The more things change....

I had what is probably best called as a "what on earth was I expecting?" moment this Sunday.

Our parish (that's the one with the innovative summer soccer program for kids, remember?) decided that we needed new fundraising and community-building ideas, so we had an open brainstorming session after the coffee hour that follows the "big" Sunday service. I'm also the parish clerk, so I took notes on the suggestions offered. There were 41 of them.

Given the success of summer soccer, and given that we are the only Episcopal church within 25 miles with any Sunday School for kids at all (in fact, probably the only one with any kids at all), you would think that most of the suggestions would involve ways we could leverage our new found fame, and our new reputation as THE church were "things are happening", right?

Well, not exactly.

Here were the general subject areas, followed by the number of suggestions in that area:

--Antiques: (2)
--Charge people to put up memorial plaques in the sanctuary or elsewhere (3)
--Musical event (2)
--Have book groups about religious books (1)
--Book sale (1)
--Tell nearby inns we have overflow space for special events (2)
--"Dinner and a movie" (1)
--Get videos of church services on public access TV (1)
--Lectures on healthy eating (1)
--Publish a new cookbook (1)
--Podcast organ music (1)
--"Chocolate Sunday" with bake sale (1)
--Wine tasting (1)
--Block party (1)
--Quilt show (1)
--Quilt making instruction (1)
--Flower show (1)
--Table decorating contest (1)

As you can see, while several of the above fall into the "fun" or "frivolous", none really build on the idea of sports ministry or sports and kids and church.

Well, it wasn't really that bad. A snowman building contest for the Sunday School, a "poker run", serving breakfast for the racers and fans at the auto race facility across the road, serving lunch to the tour groups of bicyclists that often come by, having the Vicar bless the race cars at the facility across the road, hosting a horse show in our field, and having a golf outing were also suggested. While these are not generally of a particularly active nature, I guess I should be grateful that some people are even thinking about sports at all.

But where I'm coming down right now, is the possibility that people go to church BECAUSE they don't want to be involved in athletic, or even particularly physical, activity!

Because they are mostly made up of physically inert people, churches do little to disappoint those who come searching for socially sanctioned inactivity.

And people who are looking for physical recreational pursuits, realizing this, avoid churches.

It's interesting that our soccer program was the suggestion of a kid who had no particular choice (yet) whether she attended church or not. (By the way, here's a group picture from our final soccer program of this summer --

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The WRONG answer

This post is about a classic "wrong answer" by an Episcopal Church in Michigan -- the story is here and it's worth reading:

It's absolutely painful to read; I'll warn you of that much.

Here's a summary of the story:
--Young people discover a way to use church property for sports (in this case, building a BMX bicycle track in some church-owned woods and developing it for nearly a decade)
--Church people discover that young people are having FUN on church property
--Church reflexively drives the young people away, replacing the young people with a "prayer walk"

As someone who tries pretty hard to find successful sports and recreation ministries at churches, finding something like this is discouraging.

Why? Citing insurmountable obstacles, the church in question doesn't appear to have even tried to figure out a way to provide some form of ministry to the kids it is displacing.

Okay, insurance companies and zoning boards are not traditionally fond of home-cooked extreme bicycle racing. I'll grant you that much (although we haven't been provided with any evidence that the church really did check to see if an activity like this would be insurable and be permitted as a church activity by their local zoning board). Let's assume the initial answer was "no" and "no" and that no one in the congregation had the gumption to pursue the issue aggressively.

Do we have any evidence that the church made an effort to see what kinds of activity might be of interest to the youth in question (other than perambulating on a "prayer walk")? From my reading of the piece, the church doesn't even appear to have bothered to investigate alternatives sufficiently to see if there was a way that the kids and the church could work together on some kind of more formal BMX bike activity -- or some other recreational activity the church might have found more acceptable.

Ideally there's a solution out that that would have constituted a way where the church was able to add value from the point of view of the kids (and their families).

(Spare me this comment, please: "Oh, but the church needed the 10 acres for a prayer walk." Gimme a break! What selfishness on the part of the church! You don't need 10 acres for a prayer walk. You don't need ONE acre for a prayer walk! You can stick a labyrinth inside most parish halls and still have room to walk around the outside of it. And yes, by the way, I can definitely sympathize with parishes that cannot minister to young people because of lack of space and facilities.)

