Discipling Kids
Where practical parenting meets practiced theology for families and ministries discipling kids for Christ.
Discipling Kids
Discipling Your Kids Through Youth Sports (with Brian Smith & Ed Uszynski)
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How should Christian parents think about youth sports—and what role should it play in discipling our kids?
In this episode, I’m joined by Brian Smith and Ed Uszynski, co-authors of Away Game, to talk about the opportunities and challenges youth sports create for families. From packed schedules to competing priorities, sports can shape our kids in powerful ways—for better or worse.
We discuss:
- The hidden pressures and pitfalls of youth sports culture
- How sports can compete with (or support) your child’s faith
- What it looks like to disciple your kids in the midst of busy sports seasons
- Practical ways to keep what matters most at the center
If your family is involved in youth sports—or you’re trying to decide how it should fit into your life—this conversation will help you think more clearly and intentionally.
📚 Resource mentioned: Away Game by Brian Smith and Ed Uszynski
Welcome to Discipling Kids Podcast, where practical parenting meets practiced theology for families and ministries discipling kids for Christ. I'm your host, Pastor John Scheller. Welcome. I am so excited for today's episode. I have with me authors Brian Smith and Ed Uzinski from the recently released book Away Game, which is talking about how a Christian parent, how they can navigate the youth sports industry. So, Brian, Ed, thank you so much for being here with us today. And tell me a little bit about what encouraged you or made you want to write this book.
SPEAKER_02Well, we've been using this language for a long time, and thanks for having us here. We love talking about this, especially with pastors and church people who are trying to think about this differently. We both grew up as athletes. We um both married athletes, we both played at high levels collegiately and beyond. We coached, and um we've worked in a sport ministry for the majority of our vocational life, over 50 years combined, working with college and professional athletes. But then about 15 years ago, we became well, we were parents. I have four kids, Brian has three, and we started to coach their teams and and just become more involved as our kids were playing and realized we needed an intervention of some kind. I mean, we knew how to think about this for college athletes and as mentors, but we didn't really know how to be Christian parents to our own kids who were on this fast-moving train that we've been calling the youth sport industrial complex. Brian, why don't you talk some more about that? And we just realized we needed help, and that's what got us thinking about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the word that kept coming to mind for us, but also friends of ours who had kids playing youth sports was exasperated, words like um confused, pressured, forced. And so as we're navigating the space, we're realizing that our experience is not an isolated one, that it's it's actually a shared experience by our friends, and then we start digging into it, and it's it seems like it's a universal experience just around, at least in the US, around the country, where parents are are just confused about what's going on. And so as we're digging in and trying to find what does it look like to have a Christianly response to this, does God have anything to say that could inform us? There's just not a lot in this space. There's a lot of secular research right now that's going to say similar things that we're saying in the book, but we're trying to take it a step further and say this is actually what God's word would say about something like this. And so the the research right now for youth sports is saying that the solution to everything that has gone wrong with it is that the kids just need to go back and have fun. Like the fun is the answer to everything. And so what we're trying to do in the book is really have two parallel conversations. One, we want to help parents see what this thing is, the youth sport industrial complex, what it's motivated by, the history behind it, where it's going. So we want parents to be wide-eyed about that. But then, two, especially from a Christian perspective, we want parents to know that regardless of whether you have$100 invested,$1,000 invested into your kid's youth sport experience, there's still an incredible opportunity to disciple your kid through the moments that sports provides.
SPEAKER_01And I appreciate the discipleship language that comes out in the book. Tell us about why it's confusing between the values of being a Christian and what may be the values of a youth sport industry.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Part of the confusion is that the youth sports industry promises the world to us and our kids, but there's very little, if any, accountability. And so you have these elite clubs and travel teams that are promising, you know, if your kid just signs up with us, or if you do year-round, or if you get this, then this is going to be the promise. But there's very little, if any, accountability to that. And so it's leaving parents who their lived experience then is the kid gets involved in that. The kid either isn't enjoying it, or they're not getting the results that are promised. And so what do you do as a parent in that situation? And the answer right now is you gotta go bigger, you gotta join the next the next league above and above and above. And it's just leaving kids and parents alike exasperated.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Well, in the very culture itself is not normal. We keep saying that. We just need to keep reminding ourselves that what we're all experiencing right now is really the result of a bunch of cultural trends that became true in the last 50 years that were unrelated but just sort of piled together in such a way that this youth sport industrial complex could be created. It's a$40 billion industry, which is just a staggering number that, again, you can just kind of blow by that. But Brian, you said this, it's bigger than the the video game industry, bigger than the all the professional sports industries. It's just staggering. And so what happens when you start getting money involved like that, uh, not that there's anything wrong with making money on it, but when you get those kinds of numbers involved, the kids become commodities and their personal growth becomes secondary at best. So it's really hard today to find coaches that have been trained in how to think about emotional development, psychological development, spiritual development. At best, they're working on physical development, and frankly, there's way too many coaches that have the title coach today that aren't even really working on that very well. So the kids wind up having a less than optimal experience. That's a kind way to say it. And then we're trying to do this in a setting where winning and performance are way more important than just playing and having fun. Where traveling across state lines has become the norm instead of just staying locally, where you don't have to get in a car or drive very far to get to something. Now you're driving for hours and sometimes days to be able to play. Um it used to be that you could just play in a season for six weeks, and now you're signing up for things that have a year's worth of options for you. And so do you what what do you do with this? Do we really have to do this at eight years old? It used to be easy to afford for people, and now it's a luxury, and you have to budget for it and plan, especially if you have multiple kids. So just all of these different realities that have created a new level of stress for us as parents where we can no longer just go even ourselves and just enjoy what's happening in front of us. We're always worried about some future thing that's at stake right now. They're teaching us to think that way.
