A Past Time Redeemed: How Stacy and I Tried to Teach Our Children Christ Centered Baseball

This last spring our family entered the American sports arena.  Naomi and Ethan were given their first taste of America's favorite past time; baseball.  Ethan and I have been hitting the ball around in the backyard for the last couple of years.  Naomi had just recently shown some interest this last year in wanting to learn how to play the game.  Seeing that both of them had decent hand eye coordination and a good work ethic, Stacy and I decided to put them in a low competitive league.  However, before we did this, we had some stipulations for our family.  We came up with two overarching principles that were going to guide our involvement in sports, followed by three immediate criteria that we would use to evaluate how we redeemed our time at each game or practice.

Maintain Your Center

First, we committed to each other that sports were not going to dominate the nucleus of our family.  Stacy and I have seen first hand how sports centered a family can become; spending three to four nights a week at games and practices and not getting home until after 10pm.  This is not healthy on all kinds of levels.  For starters, in order for a family to maintain this schedule it is going to have to give up something, and more times than not, it is the priority to maintain fellowship with God and His people.  Late nights and weekend tournaments tend to work against family devotions and corporate worship on Sundays.

Redeem Your Time & Presence

Another thing we were committed to was a Christ centered testimony to fellow parents and players.  If we were going to spend several valuable hours of our precious family time to something, it needs to be done in a way that is edifying and worth it.  Anytime you get involved in a sport of any kind, you are making an investment.  You are expecting a return of some kind, whether it is in your child's skill set, social posterity, or even a bit of leisure time.  The return that Stacy and I were looking for is for our family to draw nearer to Christ and to display his worth to the world.  In order for this to happen we needed to have a plan in place to redeem our time and presence on the ball field.

Teaching Our Children Christ in Baseball

This worked itself out in three criteria, in the form of three questions, that I gave the Naomi and Ethan to evaluate every game and practice. First, "did you play to God's glory (1 Corinthians 10:31)?"  Both of them must have heard me say, "Do everything with a hustle" a hundred times.  I expected them to try their hardest, whether they succeeded or not, at running, catching, hitting, fielding, etc.  I did not mind if they struck out every single time they were at bat, as long as they struck out swinging. 

The second criteria was, "Were you a testimony of God's grace to your coach, teammates, and opponents (Philippians 2:1-11)?"  In short, did you have the mind of Christ when you interacted with everyone you came in contact with while playing baseball?  We expected both of them to play hard and compete to the best of their ability, but we also expected that they do it a manner this is dignified, and that testified that God is more valuable than being the best player on the team or winning the game.

Finally, the last criteria was, "Did you have fun (Philippians 4:4)?"  Many times Christians get a bad reputation for being a bit bland or stoic.  I get that.  The general perception of us Christians from those looking on is that we are bound by a bunch of rules and God has forbidden us to have an ounce of fun in this life.  Ya right!  God has given us a wonderful freedom to truly enjoy His creation and the life He has given us.  Baseball is a gift from God.  He gave us this wonderful creation to not only work but also to play.  The green grass, cool breeze, and perfect baseball playing temperature of 72 degrees on a trim dusk spring evening is part of the blessing of God.  Even the knowledge of the game itself comes from the one whom every good and pleasing thing comes (James 1:17).  Yes, amen, enjoy the game of baseball and have lots of fun fielding grounders, hitting home-runs (or singles), and sliding into second base on a steal (oh the irony!).  Our joy in baseball can also testify of our joy in Christ, as long as we understand from whom the blessing comes.

These questions would be rehearsed before and discussed after each game and practice.  Nothing elaborate, just a brief session while walking to the field or to the car afterwards.  The purpose was to be intentional in exposing the children to God's presence in every aspect of life.

Does All of This Matter?

The stipulations set in place were to help protect the center of our family's theology and our nucleus.  The center of our family's theology is that Christ is our Lord and He takes first place in everything we aim to be and do.  The nucleus of which our family orbits is Christ and His the word.  By protecting our center of theology we protected the nucleus of our family.  By setting our criteria for evaluating our involvement in baseball, we reinforced our center of theology and further strengthened our nucleus.  In essence, we intentionally sought to make much of Christ in our involvement in sports because we see Him as Lord over everything, we want our children to taste and see that He is Lord over everything (Psalm 34:8), and we wanted to make sure that nothing altered His position as Lord over everything in our family.

Sports in America has an unprecedented ability to take over the height and length and breadth of a family.  To stop this from happening, a family needs to put some gurards in place to keep the center from imploding. This is one way in which used to ensure we did not loose sight of our family's center and redeem our time in America's pastime.