How Can David Beat Goliath?

I just preached 1 Samuel 17 last night in my sermons series through that book. Kids' books make the lesson of this story to be courage in the face of insurmountable odds based in trust that God controls our circumstances and cares about us. My congregation wisely added that God's concern for his own name factors large in David's courage/victory as well. God doesn't like it when he is slighted - even indirectly.

An article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker a few weeks ago helped me see another important component of the story: self-knowledge. David did not fight a conventional duel (as in, going out dressed in Saul's armor, looking like a half-sized Goliath); David fought like David - as he had practiced on quite a few daunting foes as a shepherd. Goliath plodded forward with his "caddy" carrying his shield & extra weapons for the various stages of a duel. There would be no stages - David ran at Goliath (the verbs pile up to illustrate the quickness of the fight), grabbed a stone, flung it, it hit the eyebrow, the giant fell, David won, he pulled out the other's sword and cut off his head. Game over, the "caddy" can take the extra weapons home.

Gladwell looked at the pattern in warfare and basketball; underdogs can win if they don't try to play the giant's game. He said, "We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It’s the other way around. Effort can trump ability—legs, in Saxe’s formulation, can overpower arms—because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coördination."

A friend of mine asked some great questions:

So if our churches are loosing the culture war, loosing the war for souls, have we been playing as Goliath?

What is it that we need to do to start thinking and acting like David? How do we substitute effort for ability?

Any ideas?