SPEAKER_00And the confusion then is how are we supposed to answer these questions? Because we want a clean answer to questions like, is it okay that my kid just has fun? How how should I, as a Christian, balance my kid wanting to be a competitor, but also me trying to build virtue and things like character into them? Are those at odds, or is there in a a way to integrate those? What do we do with Sundays? What do we do with Sunday? Do we go with the travel league? Do we keep going to Sunday church? So there's there's just so many new questions in this space. And parents are confused because there's n there's nobody giving them biblical wisdom for how to think Christianly about it.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell So God has designed children to be shaped and discipled. So they are being discipled, but it's a question of by who? And so as a as a parent, I mean I want to know that I'm the one who's forming my child. But Ed, I've heard you say that the hardest part in being a Christian parent whose children are involved in sports is being honest about what is going inside of me as a parent in order to disciple my child my child in sports. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, good, John. So this is again, I can just speak out of my own personal experience that and everybody gets this, having kids exposes all of your weaknesses. It exposes all of those unsanctified areas, the um unredeemed areas, the unresolved areas in our past and in our in a lot of cases in our present. And when I look in the mirror and just see, especially for my first three kids, because I have four kids, three are out of out of high school, they're in college, and one is a ninth grader right now. When I evaluate what was going on with the first two, especially, so much of what I was bringing to the table in their sport experience was my baggage. It was my regrets. It was my fears of what they might miss out on if they don't do X, Y, and Z. It was me wanting them to have a better experience than what I did in different ways. Um it was my anger, unresolved anger that I have in other areas of my life that I was letting come out in this sport space in kind of an unrestrained way. It was the embarrassment that I felt, my how much my own identity was tied to my kids as an extension of me. And so I feel embarrassed when they play lousy, I feel the top of the world, like I own the stands when they do good things, and it's like, I mean, it's okay to feel something there, but it was just like it was too much. It was like an idol. And so all of that language and all of those realities need to be brought in front of the gospel. You know, as for us as church people, how do we let Jesus heal some of those areas? How do we let our trust in God cause us to stop worrying so much about the future and figure out what it means just to be present right now? Um how do we not worry so much about what we're seeing in their skill performance metrics, but maybe to actually start paying more attention to what's happening in their hearts and are they growing in virtue and character in these words that we like to use in our circles? That's my responsibility. But I'll never approach those things. I'll never care about that list if they're always gonna get smothered out by my own junk, if that makes sense. My own insecurities, my own baggage.
SPEAKER_00Uncle Rico syndrome. Talk about that. Yeah, we use the the metaphor of Uncle Rico uh in the book. So if you're familiar with the the movie or heard about it, Napoleon Dynamite. Yeah. One of the characters in there, Uncle Rico played some high school football back in his day, and there's a scene and pretty iconic scene in the movie where he is sitting on the back porch with his nephew, Kip, and just talking about the good old days or lamenting what could have been the good old days, and his his quote is if coach would have just put me in senior year, we'd have won state, and you kind of see him look off into the distance, and he says, Not a doubt in my mind, not a doubt in my mind. Then he actually goes on talking about like, do you think time machine is uh a really thing that could be invented? Like he he wants to go back and right some of these wrongs. And I think it's important for us as parents to realize, man, we might have, as much as we laugh about that, some of that could be true about us. Like our kids are really made in our image, and they're they're little versions of us playing sports, and how much of us have that unresolved Uncle Rico in us of like, man, it I didn't have this opportunity, or if I would have just done A, B, or C, things have gone different for me. I'm gonna make sure that my kid has what they need to do it. So, how much of that influences our decision making and what we say yes to and no to and what we yell or don't yell from the sidelines.
SPEAKER_02Which on paper doesn't sound like a bad motivation. It just sounds like we're trying to be caring parents that are trying to give our kids something better than what we had. But again, I can speak for myself. Too often when I do that, I leave God out of that equation. Like I want to be God over their future, I want to be God over their sport experience, I want to shape it the way I think it should go. And as is always the case, God has a much better plan, and the sooner that I get in touch with that, um, the better things will go both for my kids and for me and for my wife Amy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So how would you encourage a parent who is experiencing that right now? I mean, there's some anxiety of maybe my child isn't the quickest on the field, I'm feeling I'm projecting myself onto my child, and there's now all of a sudden an awareness that that's happening. What are some recommendations to make the one-degree shift?
SPEAKER_00I think it starts with just taking a deep breath. We tell people all the time like before you drop your kid off at practice or a game, there's value in just doing your own like personal devotional with God of just maybe taking a few deep breaths, reminding yourself that what happens on the field today is not going to determine the next three years of their life. To enjoy watching them play, like you you talk about this often, just the the opportunity we have to watch our kids play a game and what a gift that is. And we almost rob ourselves of that gift if we're so stressed about what they could become or what this this is gonna do to their to their future that we miss out on just the the joy of watching them play. So I think that's a big one is just man, what if we just stopped, had our devotional with God and said, God, would you would you help me to not freak out so much today about what could be and then just joy watching my kid play? Holy Spirit, would you convict me in moments when maybe I want to say something to a coach or a ref and it would be wise to just keep my mouth shut? Uh Holy Spirit, would you give me eyes to see things that are going on with my kid that I normally don't see that in seeing them today, maybe I could help close this gap on uh an issue of self-control or love or peace in their life. And so trusting God that God might have bigger wins than just athletic success. Your kid might be behind, but that's okay. That's okay.
