224: Maybe Sports Aren’t the Enemy (And Neither Are Vacations)

Every summer, we quietly start competing—with travel, sports, family time—and it gets exhausting. 

But what if the problem isn’t where people are going … It’s how we’re responding to it? People having full, busy lives isn’t a threat to the church. 

It might actually be the starting point for better ministry.

• The tension between church and real life in the summer
• Why we feel frustrated (even when we don’t say it out loud)
• What changes when we stop competing and start noticing
• Meeting people where they already are

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Transcript

Laurie Graham  0:01 
Hey, welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I'm your host. Laurie Graham, let's dive in.

Laurie Graham  0:22 
Hey, hey, welcome back to the Small Church Ministry Podcast. Around here, we are really committed to helping smaller churches build healthier cultures where people feel valued, ministry feels sustainable, and where we're not just keeping things running all the time, but we're leading in ways that work. Last week, we talked about seasons and how summer isn't necessarily something to fix, but it's something to lean into, to embrace and to lead well and to lead differently. And today, I want to talk about something that many of us feel at some point this time of year. Maybe we don't say it directly, but honestly, I hear it a lot, but most of us feel it, and this is that frustration of, why aren't people here, or why does everyone everything else seem to come first, like sports or vacations or travel, hobbies, even just enjoying the sunshine. 

So today, we're just going to put it on the table. People are in and out in summertime. A lot schedules are full in different ways, and sometimes half your group could be gone at any given time, no matter what ministry area you're serving in, if you're volunteering on the worship team, if you lead the children, if you're a Sunday school teacher, if you're the pastor, like we get it, and if we're being honest, it can start to feel like we are competing with sports, with travel, with the weather, with anything else that's going on in people's lives. And I get it, I really do, but I want to shift how we're looking at this, because I don't think what's actually happening is what we think is happening. So there's a moment many of us have where we look around and we think, Where is everyone, and underneath that, there's often a tension. Now it's not always dramatic, but it's often there in some way, it can start to shift how we see people, it shifts us from we're here to serve with them, or to serve them, or showing up for other people, to why aren't they here? And oftentimes it becomes that feeling of, why am I the only one who is here? 

There's a lot of things that can happen there. There's a lot of layers, and a lot of it is really understandable, but that shift matters a lot. So why does this hit us that way? So I actually think this is just a totally a human thing. When people aren't around as much, or some people don't show up as consistently, we start connecting dots. We tie presence or lack of their presence to commitment and priority and spiritual health. So when attendance drops, it can feel like something else is winning, or like we or our church or God has been moved down the priority list, and again, I get it. It's a really normal reaction. It's a normal thing to think or feel, but it's just not always accurate. So I just want to zoom out for a second. What if the issue isn't what families are choosing or what retirees are prioritizing, or what young couples are doing this weekend. 

What if the issue is how we're interpreting it? Because I really don't believe most people are sitting around thinking, how do we replace church this summer? What can we do to have church fall down on our priority list? Like I don't think people are asking this. What a lot of people are trying to do in the summer is see family and friends they haven't been able to see for a while, or take advantage of the beauty of outdoors when they've been cooped up all year long because of sometimes weather, or if they have children in the home, they're looking for ways to keep their kids active and involved. When school, that routine of school is gone, people are looking to manage full schedules, to make memories, to keep up with everything that's coming at them, and when we label all that as the problem, I honestly think we unintentionally distance ourselves from people we care about. We truly care about, calling culture the enemy is really not serving us as the church, I will say it again, calling culture the enemy is not serving us, whether we're calling sports the enemy or lack of prior. The enemy. We've got to get rid of some of this, because it changes how we're viewing people. It changes our actual love for other people. Instead of thinking we're losing people to sports or to vacations or to travel or to other priorities,

Laurie Graham  5:19 
what if we started inviting ourselves into a conversation of figuring out how faith fits into real life, because real life includes travel. It includes seeing family, it includes sports and hobbies and being in the world that we live in. It includes school like, what if we turn this conversation was all this is the enemy to figuring out how faith fits in to real life, because real life is where real discipleship happens. For some families, sports is real life. For some retirees, travel is real life, and if the faith that we proclaim only works inside a building on a consistent schedule, I just want to say it's it's not going to hold up to real life for many people now, please hear me. I'm not speaking against solid discipleship or consistency or faith or priority, but I believe all those things can happen in a lot of different contexts. 

