Good Grief! Another Episcopal Church Does Sports!

Well, after three years of thinking that our little parish church was the only church and sports game in town, so to speak, with our summer soccer program, I learned this morning that there is a parish church -- yes, a parish church in the Diocese of Connecticut, where we are -- that actually fields a cricket team.

That church is St. John's Stamford and I am glad to see they are doing this. After running through their website, however, I didn't see anything in terms of sports that they do for kids. (They do have kids in their parish; witness their Sunday school programs and their Christmas Pageant -- they just don't do sports with them.)

Now, having worked in Stamford for a few years, I can understand why St. John's does not have a soccer program. Stamford is a renascent small city on Connecticut's Gold Coast, and there are already plenty of opportunistic soccer coaches down there driving BMWs and lining their pockets. St. John's is located very close to Stamford Town Center, definitely a high-end mall. It's not your standard inner city parish. And they are also creative enough to host the Stamford Model Railroad Club in their undercroft!

But one does wonder if there isn't something, no matter how obscure, in the world of sports that a parish like St. John's could do for kids that would benefit both the young people of Stamford -- and St. John's as well.

By the way, thanks to The Coracle for this lead! At one time in my life, I found myself keeping score for cricket matches on Staten Island, so this resonated for other reasons as well. (Interesting that to keep score in cricket you don't need to know a silly mid off from a fast bowler, but that's another post.)

Girls and soccer...

The New York Times magazine section has a thoughtful article about injury rates in elite female athletes. It's long, but definitely worth reading. Here's the permalink to the article.

It seems to me that the last thing we want to do when introducing sports to church is provide yet another opportunity for girls to over-commit. There's a whole lot to say in favor of sports for kids being fun -- instead of a "do or die" phenomenon that the soccer industry has made it in many parts of the country.

People frequently ask me if I am planning on a future soccer team of Trinity Lime Rock players -- making our fun summer Sunday morning soccer into something more "serious".

My answer is an emphatic NO.

And our fourth summer of soccer starts in just a month!

More about "more about"

Here's the link to the Time magazine article...

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?

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.