Clay Robinson @Clayrobinson413 - Twitter Profile

Our family stands between two worlds. It’s a pastor’s home (with all that entails), and at the same time it’s a home where multiple kids are playing multiple sports — and travel sports, at that — for much of the year. Youth sports can be a fun and enjoyable experience for families, but at the same time they have intruded greatly — particularly travel sports — upon the lives of Christian families (and their commitment to the church) in recent decades. In a recent Q&A session at Indian Hills Community Church (@IHCCministry), I laid out some cautions and concerns about Christians and youth sports. I hope you'll find what I shared helpful. Whether or not you watch the video, a few reminders for those parents who would call themselves followers of Jesus Christ: (1) Your child is made in the image of God, and He created them to glorify Him. (2) Your child might make the occasional dazzlingly athletic play, but it is a virtual certainly that your children will never make a living playing that sport. (3) Christians gather to worship the living God on Sundays. Gathering for Sunday worship is not something we do occasionally, when other plans fall through. Rather, we gather regularly, recognizing that it’s a divinely-decreed expectation that we do so. Hebrews 10:24-25. (4) There are times when a Christian might have a legitimate reason for being unable to gather for regular Sunday worship—illness, work travel, military deployment, a family emergency, etc.—but a child’s game is not one of them. (5) The greatest example you can set for your children is not by signing them up for every sport and activity—especially those which unapologetically encroach upon Lord’s Day worship. The greatest example you can set, rather, is by showing them what it means to be a faithful follower of Christ. And faithful followers of Christ don’t take months off at a time from gathered Sunday worship for the sake of sports. (6) Every Christian has to remember that they will one day stand before the judgment seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10). When that day comes, I'm quite confident that He is not going to accept “yes, Lord, but my child had a travel ball commitment for all of those Sundays we missed church” as an excuse for missing weeks and months on end of gathered worship with His people. So, yes, take me out to the ball game. Just not on Sunday morning.