With Sunday games, travel teams, and mid-week practices dominating the schedules of student athletes, many families find themselves struggling to participate fully in church life. In fact, because sports can compete directly with church activities at times, parents are often forced to choose between their child’s athletic development and their spiritual growth. This tension leaves many Christian families wondering whether their involvement in sports is inadvertently sidelining their faith community, and whether it’s acceptable for sports to take precedence over church time. This forum explores how both church and sports contribute to the spiritual development of young athletes, and offers both points of reflection and practical suggestions for how Christian parents and student athletes alike can spiritually thrive in the midst of these dueling forces. —Michelle Reyes
Participants
Let’s start with the question of faith formation. Is there a natural hierarchy with church life *always* taking precedent before sports, or is there an argument that sports can be just as formative in shaping an athlete’s faith?
Paul Putz: I think the expectation we have in the Bible is that the life of the Christian should happen in community with a local church body. But I don’t think this expectation suggests some sort of hierarchy, where the church is in competition with work or school or sports. Rather, the church should encompass all of those aspects of our lives. When we worship together on Sunday, we are not leaving behind the parts of ourselves that are formed and shaped throughout the week, and when we leave Sunday worship and are sent out into the work week, we are being the church out in the world.
I believe that sports can be a spiritually formative space. We can worship and experience God in the midst of athletic competition. But if we begin to think that faith formation in sports happens on its own, separated and outside the context of a church community — the body of Christ — we are moving away from the fullness of the Christian life.
Jeanne Nielson: In our family, there is definitely a hierarchy. Our conviction is that the local church is meant to be the central and defining aspect of our lives; we live out our faith in Jesus Christ in the context of the local church — under God’s Word and in relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
With that being said, though, both my husband and I place incredible value on competitive athletics, when it comes to character formation, personal discipline, and the process of learning to apply faith in Jesus Christ to highs and lows and the joys and pains of sports. I always try to emphasize this to the players I coach — that they are preparing for godly lives through this four-year experience of college sports at Wheaton. Quite frankly, this is the major reason I believe so strongly in college athletics, and especially in an explicit Christian context.
Andy Studebaker: Sports are forming kids in an adversarial way. I think that we are all becoming like that which we worship, and it seems to me that one of the current gods in America has become youth sports. So it isn’t much of a surprise that our youth sports are having a greater impact on forming our communities. That isn’t by any means advocacy to move from the church to sports, but perhaps an indictment on our culture. I think that our churches need to revisit the 1990’s model of youth engagement which has become largely uninteresting; perhaps the model was always broken when we outsourced spiritual formation from the family/community to the church on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings.
Mike McGarry: I don’t think sports can or should be “just as formative” in a student’s discipleship as the church. Saying that the bride of Christ is on equal footing as someone’s soccer club shows a very low view of what the church is. I know that’s a bold and potentially inflammatory statement, but the Bible’s teaching about the church should elevate its priority above other human commitments and the groups and associations to which we belong.
Sports and other extracurricular activities are recreation. They’re a part of God’s creation and they’re a gift to people. But I don’t think soccer coaches are primarily concerned about the Christian discipleship of their athletes.
If sports prevent families from fully participating in the life of a church, are families now missing out on faith formation or can they find similar formation in their sports community?
Putz: Faith formation that happens through participation in a local church body cannot be replaced. If sports are taking a family entirely away from any connection, community, and participation with a church, that is a problem for growth in the Christian life.
At the same time, there are really powerful forms of community that are forged through sports. It’s an excellent space to love our neighbors well and to build new friendships. And faith formation can happen through sports — I saw this in my own life, through my involvement with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
The key is intentionality. If we allow our kids to participate in youth sports without any spiritual direction or any long-term vision for the type of formation that can happen, we’ll be swept away by whatever the cultural default is, and we’ll miss out on the spiritual possibilities of the games we play. 1 Timothy 4:8 is really helpful here: “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” If godliness is for all things, it’s for physical training too.
Nielson: Yes, I think these families are missing out on sharing in corporate worship with God’s people, and raising up their kids in a way that prioritizes God’s church. There are obviously ways to live out our faith and disciple our children throughout the week (we’ve had lots of formative conversations with our kids as we disciple them through the highs and lows of sports from a Christ-centered and eternal perspective). But families who are quickly replacing Sunday worship with sports games are robbing their kids — and parents are robbing themselves — of the richness of corporate worship: hearing the Word preached, sharing in the Lord’s Supper, encouraging other believers, praying, singing, confessing sins, and joining in the fellowship of God’s people.
Studebaker: I think it can be okay for kids to miss church for sports. I wasn’t allowed to miss church on Sundays to play sports. I cannot deny the benefits of my family rule and the cultural norms of where I grew up. However, today it seems that sports have moved from the weekdays to the weekends. There don’t seem to be as many options in the market for sports that remain competitive and that primarily play on days other than Sunday. The cultural model of moving sports to Sundays has made it difficult for me to hold fast to a tenet that raised me (and I still value) while still allowing my kids to have some of the same opportunities that I was able to have. I think that it is important to prioritize Sunday church to the extent possible.
McGarry: I’m definitely not anti-sports. But I’ve seen many teenagers grow so invested in their sports that they essentially unplug from the church and youth group. Sports culture is increasingly year-round and requires a “full commitment” from youth and parents to pay for heavy registration fees and travel for games, so whenever there’s a conflict between a game and a youth group event, they’re likely to choose sports. Then, when they are able to attend church or youth group, it feels awkward for them that the other students have lots of shared experiences through youth group activities. And if they’re outsiders at church, they stop attending anything. I’ve seen this happen over and over again, regardless of how many times students and parents say church is important and it’s just for a season.
