Preparing for What?

Occasionally, even in our really small (comparatively) church summer soccer program we find ourselves in conversations with moms and dads whose children are with us for only one reason: to get mileage, in hopes they will eventually get an athletic scholarship.

The New York Times has been running an important series about athletic scholarships, and the lives they impose on their holders, particularly in Division I NCAA colleges. It's emphatically worth reading, especially if you find yourself occasionally (or frequently) in contact with parents (or kids) with athletic scholarship aspirations.

Two things the series make clear: (1) unless you're in one of the marquee sports, like basketball or football, full scholarships are very, very uncommon. Thus, there will also be major expenses associated with college. (Some people seem unaware of this, sadly). (2) an athletic scholarship is a job, and a very demanding one.

Questions that remain (at least so far) in my mind:

(1) given that division III NCAA colleges cannot give athletic scholarships as such but that there may still be a connection between a scholarship and athletic (or musical or artistic or whatever) prowess, how do expectations at division III schools compare with the bleak picture the articles paint of scholarship athletes' lives at division I schools? (As a lacrosse player many years ago at a division III school who did not have a scholarship, I suspect this question needs to be asked today as the experience of 45 years ago probably isn't representative of today's world.)

(2) what about private secondary schools that provide pretty much undisguised athletic scholarships? (In this case, I have a special concern about kids who may find themselves playing hurt just so they can continue their education even when they may only be in 9th grade or thereabouts.)

Glad to have thoughs or input on either of these questions.

What has this got to do with church? If you are involved with church and kids and sports, you'll get into this topic sooner or later. Might as well be informed on it in advance.

Being in the world - a hint

Frequently, people planning church activities for young people are guilty of a standard church error: talking to themselves -- assuming that everyone speaks church lingo, and plans their family life around the church year and church functions.

Fact is, if you really want to be IN the world, you've got to get out of that habit -- and this particularly applies to activities for young people, most especially sports.

When we set up our summer soccer program, one of the first considerations was when spring soccer ended and when fall soccer started. (It pretty much goes without saying, I think, that no one serious about soccer is going to skip a championship game of spring soccer to attend summer "fun soccer", nor are they about to skip the first game -- or even first practices -- of fall soccer.)

Next, we worked around the "for profit" soccer camps. We had no interest in competing with them (and, when we started out, we weren't much competition anyway) because we would much prefer to be working with them. We learn from them, we share kids with them, we even share instructors with them! It's a great opportunity.

Then we focused on the fact that many families, particularly those where both parents work outside the home, plan their children's summers in February. There are practical reasons for this. It's a matter of scheduling -- if Junior is going off on some kind of international work-study program, you will want to plan your family trip to a vacation spot with the dates of that program in mind. Of course the most desirable summer programs fill up early, so families have a great incentive to commit for the summer by the end of February, and certainly no later than mid-March.

If you really want to spread your net wide, you need to at least announce, and ideally be accepting registrations for, any programs that hope to attract an audience from outside your own church.

Accept walk-ons later? Sure!!

Encourage people who attend the program to bring their friends next week? Definitely!!

But if you fail to get out to the larger community -- the world -- about a summer program that's hoping to attract outsiders before April, you're going to miss the audience that sets the trends.

Lent notwithstanding.

Transformation of purpose

I have to admit that where my head is now regarding church and kids and sports is not where it was when I started this blog.

As I recall it, back then, my objective was to dignify the Sunday School kids we already had with an activity they could call their own, and one that they could do with a minimum of adults sniping at them (or worse) when they did not behave in a suitably churchy, prissy manner.

Well, we got that pretty well done.

Evangelism -- you know, bringing in new church members (or church member families) then seemed to me to be the correct orientation for church and kids and sports. After all, this is the rationale most Evangelicals use for their "sports ministries" or "recreation ministries". Actually, I'm not surprised that I fell into that trap briefly, because all the current literature about church and kids and sports is oriented in that direction. It's a little bit like a Bowery mission: get the bums in the door with the promise of a free meal, but once they're in the mission, they still have to sit there and listen to a sermon in order to get that free meal. And sometimes that free meal was not forthcoming -- hence the expression "pie in the sky" -- as in "You'll get pie in the sky when you die."

