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!

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?

More about girls and physical activity

We keep seeing more and more evidence of the importance of girls remaining physically active into their teens (and beyond). The linked article in Time magazine is just one example.

Significant (but understated) in this article is another point: that some kid sports are so over-orchestrated that the kids simply do not know how to play. It's true: every summer we find that the kids don't seem to be able to divide themselves up into teams and scrimmage; they seem to stand around waiting for an adult to accomplish this for them.

Anyone got any suggestions?

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 --

Two weeks into the third season -- progress report

I said I'd report back after the first session, but I guess I missed that target.

Well, the first Sunday we had 24 people in the field (about 19 kids) which probably is as many as we had had last summer at our high point. The picture on the left, which is Coach Richard Kirby talking to some of the kids, was taken that first Sunday.

You can also get a peek at the 2007 soccer shirts. Neat, huh?

Then, last Sunday (the second Sunday of Summer Soccer this year, and Fathers Day to booot) we had 31 people in the field, mostly kids -- we were a little hard pressed for coaches in fact. We had two simultaneous scrimmages going on, and some of the littlest kids still pretty much entertaining themselves -- not where I want to be with this.

Fact is, we were so busy that I didn't even get to take any pictures! The high points included the return to Trinity of one boy who I last saw three years ago (and didn't recognize when I saw him Sunday). Also, when we gathered in a circle for the Lord's Prayer, having to consciously project my voice due to the size of the circle.

The local paper, the one that rarely prints our stuff, has now printed something about our Summer Soccer program for FOUR consecutive weeks. I'm dreading the inevitable requests from the chairs of the various programs at Trinity for me to exercise my influence with the local paper to get THEIR activities publicized. I guess I will have to suggest to them that they do something really different -- and then the journalists will beat a path to their doors.

Well, this Sunday I hereby promise to take a lot more pictures. Maybe even some video so I can put a more current video on the Trinity website (courtesy of YouTube, of course).

Here's a question: do you think it makes any sense to put an activity on the Trinity Lime Rock group in FaceBook for soccer? All thoughts welcome......

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.

How do you find fault with this?

Take a peek, folks. I really liked it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Y5Qbgfwuk