SPEAKER_02Can I say one more thing about the work? Yes. So the the primary work is always between me and the Lord. The Lord seems to always want to use besides our own personal communion, he always wants to use other people in shaping how I think about myself. So I'll throw the word counseling out. I think I think we all need to get counsel um from people maybe who are older than us, whose kids have already gone through this, who maybe literally a counselor. If I've if I realize that I've got a lot of anger brewing in me, maybe I need to get some help from somebody that listens to people talk about anger problems every day of their life and actually has some some roadways to go down that can help resolve some of that. My life will only get better if I if I let some of that get rooted out, brought into the light, and it gets tra that negative energy gets transformed into something that smells more like the gospel, that looks more like the gospel. I just think it's always good to give ourselves permission to say, I need help. I don't know. I think we all just want to jump into this as though we all get it. We all we all we all know how to be sports parents. I want to say we don't. And let's start there and get the help that we need to heal inside of ourselves so that our stuff doesn't keep getting spewed out on our kids. So that's that was another long answer kind of to that. But then so what do we do having done that work, how do we bring our kids into it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think this is where there's there's freedom and creativity as parents to um to know your kid well enough to know what they're gonna respond to well. And so at least for me, what I what I've done with my kids the last few years is we have donuts with dad. Each kid, I have three kids, each kid gets a morning of the week, and my kids, they're they're Smiths, they love sugar. And so we're eating donuts before school together. And I this is the space where I'm I'm asking questions, we're open up the opening up the Bible together. If I'm noticing things in sport that I can bring into that conversation, I am, but most of the time we're just eating donuts, reading a couple of Bible verses and talking talking about how could this apply to your life today at school. And so it it's it's nothing too fancy. My kids like to eat donuts and they like to spend time with me right now. And so I'm gonna try to and they don't want to drive the bus in the morning. They don't want to ride the bus. They'd rather have dad drive them in a little bit later. Extra bonus. Extra bonus. And so all of those factors are like, yeah, donuts with dad has become my home field for discipleship.
SPEAKER_02Well, and we've we talked about this a ton in the book. This is really what the book is. It's a it's a practical manual about how to pursue virtues in our kids' life. So we're wanting them hoping they do well when it comes to performance and skill. We're not saying that that just goes completely away, but maybe we're we're balancing things out a bit by saying we're also going to have a list of character qualities that we're looking for. So we talk about love, for example. What a huge biblical category that is, especially in the New Testament, where we're commissioned really to go into the world as Jesus followers and to agape love people, to do what's best for them in spite of what it costs us, which means we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna look to see people the way Jesus saw them. We're gonna look to move intentionally into their life and have questions for them and um to be available to them, okay? Well that needs to start when they're when our kids are five, six years old. We can't wait until they're 16 or 26 or or 36 years old. We're we're trying to get our kids at an early age to notice people. And so how do we bring them into it? We we start to ask them questions like Brian just said about um you know, did it look like so-and-so was struggling on the team today? Did you notice that? So-and-so made a really bad mistake and got pulled out of the game, and they looked really sad or they were crying again, depending on what age we're talking about. Did you say something to them? And most of the time, again, for little kids, the answer will be no. I didn't see them or I didn't say anything. And so let's have a conversation about what it would mean to see a person that's struggling. What does it mean to maybe be the one that goes and says, Are you okay, or hang in there, or whatever, some word of encouragement. And we train our kids to start thinking in those categories, even if they don't fully get it.
SPEAKER_00And ourselves. We train ourselves to start thinking in those categories because your kid is not going to have the opportunity every day, or maybe even ever, to score a touchdown or hit a home run or whatever it is in that sport. Most won't. But every single practice, they have the opportunity to show love to somebody else. That's available every single day at practice. It's available every single weekend at games. And so, yeah, what if we armed ourselves with a new set of questions and categories for our kids? So the expectation, at least coming from us, is yeah, you if you hit the home run, great. But did you see somebody today? Did you know did you show dignity these dignity to somebody today?
SPEAKER_02Which it won't matter a ton whether or not they caught the ball or not when they're 25, but it'll matter a ton whether they see people or not. It's so interesting. We haven't even said this. We we work with college athletes and most college athletes, which that's that's getting really high up the food chain when it comes to sports, to be able to compete in college. And most college athletes, when they finish really aren't sure who they are anymore. Because their identity is so tied to everything that this sport has been about. Their identity is so tied to how they've been discipled by the sport, to think about themselves, to think about their place in the world. It's like they have to be reformed. They've been malformed by this trajectory they've been on in sport culture, and now hopefully somebody comes into their life in such a way that they can start to reshape them. Now that's really hard to do as a 22, 23-year-old who's only ever known this one way of thinking about themselves. So again, we're saying how much better would it be if there was there was a movement of parents out there that were training their kids to see the world through Jesus' eyes early in the context of sport and not keeping their Christianity separate from that, which I just think is probably true for too many of us. We just our Christianity doesn't invade our sport journey. It's kept separate from it. But what if we what if we started to build people's our our kids' security based on what the Lord says? What if we gave them eyes to see other people the way the Lord does, to have peace?
SPEAKER_00The gospel really is the answer to these issues. I mean, like the big mantra within the sports community right now, even up to the professional level, is more than an athlete. I'm more than an athlete. So you you see me as this, but there's so much more to me than just being an athlete, and and what you're saying is true. What what if we can help they're needing to say that now because they're trying to force themselves to believe it and force others to believe it. What if we can, through partnership with the Holy Spirit, help build this confidence and who they are in Christ into them at an early age? So they don't, yeah, they don't need to rely on platitudes and mantras later in life. They they know, yes, they still are an athlete. That's part of their identity, but it's who they are is really anchored in what God says is true about them.
