all eight rowers are pulling in such perfect unison that the boat seems to lift out of the water and glide on its own. Each rower stops thinking about their individual stroke and becomes part of something greater.

Daniel James Brown describes this in The Boys in the Boat, his account of the 1936 University of Washington crew team. These nine young men — mostly sons of loggers, farmers, and shipyard workers from the Pacific Northwest — had every reason to row as individuals. They were Depression-era kids fighting for survival. But their coach, Al Ulbrickson, and their boat builder, George Pocock, taught them that the fastest boat is never the one with the strongest individual. It is the one where every rower trusts the others enough to give themselves fully to the rhythm.

At the Berlin Olympics, that trust carried them to gold — surging from behind to beat Germany and Italy in the final strokes.

The Apostle Paul described something remarkably similar when he wrote, "The body is not made up of one part but of many" (1 Corinthians 12:14). Christian community is not a collection of individuals sitting in the same room. It is a group of believers so attuned to Christ and to one another that something greater emerges — something none of them could produce alone.

The question for us is simple: Are we rowing together, or are we just sitting in the same boat?