The idea of corralling kids with the promise of soccer in order to preach at them seems dishonest at best and unchristian at least. It's not something I've ever been comfortable with, and I suspect that the fear of being preached at would be a profound negative for any program in a mainline church that combined church and kids and sports.

Where I am now is that whatever we do in terms of church and kids and sports (beside keeping the Sunday School kids entertained during their downtime) needs to be cast in the role of Outreach. You know, doing something for other people that you don't expect to be paid back for.

Interestingly, a recent post on an excellent blog called "Small Membership Churches" -- the link is http://smallepiscopalchurch.blogspot.com/ mentioned a list of books for small Episcopal churches that would be useful to them. There was a book on worship in the small church, another on evangelism, another on spiritual leadership, another on christian education, and another on administration. All these are important topics, no question about that.

Interestingly, there was no book in the series about Outreach. I don't think I'm reading too much into this when I see this as evidence that small churches are interested almost entirely in themselves.

There's a good chance that there's an excellent reason why they are small. Think of people you personally know -- are one or more of them almost entirely self-involved? If yes, are the self-involved people the ones you want to be around? Of course not!! Self-involved people are boring at best!!

It's exactly the same for self-involved churches!!

So, from now on, Church and Kids and Sports is going to focus on sports and recreation as an extraordinary opportunity for OUTREACH.

Think about it.

Benefits of Sports at Church

Yes, we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 96 participants at Summer Soccer last summer. But what has become of them since?

Well, some attend Sunday School with varying degrees of regularity. But, really, not very many as a percentage of the total summer soccer participants. However, in most small Protestant congregations in the Northeast, that's very much to be expected.

However, when an opportunity that's a little different -- and respectful of the hectic pace of family life today -- appears, so do the kids from summer soccer.

Here's a short excerpt from our Christmas Pageant this year:



In that video, the still photo of the principal narrator depicts one of our Sunday School regulars -- indeed, the girl whose suggestion three years ago led to our summer soccer program. And the girl playing Mary who sings the solo is likewise a Sunday School regular. Some of the rest pictured attend Sunday School regularly, some occasionally, some rarely, and two not at all.

When you include the rest of the cast -- shepherds and animals, not yet on stage -- far fewer attend with any regularity. For some, it's their one appearance in church this year. For some, it actually was their first appearance at a church service ever.

Let me replay that last line: FOR SOME, IT ACTUALLY WAS THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE AT A CHURCH SERVICE EVER.

All but two of the participants, interestingly, were summer soccer participants. Of the two non-participants, one moved to town after summer soccer ended for the fall, and the other was brought by a Sunday School regular.

What NEVER to say...

Last summer, a deeply religious older lady was serving in an official capacity at a major national competition of an organization for young people -- NOT a church-related organization in any way, by the way.

I think she had been away from kids for a few years, had been called out of volunteer retirement to serve in an official capacity for this one competition, and had been shocked at "kids today". Things were clearly not as she remembered them a decade or more ago.

By the end of the competition (which ran for four days), this lady called the competitors together and announced to them in no uncertain terms that "God is going to punish you." The quote marks are intentional; those were her words to the kids.

How much damage did she do with her bizarre imprecation?

It's hard to say.

Perhaps the most damaging thing she did was to convince a bunch of pretty much straight-arrow American kids that, regardless of what they might have been hearing about the benefits of organized religion, they now had first-hand experience with the intolerant, unforgiving side of it. The more thoughtful among the the kids will link this sort of rhetoric with that of the Islamo-Facists.

We can hope that they will eventually realize that the lady who had cursed them -- for this is what she did -- was personally deficient.

A longer-lasting impact will be a reluctance by adults who hear of the incident to address the subject of religion at all within the context of that organization, and perhaps in related organizations, of which there are many.

It was certainly a sad occurrence, but equally sad is the fact that this sort of thing occurs with astonishing frequency.

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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