SPEAKER_02We we need a more robust teaching uh about this in the church, among pastors, among spiritual leaders, mentors. And what Brian and I have talked about this for years in our own circles. There there doesn't have to be like this binary where because I see people now, I can't compete to the fullest on the field or try to win or try to, again, whatever the right language is, subdue them within the context of the sport. You can do both. Now, it it takes some maturity to be able to do that both. Again, this is this is big boy, big girl talk stuff here. This is not easy to do. You have to cultivate a different way of being over time that says, as I step on this field, as my spiritual act of worship, I'm going to bring my body fully to this performance opportunity, and I'm going to play free and full and completely out. And in fact, I have nothing to worry about because my identity is not tied to whether I win or lose, actually, at the end of this. With that said, we're going to try to win. And we're going to do everything that we can to win within the rules. And if I knock you down, I may help you back up, but then I'm going to try to knock you down again because that's what we're doing out here. That's what we came out here to do. So you really can do both. And you can finish the game. So this is really where it gets practical. You go all out during the game. When you finish the game, can you rehumanize that person? Can you see them as another person created in the image of God? I know this is big talk, but again, this is the kind of training we need.
unknownTrevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01But you also talk about what does winning look like. If I've won a game in terms of points, but I've dehumanized my opponent, or there are ways where I was inappropriately aggressive or using language that was inappropriate, what if we are able to recalibrate as to what does winning look like? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Good.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus And then the goals being these character developments within the game, and if those character developments did not occur in the game, even if the points were high, evaluating a self-evaluation, did we really win?
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell, and we should have an expanded list as a Christian. So again, we're not saying ever that trying to have more points at the end doesn't matter at all. It does. That's what we came here to do. But our expanded list, Brian says this all the time. We're expecting too little out of sports. So, oh, that's all we want at the end is to have more points. Well, that's something, but what if we could have that? And no matter whether we had more points or not, there's a way of interacting with other people that's got wins attached to it. The way we go through the handshake line after the game, the way we t talk and interact with people during timeouts or during the JV game if you're a varsity player and you're interacting. You just told a story about something your son did last night that I think might even be relevant here, talking with the other kids.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he's he's at his conference wrestling tournament, and he the person he's about to wrestle is wrestling on the mat. He's gonna wrestle the winner of this match, and he's in the stands talking to an opponent, like befriending them. They're exchanging numbers and having a great conversation, and he's not paying attention to what's going on in the mat. And the competitor in me is just going crazy because I want him to pay attention to what's happening, because he's gonna wrestle the winner, and you you can do some scouting here for free. He doesn't care about that. He's what he cares about is building this friendship in this moment, and he's really intrigued by this guy and asking questions. And the Christian in me is like, I love that about my son. I love that at a really intense environment, he's able to be relationally connected to somebody else to the point where he is not obsessing about his next opponent. He's gonna worry about them when they hit the mat together. So there's there is that that yeah, I have to be okay with that. But it starts with me also recognizing that really annoys me that he's not looking at the match right now. But man, I'm also so stinking proud of him that he is making friends right now and looks differently than maybe how I would do it. If we really do adopt this mindset of, yeah, we have a diversified portfolio of win of wins, does that affect our motivation? Does that make us less of a competitor? One thing I've tried, I've done a lot of youth sport coaching with kids in public schools, and I've tried to, even though I can't use overtly Christian language, I try to, with all the kids I coach, help them see the this idea of honoring an opponent. And so hopefully the kids that I've coached would be able to tell you that Coach Smith says, whether we're up by 20 or down by 20, we give our absolute best until the whistle because that's a way to honor our opponent. That our opponents actually deserve our very best. And when we bring our full selves, our full gift set, our full teamwork, everything that we've practiced to bear in a game, that's actually honoring to them because we're saying, you deserve my my absolute best. Am I using Bible verses to slap on that? No, but I'm teaching them it it's actually a Christian perspective to bring your best if your motivation is I want to do this because it honors the person that I'm going against, not because I want to get all the glory. No, it's it's actually kind of you-centered. I want to make sure you're getting all of me right now.
SPEAKER_02And that's a different kind of win. That you know, we talk about process goals instead of just end product goals. That just is just another way to look at it. That too often we think the only way we can feel good about ourselves is if we have more points at the end of this game. That is one way to feel good about yourself. We're not trying to minimize that. But again, even sport psychologists will recognize this that you can't always control. You don't have full control whether or not you're gonna have more points at the end. There's there's a gazillion things going on during a game, whether it's officials, it's who's having a good day, bad day, um how how prepared we were, whether we can remember our plays or not. There's so many different things that go on. But along the way, a smart coach, a smart discipler, even, will be will be labeling little mini goals as wins. Um that actually when you build a lifetime of these, when you continue to stack these up, whether you wind up having more points or not at the end, you can walk away feeling what's the word, Brian? Like j joy. You can feel like you fulfilled what your purpose was for being there. It's not just to have more points at the end.