But maybe the problem isn't where people are going. Maybe the problem is we've built church ministry for a place, and I can't help to think about Jesus bringing faith to the roadsides, to the crowds, to the marketplace to homes, when we start to see faith as something that fits in real life for real people, and that we all get to choose how we spend our real life, it actually opens up a lot more opportunity than what we've been noticing. When I was a baby Youth Director. I was in my early 20s, and I was in a church in Toledo, Ohio. There was this young woman in my Youth group. Her name was Jenny. She was an amazing basketball star, and I will say a star. And she traveled with club and with a club team. She was gone a lot, and she had a faith. I have no idea where she's at now. I don't know what she's doing. I did not keep in touch with her. This was several decades ago, but I remember when she talked about her faith, it was so important to her, and I want to say it was more important to her than to many kids I have seen over the years and adults over the years who come to church every single Sunday, like, can we stop equating somebody's commitment to their faith with attendance? Sometimes it coincides, but sometimes it doesn't. And I really think when we start seeing sports or vacations as the enemy or the competition, we have it wrong, because if we stop competing, we can show up really differently. Now I want to take sports as an example, just because this is a really big hot button in our current church war against our modern culture, okay, like we see it come up all the time in Youth Ministry spaces and Kids spaces and Family Ministry spaces. 

And quite honestly, I am tired of the conversation, because when somebody starts out and says, sports is the enemy, or parents need to quit prioritizing sports over the church. Can we really take a look at that? You can be in sports and have an amazing faith, an amazing outreach. Be involved in amazing evangelism, be on fire for your faith and not be at church every Sunday. Like, oh, okay, I just went off a little bit there, so let me come back again. Okay, if we stop competing, we can start showing up differently. So I just want to give some ideas about what this could look like, practically for a ministry in your church when, let's say, kids are in sports, instead of fighting and competing against this and saying, if they were committed, they would quit sports, right? Okay, what about writing a quick note to a student before their game, before they're going to miss and say, Hey, I know you've got a big weekend. We are cheering you on. What would that shift in the mind of those students and those parents? What about somebody from church showing up once, not at every game, not every week, but what time when that family could see you there?

Laurie Graham  10:19 
What about connecting with parents or a guardian on the sideline, the aunt that is faithfully taking this junior high, you know, girl to sports every weekend, or whatever it would be. What about connecting with that guardian or that aunt or that parent on the sideline and having a real conversation there? What about bringing something simple, like snacks or water or popsicles on a hot day to a field. What about your small group at church adopting one team for a short season? You know how sometimes teams are sponsored by the dentist or whatever, and they've got the name of the dentist on the back of their shirt? What if your small group just quietly adopted a team and showed up and brought the snacks to their games. 

Do you know how much pressure that would take off those parents who are trying to keep up with everything? What about that? And I'm going to say something else that I believe matters a lot. What about shifting our language when we haven't seen people at church in a while. What about, instead of we haven't seen you at church, whether we say that out loud or we just think it, what about trying on some of these phrases. 'I know you've been traveling a lot with your son's soccer. How is that going for you guys?' Or how about, 'your schedule looks so full. I know you and your spouse have been traveling a lot. Is it a lot to keep up with? How are you staying connected? If you're talking to a family with kids, how are all your kids handling that? I know that your daughter is like the star on this team. How are your youngers doing? Is there any way we could support you this season?' And again, I'm using sports as an example, but this could be dance. This could be, this could be traveling with a chess team. This could be, again, people who just are traveling for family, with work, retirees. People have picked up different hobbies, different outreaches of their own. Why does our language matter so much? Because it removes a lot of pressure. It removes shame and guilt. It removes judgment, and I'll also say it removes our own egos. Can we stop looking like the holy, sanctified ones because we're not traveling. It changes how we show up in other people's lives, how they see us, and it opens up real conversation, instead of apologies or guilt. 

