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Actually, sports have been around for a long time. There are many elements of sports that are similar to religion. In some sense, I guess there are some who could claim that a sporting event is a religious experience.
There are people who make pilgrimages to their favorite teams home stadium. There’s something about gathering a large group of people together – most cheering for the same team. In many respects, sports can be a positive thing to bring people together.
The same is true for kids sports too. This isn’t a post bashing sports. Two of our kids participate in youth sports and I coach on of their teams. Kids learn some valuable lessons that can only found in sports – teamwork, loyalty, hard work, sportsmanship, how to win, how to lose, how to improve.
But there’s also a negative side too – when sports takes the primary position in life. I see this with families who become absent from church because of sports tournaments, games, and practices during different seasons. Again, my point here isn’t to sit around and whine about this, but rather just to point it out.
Jesus doesn’t offer scholarships. And lately, some coaches seem to have more pull than pastors.
The reality is that if churches are going to attract young families, then we need to rethink the relationship they have with church. We need to rethink time, what worship might look like, how to engage youth and more.
Having said this, I’m also not a big fan of completely changing everything to accommodate everyone else’s schedule. If something is important, then people will rearrange their schedule and provide the resources necessary to support it. This is true for religion as well as sports.
The point is that there is an opportunity for church with these families. The opportunities might not look like more activities – they already have a jam-packed schedule. Instead, maybe there is an opportunity to do something else – tap into what people are already doing. An example of this might be dinner church. Everyone has to eat – why not do a dinner church with a team before a practice, or after practice. Maybe work with a team on offering a special blessing for the team. There are opportunities. We just need to open our minds to the possibilities.
Laced up Lutheran 
Matthew, I think you’ve just given me another example…another idea, although it’s “too late” for my family since my sons are grown. But my future grandchildren…?
We are a hockey family and have been since my oldest was in first grade about 20 years ago. Two sons played hockey all the way through college, so we spent much of their childhood on “travelling teams”, and yes, that often meant travelling and playing on many Sunday mornings.
We took a behind-the-back beating from some other church-going folks; we heard it even when we weren’t supposed to. We didn’t miss church without a great deal of thought and consternation, either. We also spent more intimate time as a family each week than most young families ever will. We also missed corporate worship.
Wouldn’t it have been nice had the church reached out to us in a meaningful way? We finally found a church with Saturday evening services, too late. We found our own way of worshipping while on the road; those were special times I wouldn’t trade for anything.
What if the church had been a resource for, rather than a critic of our family’s Christian journey. Could they have provided us with some kind of “family worship while travelling” kit or curriculum or resource? Sure they could. It might have changed the nature of those critical prayers on our behalf, too.
The Church seems, well, hell-bent on getting people to fit into it’s own conventional, extra-biblical approach to being an Acts church, and in so doing fails to grow disciples on all the ways that it could.
We made out “fine” as a Christian family, but what if the church had cared enough to help meet our needs during those formative years, not just it’s own?
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Thanks for your thoughts Mark. I appreciate it. This is something that I’ve just begun to think about. I’m not sure what it should look like, but I also know that something is better than nothing, so I am not going to wait for the perfect resource. I hope that the videos and podcast I’ve been doing might be a resource to help, but I’m sure there is more. I’m open to ideas.
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