I counsel parents to honestly count the cost ahead of time, and to discuss their family priorities with their kids. To talk about why they will or will not make certain sports commitments or join certain clubs. There’s a lot of pressure, especially for teenagers who are good athletes. When they do choose to attend a youth group retreat over a sports game they often feel like they’re letting the team down and get chastised by coaches.
What do you think about athletes missing church for sports games?
Putz: The Sabbath question is relevant here. A century ago, for most English-speaking Protestants, the idea of missing church for sports would have been unthinkable. Their concern was that playing or watching sports at all on Sunday — even after church services — constituted a violation of the fourth commandment.
Like many American Christians today, I take a more flexible view on when and how Sabbath should be practiced. Still, the weight of Scripture makes it clear that routinely missing gathered worship with fellow believers in a local congregation should not be done lightly. If some Christian families and pastors simply say “no” to any Sunday youth sports events, that’s completely justifiable.
Still, I think Christians do have freedom of conscience on what this looks like in their contexts and in different seasons of life. If Christians decide to participate in a youth sports league that takes them away from home on the weekends, I believe they should seek to do this with their church. This means they should stay connected and in community with fellow church members during the week. They should meet with their pastors to process the decision and explore ways that they can be “on mission” with the church while they are away. Sunday worship should still happen, too — perhaps at a congregation in the city one is visiting, or perhaps with fellow parents and players on the team.
Nielson: To put it simply, I don’t believe athletes should miss church on Sundays for sports games. For believers in Christ, as countercultural and odd as it may seem in our day, gathering for corporate worship with God’s people on the Lord’s Day should be a nonnegotiable part of our lives, and one that we plan other things around. I don’t have any problem with playing sports on Sunday (the day itself); as New Covenant Christians we are not under Sabbath regulations and are free to enjoy Sunday afternoons and evenings according to our consciences before God — and all to his worship and glory. But if sports are getting in the way of the corporate gathered worship of God’s people on the Lord’s Day, that seems to me to be a sign of misplaced priorities. And, for our kids, I wonder what message we are — explicitly or implicitly — passing on to them about Lord’s Day worship if it’s easily dismissed for the sake of a traveling soccer game. How are we training them to prioritize eternal matters, beginning with the state of their hearts and souls before God?
Studebaker: I am hard-pressed to believe that the current sports culture could be a consistent substitute for the formation that a church community can bring. But more than that, I think much of our push toward the idolization of sports has come from the desire to be special. It is good for us to want our kids to excel. It is good when they want the same. However, the temptation is to “specialize” them much earlier than necessary in order to achieve that end. What we are left with is a culture that awards commitment to sports before we allow genetics to do its job, and kids are missing out on truly transformational experiences, only to find out they were never going to be tall enough (or other trait that a sport may require). What we are left with is a generation full of kids who missed out on life only to find out that the specialization they pursued had a genetic component. Where does this leave our kids after puberty and through high school? They have not explored other activities, and suddenly they find that the sport we pushed them into is no longer a community for them to belong to.
McGarry: This comes down to the question, “What is the church?” The church isn’t just a social club. It’s the family of God, gathered intentionally under a group of elders and spiritual leaders, and we have covenanted together to honor Christ as salt and light in our world. We cannot simply “be the church” on the sports field or in the bleachers if we ourselves are not worshipers. We need the church. We need to sing together and hear the Word of God preached and applied. We need to know and be known by fellow church members. Those things strengthen us to honor Christ on the sports field and in the bleachers.
Something I’ve observed, which was also corroborated by the book The Great Dechurching, is that parents themselves have begun to unplug from their church because they’ve “found their tribe” among other parents on the bleachers. So the awkwardness I mentioned above that teenagers experience is also shared by their parents when they attend church. The less you attend church the easier it is to not attend.
Should Christian parents be more vocal in requesting Sundays off or working with leagues to adapt schedules to weekly church rhythms for families?
Putz: One of the practical challenges for parents with kids who have affinity and ability in sports (particularly in sports like soccer and baseball/softball), is that the kids are eventually faced with two paths: continue to participate in a community league where the competition might not be good enough to sustain interest and enjoyment or join a travel team where the games regularly happen on Sunday.
I’ve already mentioned that I think Christians can land in different places on this question. But I think Christians should also have a long-term goal of working collectively to reform and reshape the system and structure of youth sports in American culture so that it cultivates healthier rhythms and habits. Asking individual Christian families to make individual choices will do little to change things for future generations. True and lasting change will have to involve collective action over a sustained period of time.
What if Christians took the lead in building competitive leagues that were more community focused and also provided sensible boundaries to protect a family’s time? This could help protect gathered worship on Sunday, and it would also be a great way to love our neighbors and serve the common good. It could provide opportunities to address issues related to access and opportunity across socioeconomic divides as well (studies show that the biggest declines in youth sports participation are happening in lower income families).
Nielson: I do think Christian families can and should be confident and clear about their priorities and commitments. In our home club, for example, I believe that sufficient families have gently and respectfully voiced their commitment to corporate worship on Sundays — and that has indeed made a difference in the way that the club schedules its games. We have also seen a few clubs starting in our area that have slightly less rigorous schedules and commitments; this may be a really good option for some families who want a step in between a loosely organized park district program and a very time consuming travel club.