SPEAKER_00And if it is, the the athletes who have reached the crescendo of their sport will attest to this. Like it's really fun for maybe a week, but then the joy fades in what's left. They gotta do it again because they've almost discipled themselves through putting all their eggs in the I just gotta win basket, and it's not satisfying. Because God actually says in Ecclesiastes 3 that we were built for eternity. He actually wired our heart to to respond and be filled with eternal longings, and sport is great, but winning a basketball game is not going to satisfy the deep desires of our heart. And so, what do we train ourselves in sports? We train ourselves to think, man, if I just win, if I score enough points, it's gonna make me happy, and people are going to affirm me, and that happens. But to keep that feeling, you gotta do it again and again and again. And when is it enough? When when is enough enough? Tom Brady was in a 60-minute interview a while back after he won a couple Super Bowls and he said, Why do I feel like I have these Super Bowl rings? And I still wonder, God, there's gotta be something more to life than this. And the interviewer looked at him and he said, Why do you think that is? And he stopped for a second and he said, I wish I knew. I wish I knew. So he like he had the Super Bowl rings, he was making more money than anybody else up to that point. He was still married to a supermodel wife. He's a great looking dude, like he's got it all. And when he's asked, what else is there in life? Because he's like, This doesn't seem like enough, he does not know the answer. Yeah. We need to be teaching our kids this at a young age.
SPEAKER_02So we're looking for goals that that uh where they exhibit courage, they take risks, trying a new move that may result in a short-term loss, but in the long run will be better for them as an athlete. We're looking for moments where they serve their teammates. Why? Because a lifetime of service, uh again, the gospel is constantly pointing us in the direction of saying, as you lose your life, you will find it.
SPEAKER_00And let me say this because I know you're gonna keep going.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00The coaches in the youth sport industrial complex is not going to celebrate that for them. Good. But if mom and dad start celebrating those wins as they're looking to mom and dad for affirmation and what is right in the world, what what kind of perspective should I have as they learn from mom and dad? Seems like when I celebrate other people, they get really happy. They take me out to get slurpees. That's right. It seems like when when the ref leaves the field and I run and shake their hand and thank them for their time today, that mom and dad throw a party for me. Good. Like we're we're building into them a new system of belief in and disciplines that hopefully will, again, carry over into their 20s, 30s, and 40s. But it starts with us celebrating things for them to replicate.
SPEAKER_02That goes beyond or isn't minimized by just whether or not we had more points at the end of the game. For sure.
SPEAKER_00That's all we're saying. Go go get go get the points. Go try to win. But make sure you do this other stuff too.
SPEAKER_01What's a win for a parent during a game? What's their game plan going in? What are their goals that they should be thinking about?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That's good. I'll put a couple of mine on the table. And these are fresh. Again, I was just at a basketball game last night, and sometimes I I succeed and sometimes I don't. Um one of my goals is that I'm I'm going to um not yell things out to the court, whether that's to the refs or to my kid or to the opponent or to any of the sundry people that I wind up wanting to yell things at. I've tried to just stay quiet. Um, number one, we can come back to why that's important. Two, I'm wanting to be way more present to some of the families that I'm on this journey with. And as a Christian, as a a sport minister, a sport missionary, really, I I want to be aware of them. I want to move beyond the surface with them as we continue to sit there week after week across months. I want to be interested in their life. I want to have a follow-up question for them based on what they told me at the last game. Um I want to minister. I want to love, I want to care. Uh which may seem really weird to do at a game. You're there to watch the game. Well, I'm I need to be there for more than that for me to get a win. Uh so those those are actually the two biggest things that I am more and then three, when my son comes back to me, in this case, just my son's all that's left at home. How he how he finds me, my my posture, my face, my tone. What's the first thing that I'm that I'm throwing out to him when he comes to me? My flesh wants to say something about performance. And it's interesting because even the other parents that I sit with, I listen to them do it. The kid comes up and immediately there's there's something critical coming out. It's just natural to do that. I want Trey to come and find something different with me. He knows I've got basketball criticism for him somewhere if he wants it, and I've got feedback on everything that happened in the game. But the first thing I want him to experience is like the father and the prodigal son, who's ready to throw a party just because you're back in my presence up in the stands, and this was a blast, and it was so fun. And yeah, no, you were messing up here and there, but whatever. I'm not even going anywhere near that right now. I'm just so glad to be here with you right now. And if he feels that over and over and over again, I just think it's going to produce something good in both him and me, and that's a win. So those are my three things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'll throw three on the table. Um, one, I don't do a good job about this, but I'm trying to get better at it, is practicing the presence of God in the midst of watching my kid play. So my my tendency is to leave God in the parking lot. I mean, obviously, I know theologically he's he's everywhere, right? But I I find that I get so sucked into what's going on on the court and the field that I just don't think about God and his presence and what he's actually doing. It's a good one. And so I'm just trying to be increasingly aware that he he's here, that he's moving, that he's he's up to something. And approaching it with this open-handed posture of I don't know what he's up to. Man, I hope it means good things for my kid in terms of athletic success. But it could mean that him getting pinned on the mat and wrestling ends up being a really good thing in his sovereignty. And so I just want to practice the presence of God more and just be what I mean by that is I want to be aware of his presence. I want to talk to him, I want to pray and say, God, what are you up to? Would you would you help me to see things that normally I don't see? Uh two, I want to enjoy it. I really am trying to do that more. And so for me, that means I'm my phone stays in my pocket, like I need it if somebody calls or texts me. But I'm I just stop recording things. I used to take pictures and record it so I could watch it or post it on Facebook, which is a whole nother thing. Yeah. And so I just stop doing it. Um, and it's really forced me just to be present and enjoy watching kids play. And then the last one I I've noticed, this is this shouldn't be like too amazing, but when other parents tell me something positive about my kid, like that just does something in my own heart. And so I'm trying to be that for other people. That's good. Um, so when Tom's son, Henry, does great on the match, I want to make sure I go over to Tom and say, Hey, Henry wasn't doing that at the beginning of the year, he's grown so much. And so just to find ways to affirm other kids to their parents. Yeah, youth sports might be one of the most impactful spaces for Christians to be. Because if you think about it, like you have tons of people, usually from your community, believers, non-believers, across all different jobs and stages of life, parents, grandparents, cousins, friends, and they're all in one spot together, cheering for the same people, that's opportunity. That's relational opportunity. And so, what would it look like? This is yeah, this is the effectiveness. What would it look like for Christians to go in that spaces, in those spaces and embody love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?
