Fellowship Hall

Gary's mission field is a paved oval

By Mark Wolfe

Our world has become a place where people love to compete in the name of sport.  Each year, competitors manage to push even harder than before, breaking records that once seemed unbeatable.  Athletes run faster, jump higher and hit further than ever before. 

Extreme Sports have especially altered our expectations, as we fully expect to see nothing less than competitors who back-flip motorcycles, leap off snowy cliffs with a snowboard strapped to their feet or perform inverted, multi-rotational aerials on a skateboard.  These kinds of feats have become as expected and ordinary as hitting a home run was once.  

All this emphasis on competition and pushing the limits of human achievement begs the question ‘Where does God fit into all of this?’

That search has particular importance for Gary Elliott, who has found a way to combine his love for the high speed, pavement pounding sport of stock car racing with his love for God, and for Gary the balance is really quite simple…”never leave Jesus in the pits.”

Gary Elliott

Gary’s life of racing started in 1969 when he began driving in the Mini-Stocks class on the dirt track at Merrittville. This was a dream come true after many summers of watching races from the grandstands along with his family.  A few years later in 1972 he took his experience and newly found driving skill and moved up to the Vintage Modified division where the speeds are higher and the competition even less forgiving.  It was in this class Gary would find his home in the racing world for the next 33 years.  He also found a great deal of success along the way including multiple awards for Most Sportsmanlike Driver, Most Popular Driver, Best Looking Car and two overall Series Championships.

Since 2005 Gary has been campaigning a car in the fiercely competitive and even faster Late Model division where he took Rookie of the Year honours and has already been first to the checkered flag on multiple occasions. 

Success at this level of racing takes dedication, time and an ability to push the limits of both the car and driver to a very delicate edge, without going over it.

Accepting life with God didn’t come quite as early on for Gary.  It wasn’t until after he married his wife Nonie and after their children David and Shirley had come along that Gary really started searching for the truth about this guy “Jesus” who he had heard about as a child.  Gary had a lot of questions and God had placed a number of Christians in his life to help him find the answers he needed.  The turning point was coming to terms with the reality that Jesus, the great guy he had heard about since he was a child, was in fact, God. 

Initially this didn’t sit well with Gary, but after realizing only God could be responsible for the miracles Jesus had done while on earth, Gary started to believe.  His life began to change as his relationship with God grew and his approach to the competition on the track changed too.  Gary now saw his competitors as those whom God loves and Christ died for, and his prayer became to race in a way that will allow people to see Christ.

Gary's celebrates victory in a Vintage division race.

In so doing, he becomes both more equipped to accept those things that go wrong, as they so often do when you put a pack of fiercely competitive drivers on a track together, and is better equipped to keep control of his emotions.  As a result, you don’t see Gary intentionally putting other drivers out of the race or unnecessarily banging fenders in order to get by the racer in front of him.

When things go wrong and Gary is on the receiving end of someone else’s mistake or worse, taken out of the race by a competitor, he isn’t the guy yelling, screaming or throwing his helmet across the pits ready to explode with fists of fury. 

Holding the lead in a late model event.

Probably the greatest benefit of combining his love for racing and his love for God has been the opportunities it has created for Gary to share his testimony with others.  His crew, the competition, their crews and the fans in the stands all see how Gary conducts himself in the heat of the battle.  By maintaining his Christian principles while he races, Gary has been able to have a tremendous impact on others in the sport.  They know there is something different about him, something beyond just being another racer who wants to take home a victory.

These opportunities to share the Word of God with others from the track have been an amazing blessing for Gary.  Friendships have been created and others who had been searching, just like Gary had once been, have been given the opportunity to have a relationship with God. 

Sunday school students check out the race car at Gary's home church, Flamborough Baptist.

It can easily feel like we have become a society obsessed with secular pursuits such as competition and sport.  Our lives are often in a state of imbalance as we commit ever-greater amounts of time to the pursuit of goals such as these.  But Gary Elliott’s message, and his experience, is that Christians must show their faith in all aspects of their lives and “never leave Jesus in the pits.”