People don't need reminders that they've missed church. They need to know they are welcome when they come. They need to know they are still seen. And again, I don't mean them and us. I mean all of us, quite honestly, some of us who are going to church every single Sunday and feeling very proud of that fact, need to take a vacation. Need to take a sabbatical. Need to take a little retreat ourselves. I was so reminded this past Sunday, when I was in church, I usually keep a journal with me at church, because oftentimes I'm getting just different thoughts or different nudges about different things in my own life that pop up during a worship song or or during a sermon sometimes, and I was so reminded that we don't have good perspective until there's some distance. Like, you know, seeing the forest through the trees when you are right next to the tree, you don't have perspective of the forest. 

But when we step back, when we create some distance, this could be in a relationship. This could be our work. This could be our ministry. This could be our spiritual lives. This could be the weeds of the way that we do our daily quiet times, when we step back a little bit, create some distance or some space, we really see things differently. Many of us have experienced this in our lives. You know, when we're, I'm in my 50s now, and I look back at my 20s, and, man, how I would have defined my 20s, and my 20s is very different than how I would define my 20s now, the script that I've created around it, the narrative, it's so different. So some of us need to take a step back ourselves from our perspectives, from the way that we've labeled things, from the way that we're looking at sports or vacations or people traveling, or our pastors needing a vacation. By the way, please give your pastors a vacation, please look into specific sabbatical type situations.

Laurie Graham  15:07 
This is seasonal. It's human. It's the way that God has built us. It's the way that God grows us. If you missed last week's podcast, please go back and listen to it about how winter and fall, seasons that look dormant, seasons of pulling back, of losing our leaves, actually create more growth, more invisible growth, than seasons that look like they are on fire. So back to summer, back to sports, back to people traveling. Nobody needs a reminder that they've been gone. They need to know that they are seen and loved, ourselves included again. This isn't just about sports. This could be kids involved in robotics. This could be adults involved in community theater. This could be dance or music or art or the creative quiet people within our congregations who get lost in writing. This doesn't just have to be about a person who fits a specific traditional mold, but if we only celebrate what happens at church, we are missing so much of people's actual lives. 

Let's take a step back and look at it. You know, we could start noticing and celebrate what's happening in people's worlds with a board in our Welcome center, with a quick mention, with a moment in service and celebrate, a game, a performance, a project, a milestone, a graduation, including people who are different, who are neurodivergent, who have different interests, who show up in different ways. Connection in our church bodies, in our communities, does not require constant presence, but it does require intentionality, and this doesn't mean that someone cares less if they're not showing up every single week. Attendance and presence does not equal care or commitment. Now sometimes it can be a sign of that. I'm not saying that, but it's not equal. We're also not talking about lowering the bar in ministry. We're talking about leading better in the reality of where people actually live when we can stop measuring everything by attendance. 

We can stay relational even when people are inconsistent, ourselves included. We can build ministries that are flexible. You know, over the past couple years, I've heard a couple times that one sign of emotional maturity in a person, in an individual, is flexibility when people are inflexible, when they need it a certain way. It's a sign that that some emotional maturity isn't there, or that there's an opportunity for emotional growth when we're flexible, when we can say, oh, that happened. Didn't know that was going to happen, and we can flex with it. That's a sign of maturity as an individual. What about that being a sign of maturity of a church. 

