Churches that do it right, example #1

This article is particularly intended to outrage mainstream protestant clergy in the Northeast.

To most of them, the idea that young people should be permitted to do ANYTHING physical at church is anathema (hope I spelled that right), and that if they do happen to be permitted to do something physical, that the activity could possibly be COMPETITIVE is somewhere beyond anathema.

Starting with this post, I'll provide some cases of churches that do it right (I've already said a little about the Methodist Church of Liberty, NY -- sorry they do not have a website, although they do have a gymnasium).

The next example is the First Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Please take this link to view the main page of their youth group on their church website.

Yes, I mean it. Please DO look at that page, and do it now. (There will be a quiz.)

Have you looked yet?

Really, please look before we go on. I'll wait.

Okay, I understand that "Cumberland Presbyterian" is a little on the edge of mainstream protestantism.

However, I will say that I know a little about this particular congregation because my wife grew up in it. She's fond of referring to them as "the high church Anglican Cumberland Presbyterians" -- they have a magnificent structure, a three manual pipe organ that can blow you through the (masonry -- wife's father was also the masonry contractor for this job) back wall, and lots of other "stuff" that would work pretty well in most mainstream protestant denominations.

You can read about their main worship space here.

And they have a six lane Olympic swimming pool, as well as lighted tennis courts, and a playground.

"Yes, but that's down South!"

And so it is. But, in a city with a church on virtually every corner, these folks seat 1000 in their sanctuary, and come pretty close to filling it regularly.

So, mainstream protestant clergy in the northeast, can YOU do that?

Of course you can't.

Trying RSS syndication

It occurred to us that, if we don't tell anyone about this particular blog, it's unlikely anyone will ever find it.

So, we've signed up for RSS syndication. Let's see how it works!

John Ernhout and Basketball

Likely I've given the impression so far that if mainline protestant clergy would simply embrace sports it would be clear sailing.

'taint so, I'm afraid.

I remember, when I was a very small boy, my father came home from work absolutely fuming about this fellow whom I knew as John Ernhout -- which was his name.

I knew that Mr. Ernhout went to our Liberty Methodist Church, and I had really only two impressions of him: first, that he was old (like about 70), and second, that every thing about him was starched. I cannot remember what his face looked like, but I can recall clearly that his white shirt was extraordinarily stiff. In retrospect, he probably had his underpants starched.

My father was fuming because Mr. Ernhout had evidently been overcome with religious zeal and, with a sidekick of his, had removed the basketball backboards from Memorial Hall, carried them to the back lawn of the church, chopped them up with an axe, and burned them.

I cannot say exactly why Mr. Ernhout committed this zealous act of vandalism, but I can theorize that he had concluded that young people were committing the sin of having FUN by playing basketball, and that while fun was bad enough wherever it took place, when it took place in a church-owned structure it was completely unacceptable. Thus, he may have reasoned, he was called to eliminate the root of the fun, namely the basketball backboards.

One supposes that, while chopping and burning, Mr. Ernhout envisioned himself as one of the Old Testament prophets.

However, sanity did prevail. Ernhout and his sidekick, while not ostracized in the church, were at least marginalized. New basketball backboards were in time fabricated (although they were not as handsome as the ones Ernhout had chopped up and burned) and hung on the end walls of the tiny gymnasium.

And, in fact, basketball was again played in that little church gym -- albeit with a new sense of insecurity, the realization that mean-spirited people could, at their whim, in the name of mainstream protestant religion, abolish joy.

Where I got the idea....

Back in Liberty, New York, in Sullivan County, in the Catskill Mountains, where I grew up, there was a Methodist Church.

In the picture on the right, the church itself is on the right side. On the left was nothing short of a stroke of genius: something called "Memorial Hall".

Back in the 1890s or thereabouts, a local family decided to memorialize a family member by building what we today might call an "all-purpose building" for their church. This turned out to be Memorial Hall. In the basement it had five Sunday School rooms (kinda depressing for adults, but kids liked them fine). On the first floor it had a requirement of the day, a "ladies parlor", a church office, a kitchen -- and a very small BASKETBALL COURT. Really, it was not much bigger than a standard volleyball court. On the second floor it had three larger Sunday School rooms, a balcony around the basketball court (with shuffleboard layouts painted in the open space and a ping pong table or two).

That's it. No olympic swimming pool, no hockey rink, no playground.

None of the other churches in the town had anything remotely like it.

And the Methodists ate their lunch (and I do not mean at church suppers).