SPEAKER_01I feel like I've heard that somewhere before. It's pretty good, what? He just made that up.
SPEAKER_00Next book coming out, Fruit of the Spirit. But would that not one, is that list not attractive? And it feels odd to talk about that in the context of sport, love, but joy, peace, patience, gentleness, self-control. Man, what what if the body of Christ was marked by an increasing growth and maturity in that fruit? Would not our unbelieving neighbors and friends see that and go, that's attractive.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I want that. Maybe I've been hurt by the church, but John acts in a way that I want, and I wonder if that's accessible to me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and to do it in a connected way, not a disconnected way. And what I mean by that is I've seen, and maybe this is in Christian school settings especially, where we're gonna act like we just don't care at all about what happens on the court. We're gonna just we're gonna be disconnected from that, and we're just gonna be nice people and we're gonna downplay emotions or any of that. And I say, well, no, I I don't think that's very attractive either. How do we be how do we be right in this and actually care?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was gonna say, how do you care? Yeah, I care.
SPEAKER_02And so it hurts when we lose, it hurts when disappointing things happen. It's it's exhilarating when fun things happen. We can show that, we can cheer, you can, you can, you know, go off your rocker a little bit when something fun happens, instead of like you talk about Brian, just keeping your emotions between three and seven on that scale between zero and ten, where we're just gonna keep it right here, not feel anything too much in any direction. And we say, no, go ahead and feel and show love and show peace.
SPEAKER_00What does that look like practically though? Like so when when Trey maybe misses a game-winning shot, instead of avoiding Ed as his dad, what would it look like to go over and say, Man, Ed, I love that Trey had the courage to take that shot?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, literally just happened last week, actually, in reverse. And my son has missed one, and this other parent has missed one.
SPEAKER_00Because we feel embarrassed, we feel like yeah, we're the ones that need to hide. But as Christian people, how do we step into that space and be Jesus people?
SPEAKER_02Yep. And I looked at this parent actually, we might as well keep going with it. And we made eye contact when his son missed it, and I just kind of scrinched my face up and I was like, he should have passed the ball. Wow, I was scrunching up and was like, that hurt, I know that hurt, and you know, just I didn't even need to say anything. And then I came by him and I said, I know, but I want you to know, man, it really matters that he took the last shot. Like that's a man moment right there. You keep taking those last shots and get used to taking responsibility for the moment. And I said, and it's interesting, my son actually didn't want to take the last shot in this particular game. It just happened last week. He actually passed it over to Lenny, who took it.
SPEAKER_00Is that because he missed the week before? Whatever for whatever reason. He just wasn't ready.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he he he didn't want to take responsibility for it. So I didn't feel myself sink completely into the depths of despair about that either. It's like this is where he's at. He's just he's just getting used to even being on the game in those moments. Lenny's been in the game. Now Lenny's he's taking the shots, and sometimes they go in, sometimes they don't. But dude, throughout life, I'll take a man who will step up and take responsibility. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00And that's what you're saying to this dad, right? Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's right. I literally said all that to him. And that's and that's not like I'm sharing the gospel with him, but but it is opening the door to a relationship where you become a safe person that has proven that you care about him apart from the performance of his kid.
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yep, and I love his kid. Yep. And he knows that. So you know what else? He also will take a critique from me too, because I built up and I'm a basketball coach, so I think he's more prone to listen to me. But it just creates a foundation for relationship to happen. That I am loving his kid. Yeah. That I'm loving him, that I'm fully there feeling what he's feeling. And guess what? He ends up doing that for me too. That just like you said, there's like this contagiousness to that when we start giving it to each other, care and concern for someone else's kid. Now, there's also people in that crowd that are hating on my kid because he wouldn't take the shot. Literally. There are people who they're the older brother in the prodigal son uh story. Their arms are crossed and they kind of despise you're a loser. You're you failed. That's exactly what we're saying is there in this in the culture, and that's why we look so different when we don't do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's really helpful. Shifting gears a bit here to some specific questions we've received from some of the parents here at our local church. There is a huge pressure for children at a young age to specialize in a specific sport and to stick with it as young as six. How should they navigate that when that pressure is there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so let's let's rephrase the question for what it is. It's not the kids feeling, especially a six-year-old is not feeling pressure to specialize. It's the parent who's feeling pressure from somebody else that they should make their kids specialize. That's that's what's going on. Six-year-olds want to play and they'll really do whatever we put in front of them. Sign them up for. Yeah, they're they're not thinking about wanting to wake up and play soccer for the next 365 days out of the year. Um so parents need to realize what's what's going on what's what's motivating whatever this youth sports industrial complex is to be able to make an ask or push parents in that direction. And it's it's usually, if not always, money. Why would Why would after the volleyball season is done a coach from a club team come up to my daughter and ask that she would sign up for another six months of volleyball? Like, yeah, I'm sure he wants to help her get better. He also wants the thousand dollars that's gonna come with her playing.