Emotional maturity, a ministry that can be flexible, that doesn't demand the same thing from all the same people all the time. Consistency can be a sign of growth, but it's not the only one. We can be very connected without our being present every week and without other people being present every single week. There is no ministry that has to fall apart when rhythms change, but when rhythms change, what if we shifted instead of resisting it? You may have a team at your church, a Prayer team, a Worship team, an Outreach team. Maybe there's some things going on. Maybe somebody is relocating, maybe somebody is dealing with a diagnosis in their family that they haven't even told you about. Maybe somebody is pulling back, and it causes sometimes us to panic a little bit, especially if it's one of those committed core volunteers, where we feel like the sun rises and sets on them being here. If they're not here, this ministry is going to fall apart. That is the same kind of feeling and impact that can happen with an entire season. For many of us, that's summer. And what if we started learning

Laurie Graham  20:08 
and growing in ways where we look at something and say, Okay, this is happening. How could we respond to this, instead of fight it? How could we join with this? How could we look at opportunities on the sports field instead of considering sports the enemy? How could we support that couple who has chosen to travel for this next season or for the next year? How could we support our pastor and their family on a sabbatical. So many times, churches push against the idea of sabbaticals for pastors because they're going to lose them, or they don't deserve the time off, or whatever that is. And I really think we need a reframe on sabbatical. I'll need to do a, yeah, I probably should actually do a podcast series on that coming up, which I will work on. I'll add that to the dream list. But what about if your pastor is taking a sabbatical with normally, they would take their family for part of the time, whether they're leaving town or not leaving town. What if we looked at that opportunity as how do we support them, not just run the church, but what could we gift them with? Could we write little notes or cards? Could we send some presents for a terribly long road trip with littles in the car? 

What could we do so, anything that pops up for you that feels like an obstacle or something we want to resist? What if we just changed our language around that? Wow. How could we come alongside that. How could we support that? How could we do ministry in the midst of that? And if you are one of the people listening now, and maybe you haven't said it or voiced it, but if you have some resentment inside that those people get to be gone, and you are left holding the bag, having to do everything because they are gone. I would just like to speak into that just for a minute before we close, that that's an opportunity for you to possibly step away, take a break, create a healthy rhythm for yourself, because, again, I'm not talking about them and us. We get like that a lot when we have core volunteers, like most of you listening right now, who are holding up the weight of the church. God doesn't want you burnt out or exhausted either. 

So let's work on creating healthy rhythms all around from volunteers to ministry lead, ministry leaders to the leadership, whether your church has elders or deacons or pastors who are serving full time or bivocational, let's press into some heavier rhythms, healthier rhythms, and have some conversations around this. If you are struggling with the sports mentality or pushback in your church, that is actually one of the sessions we have coming up at the Kid Min and Youth Ministry Conference happening at the end of the month. Jeremy Ruffin is speaking. He is amazing. If you don't know him, if you haven't heard of him, he's actually bringing a really strong perspective from both the world of ministry and a perspective from the world of sports, a whole conversation around sports and family life. If this is something you're navigating, make sure to grab a free ticket at that conference. You're gonna want to be there to catch that one. 

But at the end of the day, wherever we're coming in from, whatever we're looking toward, whether it's summer or winter or fall or the Christmas season, people having busy, full lives is not a threat to the church. It's a context that we've been called to lead in. It's a context we've been called to walk alongside with, and we when we stop fighting the context, we usually find that we have a lot more opportunity than we thought that can be freeing and light and beautiful and relational and supportive in so many different layers. So I just want to thank you for being here with me today, for taking the time to be here. I know you have a million other things you could have done right now with this time.

Laurie Graham  24:39 
If this episode has shifted how you're thinking even a little bit or this is a conversation you'd like to have with others in your church. Share it. This is one of the easiest ways to be part of changing your church culture a little bit toward a little more health, is just having the conversations. And the easiest way to have this conversation is to say, Hey, listen to this episode. Tell me what you think. I'd love to talk about it with a ministry team, with a pastor, with a spouse, with a friend. And also, I would love to ask you just to take a minute and leave a review of this podcast. It really helps more small church volunteers and ministry leaders find the hope, the encouragement, the conversation that can lead to healthier churches, really all over the world. I know a lot of people right now are struggling with this specific topic, especially as we're headed into summer, and I can't wait to be part of more conversation, more growth, more flexibility, more leaning into serving well and healthier as ourselves as well. 

So all right, we'll talk again next week, until then, be a light.