But why should the church do anything at all for these kids, these trespassers? It appears, after all, that the kids using the BMX track were not parishioners.

The answer should be obvious, and the very question implies that no one in the congregation has been paying attention during the New Testament readings lately. Why has it not occurred to this congregation that they are being called to a ministry to these kids and their families?

This situation is as clear a call to a specific ministry as a church is ever apt to get -- that is no doubt the real reason that the incident merited press coverage. The situation is crying out for a sports or recreation ministry. To be any more obvious we would need to see a Paul on the road to Damascus event, it seems to me.

It is tragic to see this church refusing to listen.

Original article re girls/sports/college graduation

For those who want to go through the statistics and proofs, the article upon which the New York Times based its article concluding that girls who play interscholastic sports in high school are 41% more apt to graduate from college than their peers, can be found here.

Causing further grief to many associated with churches who would prefer less vigorous physical exertion, both fine arts and other extra-curricular activities were specifically examined by the authors and found to be less effective (in the case of fine arts) or actually counter-productive (in the case of other extra-curriculars).

DEFINITELY something to think about!

Helping girls get ahead in life

The New York Times today had an interesting article -- a portion of which is quoted here:

QUOTE
Girls who play interscholastic high school sports are 41 percent more likely to graduate from college than their counterparts, according to a study in the June issue of the journal Youth & Society — in time for the 25th anniversary of Title IX. For her master’s thesis at Brigham Young, Kelly P. Troutman looked at 5,000 girls in the National Education Longitudinal Study, high school class of ’92. The athletes had the advantage of “social capital,” she says — a network invested in their success, mentor coaches and all those parents in the stands sharing college info.
END QUOTE

That said, it certainly looks as though, if one is interested in helping young females in a church, one of the more important things we can do is to help them develop sports skills that will enable them to make the team in high school.

Furthermore, since 41% is such a big number as statistical studies go, there is little doubt that parents will take note of it -- big time -- as this news is propagated, especially beyond the grey confines of the Times.

What will parents do when they see it? The answer is pretty obvious, given what we already know about today's parents in America. They will try to improve their daughters' chances of making the team in high school.

How will they do this? They will ensure that they are taught sports -- sports for which there are teams in their daughters' prospective high schools. Their daughters will be encouraged to play on club teams, elementary school teams, recreational teams -- and church teams.

Where will the time for all this additional sport come from, given the extent to which kids are already over-programmed? This answer is simple: it will come from wherever there is no discernible payback. Too frequently, church and Sunday School will be perceived to fall in the "no discernible payback" category by these parents. (Free play time, to the extent to which kids have any of this scarce commodity left, will be an additional casualty.)

Few churches will be able to suck in and respond by filling the demand. Most will whine, complain, and generally badmouth sports, as so many already do. Others will respond -- or continue to respond -- by going on the offensive, attempting to punish sports that infringe on what they perceive as their turf with regard to young people. Almost without exception, of course, churches view Sunday morning as "their turf".

Churches that have an interest in survival will incorporate sports in their programs for young people, and will learn to make use of Sunday mornings as the ideal time to combine sports with worship and learning -- on THEIR turf.

41% is indeed a big number.

Using FaceBook

About a month ago I had mentioned that I was contemplating putting our weekly Summer Soccer sessions on FaceBook. At that point I was a complete neophyte at this web 2.0 networking stuff, having just been introduced to it by my grad student daughter.

Well, since then I have acted. You can now find a group called "Trinity Lime Rock" on FaceBook, and each week I am creating an activity for Summer Soccer for that group. This week I added it to the local network (Hartford, CT is the closest to us) and we will see if there is any discernible result.

I'm also working on the profile for Trinity Lime Rock on FaceBook, and am glad to have any suggestions at all. Swing by and take a look!

96 shirts!

Just as an addendum to the previous item, earlier this week the second order of shirts for Trinity Lime Rock Summer Soccer 2007 participants arrived, three dozen of them, supplementing the 5 1/2 dozen we received earlier.

Tomorrow we'll start handing them out -- these are for the people (kids and adult volunteers) who have appeared since the Summer season began and since we placed the first shirt order this year.

Interestingly, two of the shirts will be going to participants in Norway who appeared (and played well) for two sessions while visiting the US -- their dad had been an exchange student at Housatonic Valley Regional HS back in the 1980s and he brought his family over to show what things were like in the US. They returned home last week, but their shirts will be following them shortly.