SPEAKER_02And wants to build their brand, which is a close, you know, cousin to that money. It's like the more kids we have, the more our the more our brand expands and and people view us a certain kind of way. In either case, the kid winds up being viewed as a commodity. More than we really believe that he or she's gonna grow holistically under our umbrella. It's we just need bodies that look like they can perform in a certain way, and you can pay the money.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we keep going back to, man, if if you if your kid wants to play soccer three out of the four seasons of the year and they're they're asking for it, they're they're leading the process at six years old, seven years old, I'm I would not that would not be my first choice, but I'd be okay with it if my kid's leading the process. If it's me feeling pressured from other people to make my kid do it, that's what I have a problem with, and that's what all the stat is saying. That when we are the ones driving the process, it's causing our kids to to resent us, maybe, but for sure to not enjoy their sport. So we just need to be careful with that.
SPEAKER_02Let's say this too, just again, so every situation is going to be different. We always want to say that. Every sport's different, every kid's different, age matters. But principally, it's bad to specialize because it overworks the same muscle groups. Like again, this this is uh this is not a hunch. This is this is research that if that's all you're doing is throwing a baseball from the time you're six years old until you're sixteen, even let's say across the decade, and this is why there's actually so many arm injuries in the major leagues these days, is because they've thrown so many pitches. Um it overuses the same muscles. And so even high-level coaches, they love when athletes have played a bunch of sports because they've used uh a wider range of muscle groups. They've developed more holistically in their body and in their mind. But then, too, you burn out. You just you burn out when you when you start at six or seven or eight, and this is the only sport you play, um, it's really hard to stick to that 10 years later. Right when you actually might be getting good, that's the unfortunate thing, that you might actually be really good as a 16 or 17-year-old, and you're just like done with this. You want to do other things. We hear those stories all the time.
SPEAKER_00Before high school, your kids should have fun playing sports because 70% are quitting by the age of 13. So your kid does not need to specialize at a young age and become a young professional by the age of eight or nine. That's not how it that's not how it works. If anything, the evidence is pointing exactly in the opposite direction. Allow them to have a diversity of experiences. The word that should keep coming back to mind is fun, fun, fun. Are they having fun playing the sport? And then, yeah, when they get into early high school, if if this is something that they want to specialize in, then I think you look into those different club opportunities. But yeah, I'm hesitant to say early on, specializing is a wise decision when all the evidence seems to point against it.
SPEAKER_02There was a guy that just came up to us as we had this seminar who said he'd played soccer from the time he was five until he went played through college, actually. He wound up playing in college, really didn't want to play anything else. And I look at that and say, okay, I just feel like he was he was an outlier. He was an outlier in that he didn't want to play anything other than that, which is fine. He was an outlier in that he didn't get burned out. He's an outlier that he went to college and got to play. And but what did he say? Then even the the shift was so much greater than he just wasn't used to and it became a little overwhelming now that I think about it. So even he wasn't really enjoying it once he got to college. But still, that's an outlier situation. Most of our kids should not specialize that early, if at all, until much later. And it won't because it won't be good for them to do that.
SPEAKER_01So, final question in the time that we have left. With different leagues, different sports, having commitments on Sunday, how do parents navigate that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So a number of things that Brian and I keep saying to each other as we get asked this question. It's a great question. Again, I we don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer for everybody, but there's some principles. So one of our main principles is that we firmly believe we should be with a congregation of people as often as possible on a constantly recurring basis, a weekly basis, maybe multiple times a week, um, maybe once every two weeks. Again, everybody's got their their own little system, but it is constantly reoccurring that we're coming back to be with a body of people where we're hearing the preached word, where we're experiencing communion together as a body.
SPEAKER_00To the point, maybe we can put flesh on to the point of if you're not there, people notice. Yeah, good.
SPEAKER_02It's a community. Um, which again looks different in a in a hundred and fifty-person church as compared to a ten thousand person church and everything in between. But the point is our rhythm is that we as a family are showing up with a body of believers regularly. We firmly believe that. And we believe that we live in a time where that's become optional for way too many of us who who check the Christian box on the census when it comes out, it's become way too optional for people that claim themselves to be Christians to show up among with the community. So maybe we need to make an adjustment and start protecting that time more. And I'll stop there, Brian, take the baton.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I this is well-intentioned parents who I think oftentimes we're getting stuck because we're not doing the front-end work required to make decisions like this. And what I mean by that is so many times I feel like even within our friend group, people are signing up for these leagues and they don't know that competitions are on Sunday. They like they don't they don't know because the calendar and the schedule is not released yet. And so what would it look like before we're signing our kids up to ask the coach, one, hey, do you compete on Sundays? Two, if there's games on Sundays, what would happen if we choose to be involved in this club but we don't show up on Sundays because we're going to prioritize church?
SPEAKER_02Maybe before noon, even we're not gonna be there before noon. If there's Sunday afternoon games, maybe we'll be there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but there's a series of questions like that that I feel like, man, if parents would do the hard work of maybe doing a little bit more research on the front end to figure out what is it actually going to cost you in terms of involvement with the local church if you say yes to this league instead of just being surprised and feeling like you're stuck because you signed up and now you're in and you don't feel like you can get out. I feel like that's more often the case than we asked the questions, we made the decisions, and we decided it was actually going to be good for us to miss eight straight weeks because of volleyball on Sunday. I was just gonna say, are we?
SPEAKER_02Are we missing three weeks or are we missing three months of Sundays? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Those are the questions that I think if if parents did the work of talking to the coach and figured that out, like maybe the coach would actually be okay with you saying yes to this league and missing Sundays.
