No space; no facility? How about jump rope?

Probably the most frequent excuse (and that's what it is, I'm afraid) I hear why churches cannot possibly have physical activity for their young people is that they do not have any room. All their outside space is taken up by parking lots (if they have any space outside their four walls to begin with), and there's just no room inside to play basketball or something along those lines.

Well, my usual rejoinder to those complaints is "ping pong" -- but an article in today's New York Times suggested another one: JUMP ROPE!.

Okay, you'll probably never be able to develop jump rope in your parish to the level the kids in New York City have taken Double Dutch, but it's definitely a low-cost sport to start with.

Also, presumably you realize that boxers traditionally jump rope for conditioning and coordination purposes -- so it works for boys as well.

Give it a try! Let us know how it works out!

Getting closer to home....

Pine Plains, NY is not in the area from which we currently draw parishioners here at Trinity Lime Rock (CT), but it is only one town away from where our Senior Warden and her husband live.

So, when I saw this headline from the Poughkeepsie, NY newspaper this morning, it seemed too close to home to neglect to post.

Yes, schools ARE cutting back athletic programs -- but not just on the interscholastic level, like Pine Plains. They are also yielding to budgetary concerns and cutting back throughout the schools. You can bet that if the Pine Plains school district is cutting back their interscholastic sports, there is little money in the budget for badminton birdies, ping pong balls, volleyball nets, or for the people who bring tools like these into the presence of the kids.

When schools -- and government in general -- falls short, there is both an opportunity and an obligation for churches to help.

Certainly not just soccer!

While we're very proud of the kids who have developed their soccer skills in our Summer Soccer program, we're now beginning to think that perhaps we're making a bit of a mistake by confining our efforts to soccer.

Likely due to the economy, we're seeing the local travel soccer team unable to fill what are normally two very popular age levels: U-12 girls and U-12 boys. There simply won't be a team for the few U-12 girls who tried out, because there's already a full team of U-14 girls. The few U-12 boys will get to play up with the U-14s, and thereby we will have a U-14 boys team.

With families pulling back on expenses like travel soccer, we also see them pulling back on activities that might lead to future expenditures on travel soccer. And, as a result, our attendance has been off this summer.

Today, I asked the kids what they thought we should do. (By the way, asking the kids is always a good idea in this kind of thing. We'll go so far as to say that if you do NOT ask the kids, you are setting yourself up for failure bigtime. But that's another post.)

The little kids didn't have much in the way of opinions. One six year old girl suggested football, and a five year old boy agreed with her.

The big kids were more forthcoming. Lacrosse (one girl said it is the fastest growing youth sport in America right now) was a popular suggestion. So was beach volleyball. So were ordinary volleyball, badminton, horseshoes, and ... soccer.

Anyway, we're floating a trial balloon on this one, both inside the parish and outside it. Namely: what do you say that we call it Summer SPORTS at Trinity Lime Rock next summer, and we do what most people want to do each Sunday?

Where do YOU think we are going to go with this?

Here's an add-on

No, this post isn't specifically about kids and sports and church. Instead, it's about having a church that's sufficiently open to the idea of sports that it can not just accept the notion that sports are good for kids, and what's good for kids is also good for church, but expand on that as well.

In the photo above, Emily DiMartino is honored during the main Sunday worship service for winning the gold medal in the 1500 meter speed walk for women age 60-69 in the US Transplant Games for 2008. Emily took the opportunity to ask the congregation to complete organ donor cards -- a great way to continue giving after one's death; what a great living illustration of the Golden Rule!

(Thanks to John Lloyd for the photo!)

NOT a loss leader

For anyone who feels that having enough space for kids to do sports is simply a matter of spending money on the undeserving, let me offer a good example of how churches can have open space that's used for sports for kids and have it make a contribution to the bottom line as well.

Here's the link.

You see, here at Trinity, we let Lime Rock Park use our field (that tomorrow morning will be occupied by kids playing soccer) for overflow parking for their racing events. As the blog post linked shows, they had a very good day today, and they compensate us on a per car basis for cars that they park in our field. They also maintain the field for us! Good people, and we are happy to have the racers and their fans as part of our extended ministry.

Try looking around your place and see where you have some space that could do double -- or triple -- duty!!

Cholestrol and Kids

Well, we're not pediatricians or scientists, but we do know a thing or two about getting kids into the habit of regular, vigorous physical exercise.

No, we're not the athletic director of a school. We run a soccer program for kids at a CHURCH!

And, we are very happy to welcome kids as young as four years old.

As the New York Times (and lots of other media as well) have pointed out recently, it's an important thing to do. Here's a permalink to the: Times editorial. Not surprisingly, the Times recommends that the schools take responsibility for this.

But, why leave this important mission to the schools? Churches -- at least some churches -- can actually do it just as well or even better. Can yours?

Thank God we are not in Greenwich!

Interesting!

I never suspected that a town in the same state where we're located would be quite so hostile to kids and sports.

Well, the citizens of the "diamond of the Gold Coast", Greenwich, CT, cannot find it within themselves to let teenagers play wiffleball on town-owned land.

Here's the permalink from the New York Times article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/nyregion/10towns.html?ex=1373428800&en=3a8a02a8cafa6c8e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Is there anything that churches (of any denomination) can do about it? They really ought to try!

When the wealthiest, most privileged kids in our nation cannot indulge in pick-up sports, there is emphatically an opportunity for churches to step into the gap.