Football vs. Ministry: who wins?
It’s football season and America loves football – especially if you are in a city where there is a pro or college football team there. I live just outside Washington, D.C. and people here are extremely passionate about the Redskins. It doesn’t matter if the team is terrible (like they were last year) or if they are great, people are going to go to the games or watch it on TV.
Because of this passion, the ministries I have been involved with in the past and now have always had this challenge of scheduling events so that they do not conflict with Redskin games. See, in a perfect world, I would hope that whatever our youth program or church did on a Sunday afternoon or night would be of the highest priority of someone who is a fully devoted follower of Christ. If someone wasn’t a mature believer, I wouldn’t expect them to make a Christ-centered activity a priority, but a mature one, I would like to hope they would. After all, it is just a game.
But, we do not live in a perfect world and none of us are perfect. In the past, whenever we have scheduled a youth ministry event (i.e. traditional youth group) that has conflicted with a Redskins game, our attendance is down dramatically. And students will not be ashamed to admit it. Unless we change the event dramatically and have it centered around the Redskins, they will say they aren’t coming because the Redskins are on. It really drives me crazy! I understand that people are passionate about their team, but isn’t Christ more important than a game or a team? I love Penn State football and the Dallas Cowboys but I have missed big PSU games and even missed the 1993 Cowboys v. 49ers NFC Championship game (the year Aikman, Smith and Irvin won the first of three Super Bowl Championships) for regular youth group. Not that I was so committed in my walk back then but I wanted to be with my friends and I wanted to hear what my youth pastor had to say.
Now, when there is a big football game like the Super Bowl, I’m all about scrapping traditional youth group to have an outreach event centered around football. But do we have to change our ministry events around regular season games?
So, as I begin another year of looking at the Redskin schedule and finalizing events, I’m curious, what do you all do when football and ministry conflict? Surely I am not the only one who deals with this, or am I? How do you motivate people to attend without guilting them?
TAKE A MINUTE and post a comment on what you would do or currently do in this situation.
We suffer the same fate in Mississippi. Except for us, it's college football. Everyone in our church from kids to senior adults is either a Mississippi State fan or an Ole Miss fan (with a few Southern Miss exceptions thrown in there). We plan our Saturday events around whether or not these teams have a home game that weekend. I too have felt the frustration over the misplaced passion for football, but not too much. I am, after all, a huge MSU bulldog fan myself (there was that whole paint-my-chest-for-a-game incident back in college)!
I don't believe that giving my students a guilt trip is helpful or effective. It pushes away rather than pulls in. I believe in either avoiding it or redeeming it.
Avoid:
Don't plan the event during the game. Watch the game, and then call the kid who went to the game and talk excitedly about it. That deepens the relationship.
Redeem:
Or have a party to watch the game (like a SS fellowship in someone's home) and do something at halftime (much like the super Bowl thing I already do).
I just believe in starting where the people are, instead of forcing them to come to where I am. And I mean that spiritually, not geographically. But start where they are, and go a step or two in God's direction from there.
Have your event for whomever shows up… or, just stay home and watch the game yourself. I'm convinced churches have too much "church" anyway.
I get you entirely…We have Colts football to contend with here, plus High School Football kills any Friday night activities three months of the year. I agree it "shouldn't be" a hard decision, but it usually is in the pews…
But it is a spiritual matter:
Satan will use whatever means he can to distract God's people from HIS plan and purpose…