Physical Activity and Kids

The Center for Disease Control has taken a significant stand in favor of increased physical activity for kids in school programs and family activities.

The post attached provides lots of resources for use in convincing recalcitrant school administrators that physical activity is important. We submit that the same material can and should be used on religious leaders. Here's the link. Use it!

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?

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.

Been a while....

Tomorrow starts our third summer of what began as Summer Sunday School Soccer at Trinity Lime Rock, and our first year when we have been active in publicizing the program in the larger community.

Last summer we had around 35 kids attend at one point or another, some for one session and some for nearly all. This summer we already have 54 kids formally registered (something we didn't do last summer) -- and our local newspaper has printed not one but two notices about the program.

Over the past four days I've been participating in the tryouts for Berkshire United Soccer Club (BUSC) our local youth soccer organization, and I've been surprised at how many of the adults and the kids whom I did not know knew who I was. One mom who introduced herself said that another mom (whose name I recognized but who had not registered her kids) was planning to attend.

I said "great but tell her to get there early -- I ordered 66 shirts, and 56 are already spoken for".

Well, here goes.

I'll report back after day one.

Getting ready to go public

Well, we've run the summer soccer program at Trinity Lime Rock for two summers now. The first one started off a bit slowly, but gained momentum. The second summer took off where the last one ended and grew from there.

Anyhow, we figure that it is now time to start reaching outside the church. There are certainly kids in Lime Rock who play soccer seriously, whose families have no connection to Trinity, and who wouldn't be apt to hear about the program. Well, they might hear if our kids talked about the program at Berkshire United, or in town rec soccer, or in school soccer. However, kids are kids and don't tend to tell other kids about church.

So, we will have to do the telling. We're thinking a press release that the local paper, the Lakeville Journal will -- with a little bit of luck -- print at least part of. We're also planning on mailing invitations to the known soccer kids who live in the area of the church. And, I guess I will e-mail all the area soccer folks who are in my directory.

It will be interesting to see how it goes. We'll keep you posted.