There was once an Episcopal Church in the town. Being fairly astute, their Vestry realized that they could not compete with their offspring denomination and closed their church, joining with another Episcopal church in nearby Monticello. The Lutherans were, for the most part, German-speaking, and, although they had occasional bursts of revival, were really just old people. The Baptists were not of much consequence. I didn't know any kids growing up who were Baptist, and that says a lot. The Presbyterians were decent competition -- but only because the denomination send a string of really high-powered young ministers to that congregation who did a heroic job retaining kids (many of whom showed up at Methodist Youth Fellowship on Sunday nights on a regular basis).

Really, the Roman Catholics were the only gentile competition the Methodists had, particularly for the young people of the community. St. Peter's, however, had two priests -- the younger of whom was invariably a really good athlete and liked kids. They had their own parochial school for grades K - 8.

Ecumenism was not an important concept in the 1950s -- yet a few Roman Catholic kids actually attended Methodist Youth Fellowship, and the CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) regularly invited the MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship) to go along when they chartered a bus to go roller skating or to Palisades Park or for some other suitable amusement not available in the small town of Liberty.

I can think of one -- and only one -- reason why the Methodist Church in Liberty thrived while the other churches struggled: Memorial Hall, with its grotty little basketball court.

Fast forward

Just so everyone knows that everything has turned out okay so far, I thought I should put up a couple of pictures from the 2006 season of Trinity Lime Rock's Summer Soccer.

The picture on your left was taken in early July. The kids are a couple of the 8 year olds who participated for most of the summer.

The shirts were the generous gift of a parishioner who seemed to intuitively understand what I was trying to do with the whole idea of summer soccer. The kids really REALLY liked the shirts.

The balls were not intended to be color-coordinated, it was just that soccer.com had that particular color on sale when I concluded that I definitely needed some more size five soccer balls, since the kids had very quickly realized that there was no percentage in bringing their own ball to the sessions.

The picture on your right was taken at one of the sessions in mid-August. The truck isn't intended to be color-coordinated either; it happened that when my wife bought it, it was the color that the dealer had in stock from the previous model year and she got it cheap.

In our little parish church, the fact that as many kids were present on a Sunday in August as you see on the truck represented a fair approximation of history being made.

Anyway, now that you know that we have achieved a measure of success so far, you should also know that in future posts I will be talking about:

1. How we got from zero kids per Sunday in the summer to the group on the truck in only fourteen months

and

2. Why mainstream protestant clergy are generally bemused -- if not stunned -- when I tell them about Summer Soccer at Trinity and why it is GOOD.

Why this blog....

Four or so years ago I found myself running the Christmas Pageant at our small, rural Episcopal Church, located in Northwest Connecticut, Trinity Lime Rock. The fact that I was running the pageant was largely happenstance: I had been photographing it for a couple of years for the parish website, and when the previous pageant director moved along, I was the logical person to attempt to pick up the pieces and continue the pageant tradition. At least I knew all the kids by name; likely I was the only person in the church who did.

The most obvious thing I noticed is that we had about 25 kids in the pageant, and maybe a fifth that many regular attendees in the Sunday School. But, praise God, I did not get saddled with the Sunday School in addition to the pageant, so for the most part I put that uncomfortable fact out of my mind. Lousy Sunday School attendance was NOT my problem; it was somebody else's.

When the next summer came around, I noticed that even these "faithful five" gradually disappeared. A couple showed up for church the first Sunday after Sunday School had stopped for the summer, but they didn't make that mistake again.

That winter I ran the pageant again. Once more, about 25 kids in the pageant, versus five in the Sunday School. Again, come summer, even those kids vanished.

At the same time, we were deliberating in the parish about what use we should be making of our "Trinity Field". This was a flat, well-drained former hayfield and former (like in the 1890s) bicycle racetrack, located right behind the church. The church had sagely acquired it a decade before, and aside from providing overflow parking for Lime Rock Park, across the street from the church, had made little use of it.

When late spring 2005 rolled around, one of the kids (who had been Virgin Mary in the Pageant the past Christmas, and who was one of the few regular Sunday School attendees) told me during parish coffee hour that she really loved soccer, and she wished we could play it at church. Courtney, thank you for that insight.

Within a few hours of that remark a thought occurred to me. Yes, I know that thoughts are supposed to occur instantaneously, but this one did not. It took a little while.

Here it was: we could have the Sunday School play soccer during the summer instead of scattering. After all, we had a field, and we had at least one motivated kid, and even though my soccer experience dated back more than 50 years at least I had some -- so all we really needed was a soccer ball -- and the permission of the Rector to do such an unorthodox thing as have Summer Sunday School Soccer.

I'll post this and continue the chronology in the next post.