Has it really been five years?

Has It Really Been Five Years?

Well, the answer, I guess, is that it has!

Remarkably, Sunday School at Trinity Lime Rock -- what we were talking about a few years ago -- is still a going concern.  We have continued to operate 52 weeks a year (more or less -- we always have a couple of unplanned "no days" a year when there are simply no kids in the building.  The routine is still Sunday School on Sunday mornings during the normal school year, plus Summer Sports during the Summer months, when nobody has Sunday School.  Some months we have a Youth Sunday, when there's no Sunday School but when the kids are in church, and depending on who gets cold feet any particular Youth Sunday, we may have kids assisting as Ushers, doing the readings, and even serving at the altar.

We started keeping a count of how many people under the age of 18 were present in the building each Sunday morning.  The number isn't exactly huge, but when you compare it with the attendance of young people at other houses of worship in our area, it is downright spectacular.  Young people in our area do not have much to do with church anymore, sadly.

We count ourselves lucky.  We work on encouraging the kids we have, and we encourage them to take more and more responsibility, both for themselves at church, and for telling us how they want church to interact with them.  They surprise us regularly.

For example, the previous tranche of kids thought that the red streamers that come out every Pentecost were hopelessly uncool.  This group thinks they are great.

And we see some interest in sports!  Here are some of the kids running towards the soccer pitch of bygone years.  It was great to see, and we hope that someday we're back with a virtual mob scene on the soccer field!  We are definitely not giving up!

Preventing obesity, redux

We're a little over half way through with the 8th summer of Summer Sports at Trinity Lime Rock, the enterprise that sparked this blog, so it's probably reasonable to provide some updates and commentary at this point.

First off, a comment about why we have Summer Sports at Trinity.  Although we've received favorable comments about how we're fighting back against organized youth sports that have violated the Sunday morning turf, it's not really what the program is about.  Sure, there's an element of that, but mostly that's not it.

Here's one thing that is:  lack of physical activity for kids today.  This article, from the Well blog in the New York Times, provides some statistics about even so mundane an activity as walking or biking to school, and the shocking infrequency with which it happens today.

So, here's one reason for Summer Sports at Trinity Lime Rock: we offer kids physical activity at least one day a week all summer long.  (Honestly, we also offer physical activity for the adults who participate, coaching, helping out, chaperoning, and so forth, but let's keep that our little secret, shall we?  We don't need to tell the adults that they're getting something out of this too.)

Even if your parish cannot mount a competitive soccer team, you can offer physical activity to kids.  That's worth a lot, a whole lot. 

You CAN do this....

Yes, you CAN do this!

A regulation volleyball court is 60 feet long, and 30 feet across. You need 10 feet on either side for the guy ropes for the net. You need four feet on each end for serving space.

Look around your church.

Is the church hall 70 feet long and more than 30 feet wide?

Is there a parking lot that big?

Maybe a front lawn, or a back yard (as in our parish, where the people that went before were smart enough to realize that stewardship of open space is a pretty important kind of stewardship)?

We paid under $200 for the volleyball net (including poles, guy ropes, and the pre-marked rope to outline the court. We got the ball for points from a Citibank promotion.

Anyway, it should not surprise you to know that the volleyball court is a people-magnet. Even more than soccer was when we started the Sunday School playing soccer in the summer when Sunday School classes are on vacation.

We also rounded up the captain of our local high school's volleyball team. She doesn't go to our church, but she was delighted to be involved with getting younger kids involved with volleyball and teaching them skills -- and possibly keeping an eye out for potential players for her team amongst our kids who will be entering high school in the fall.

We also found that dads seem to like volleyball a whole lot. Even the ones who mainly don't show up on Sunday mornings!

More pics are on our website, and on our Facebook page (your church DOES have one of them by now, don't you?)