SPEAKER_02I feel like a lot of coaches are maybe it's Wednesday that we're trying to protect because we've got a youth group and our kids love youth group, they're getting a ton out of it, and so there. Can we leave practice early on Wednesdays? Can we show up late? Can we miss them all together? What have you said about Chick-fil-A? I think that's always good. Well, yeah, it is kind of amazing that Chick-fil-A dominates the chicken sandwich market and isn't open on Sundays. And they they miss Sundays, basically. And it's like the Lord has blessed them. I think you can literally look at that and say they certainly haven't lost anything by being closed on Sunday. How in the world are they dominating the market? So we say the same thing. Your kids' athletic future is not at stake because they missed Sunday.
SPEAKER_00And we're not saying God is going to bless you athletically if you missed it.
SPEAKER_02No. We don't know what he's gonna do. He may honor, who knows how he's gonna honor it. Exactly. But it's not at stake. Their spiritual future very well might be at stake because we missed just basically we missed years of gathering as the people of God because we were we were gone nine months out of the year. And if you have multiple kids, so that's interesting too. Maybe for one kid, well, you were only gonna miss, you know, these six weekends, but then the second kid now has got you missing these next six weekends, and then you got a third kid, and in his or her season you're missing. And so when you do the the budget for the entire year, you look up and all of a sudden we haven't been to church in four months. That's just not gonna be healthy in the end.
SPEAKER_00God's way of operating, calling us to live in and of this world is going to lead to flourishing in some sense of the word. The way the youth sports industrial complex is promising, that same flourishing is not is not lining up. So it really is a trust, and man, if we say no to this and we're showing up weekly as a as a body of believers and putting our kids in that environment, we're gonna trust again. Well, let's go to a diversified portfolio of wins, we're gonna trust that there's going to be greater wins in that decision than what we're gonna get connected to this Sunday team.
SPEAKER_02Now, with all that said, and let us say all of that, we also believe that at the end of the day, if the sum total of the discipleship that's going on in your your kids' life is entirely dependent on what happens on Sunday and there's nothing else going on the rest of the week, that's gonna be a problem too. So we we're we're encouraging ourselves and encouraging others that are in this conversation with us to to evaluate whether or not you have your family on a discipleship trajectory across every day of the year. What does it what does it look like to be on a trajectory? Where Sunday is a part of that. It may again, maybe you're missing some Sundays in there, but you're not dependent only on being a Sunday for them hearing the Word of God. Is there some other way that you're reading the Bible with them? Is there something else that you're listening to as a family? Is there, you know, when we drive to school in the morning, I put on a chapter of the book of Proverbs for my ninth grade son and this other kid that rides with us, and we listen to it for 90 seconds or however long it takes. Just I'm intentionally making sure that the word of God is being brought to bear on his or her life. It's not just what's on Sunday. When we're on the road and we decide that we're gonna take weekends off, are we listening- do we have a list of sermons that we're gonna listen to? Could we listen to the sermon from church, you know, that's that's gonna be broadcast either live or after the fact? We're gonna listen to it on the way back so that we just kind of keep up with what the communication is within our body. Um are there passages that we can look at together? What what else have we come up with? Just ideas on how you can keep cultivating the spiritual life of your kids even though you're not actually at church.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what would the pastor of the church even be willing to help us figure out is there some sort of athletic devotional we can do with our kids on the car ride or this weekend? Could we take, as the as the Jesus people, could we take ownership of getting the team together and doing some sort of pre-game chapel together? Like if we're not going to be at church, could we be church for other people in that space?
SPEAKER_02Could we go visit? I've had some friends who they literally will go visit a church on the road. So they went away, you know, three hours away to Fort Wayne for a tournament or something. Saturday night, they go find a service. I I've never done that, but I've heard other people do it because they want to be going into a building with a body of believers, even if it's not theirs, just to build that pattern into their kids' life and to say, we love sports, we're gonna do sports, but not at the expense of us getting with God's people. A lot of creative ways, but again, you have to think about it and be intentional and not just say, Well, we're just we're just gonna miss, we're just gonna miss. It's okay. Yeah, I feel maybe a twinge of some kind of guilt inside, but we're just gonna miss and it'll be okay. It's like, no, to be a discipler, you gotta be more intentional than that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it would be hard for me to believe that if you really do bring it before the Lord and and the options are like gone for eight weeks playing sport or saying no to that and taking those eight Sundays and being invested in a local church, it would be hard for me to believe that you hear from the Lord that you should go play sports on Sunday, honestly.
SPEAKER_02Everybody's gonna make these decisions for themselves. And like we said, we think it looks different for everybody, principally.
SPEAKER_00Principally.
SPEAKER_02Principally. But get in church as often as possible and fill the gaps when you're not.
SPEAKER_01Well, Brian, Ed, this has been a huge privilege. Thank you so much for the giving of your time, not only in this podcast here, but also in the work that went into thinking through this book, its contents, and how to be a blessing to families and to really help them to disciple their kids in these arenas.
SPEAKER_02Thanks, Pastor. Thanks for having us. You know, one of the things we hope happens is that that groups of Christian people, groups of church people will get the book, you know, go through it together, have shared language, and really hold each other accountable. It's not a solo sport what we're trying to do. Like it's way easier. Just like Daniel, who was able to be obediently and faithfully involved in a very godless culture in Babylon, he locked arms with a couple of other friends to do that. And they trusted God to look different in that space. That's really what we want to do in the church.
SPEAKER_00It's gonna be messy. There's gonna be ups and downs and highs and lows, but it is it is so worth it to try to figure out how do we do this God's way instead of the culture's way. Praise the Lord. Thanks for having us.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Thank you for listening to Discipling Kids Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe so you can receive the latest updates about new episodes and other events.