Leadership Teams

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Chapter Four

Sports and Christian Discipleship Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain

it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep

it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

(1 Corinthians 9:24–27)

believe that God made me for a purpose. But he also made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure.” That

memorable line is from the 1981 British historical drama . It is the response Eric Liddell givesChariots of Fire when he’s confronted by his sister for neglecting his responsibilities before God to focus on competitive running in

preparation for the 1924 Olympics. His words are powerful because he does not see his athletic pursuit as neglecting God but as a means of glorifying God. Liddell strove to keep God at the center of his athletic pursuits, so much so that he, being a strict Sabbatarian, refused to bow to international pressure to compete in the 100-meter race in the 1924 Olympics because it was on a Sunday.

You do not have to be a strict Sabbatarian to appreciate and learn from Liddell’s example. I do not hold to Liddell’ s views on the Sabbath, believing instead that the Lord’s Day (Sunday) should be set aside for corporate worship and gospel rest in celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In my understanding, the Sabbath principle is already fulfilled in Christ, who is our rest. Nevertheless, the Lord’s Day is a gracious gift to remind us that our lives are “in him,” and the day should be honored until he consummates his kingdom and ushers in eternal rest in the new heavens and earth. Regardless of one’s particular views on the Christian Sabbath, Liddell’s example is instructive for Christian parents as they think through all the complexities of leading their children through participation in youth sports.

Sports as a Metaphor for the Christian Life

Eric Liddell’s sister considered all sports to be a waste of time. As we noted earlier, that notion is still around. It is not uncommon to hear a Christian say something like, “Sports are not necessary; so, why waste time on them—time that could be better spent advancing the gospel?” On the contrary, the Bible is far from silent on sports and athletic

competition and periodically uses sports imagery (Gen. 30:8; 32:24; Ps. 19:3–6; 2 Sam. 2:14; Phil. 3:13–14; Gal. 2:2; Eph. 6:12; Heb. 12:1–4). In fact, the apostle Paul holds up the athlete as one of his three primary metaphors, along with the soldier and the farmer, for describing the Christian life (2 Tim. 2:4–7). He also compares the discipline and self-control required for faithfully following Christ to a runner training for and competing in a race (1 Cor. 9:24–27). If Paul had lived in our age, I think it is safe to assume he would have had ESPN. As believers in Christ, we should follow Paul’s lead in seeing athletic competition as a good gift from God—a gift that has the potential of providing lessons that can help us mature in Christ when rightly applied.

Sports and the Supremacy of Christ

As Christian parents, our responsibility is to teach our children “the supremacy of Christ in all things” (Col. 1:18) —including sports. Paul made clear that a far more important goal exists than winning a perishable wreath on an athletic field (1 Cor. 9:25). In an effort to prioritize Christ, some Christians pull their children out of sports altogether. They simply do not want to face the decisions that inevitably will arise while navigating athletic involvement and a commitment to church and Christian service. One of the problems with this shortsighted approach

Prince, David E.. In the Arena : The Promise of Sports for Christian Discipleship, B&H Publishing Group, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liberty/detail.action?docID=4648384. Created from liberty on 2025-07-11 12:22:57.

is that the kids playing on these teams will one day grow up to have jobs, children of their own, and other responsibilities as they serve Jesus and his church. It is simplistic and unrealistic to teach our children that we can push “pause” on the rest of life to focus on Jesus. Showing them how to navigate these matters while faithfully

committing to the supremacy of Christ is not a problem but a wonderful opportunity for discipleship. The tension of prioritizing Christ in the midst of a busy schedule is something they will face for the rest of their lives. Sports commitments provide Christian parents a unique context in which to model the same kind of Christ-exalting decision making we find in Eric Liddell.

Some Christians make the mistake of prioritizing sports over church by reasoning that the youth sports opportunity is only for a limited period of time and the church will always be there. Clearly, teaching children that sports provide a valid reason to neglect God is disastrous. Some parents even fashion themselves as victims in dealing with these issues as though they cannot set boundaries on their children’s participation. They reason as if the only options are not participating in sports at all or acting like the team’s practice and game schedule is in charge of their children’s lives.

Sports Are Not the Problem

The solution is simpler than many Christian parents want to believe, but it involves parental leadership, direction, and conviction. The bottom line is that sports are never the problem; inadequate leadership in the home is the problem. Sports are often made scapegoats for a parental failure of leadership. Liddell’s excellent Christian example is instructive. He was passionately committed to excellence in athletic competition, but it was for the glory of God. Because God’s glory was his end goal, his Christian conviction led him to set boundaries and gladly endure the

consequences. When a Christian family is involved in sports, they should be committed and diligent participants, but they should also draw whatever boundaries are needed regarding their child’s participation. As the father of eight children who loves sporting competition, I have had to lead my family in this way many times.

When you register your children to compete on an athletic team, you should clarify any boundaries that you have regarding their participation. For instance, when my children have played youth sports, we have told the leagues when we sign up that we do not play or practice on Sundays. With that information in mind, a coach is free to decide whether or not he wants our children on his or her team. Also, when our sons made all-star baseball teams, we told the coaches that we know most of the championship games are on Sundays and that our boys would not be able to participate on Sundays. If they did not want our boys on their teams because of that, we would certainly understand. It is beneficial to teach your children that Christian convictions have consequences and that you will gladly face them. Too many parents are rearing their children in Christian sentimentality, which seeks to allow them to have convictions for which they never have to suffer. Christian sentimentality is at odds with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In our home we do not treat other church activities the same way we treat the Lord’s Day. We have biblical- theological convictions that demand setting aside Sundays, but we do not have the same approach to general church programming. We are not victims of the team’s schedule or the church program schedule. Parents have the primary

responsibility to disciple their children, and a major part of that discipleship involves our children watching the choices we make. For instance, if one of my children has practice or a game during the time of a church youth event, then they usually go to their practice or game because we want to glorify God with the commitment we have made to the team. In other words, we do not want to use general church activities as an excuse to be lax in our other commitments. We also view participating on the team and being involved as parents in the league or school as unique mission opportunities of which we want to take full advantage.

I have found that, if you are honest and straightforward from the beginning about what you will and won’t do based on your Christian convictions, most people will respect you more, not less. Sports, rightly understood, are just one means to the greater end of delighting in God. Sports must not become an idolatrous competitor with God instead of a means to glorify him.

I believe that God made me for a purpose and that he placed me in a home that enjoyed sports, and when I played sports (particularly baseball), I felt his pleasure. I unapologetically hope my children feel his pleasure through their participation in sports as well.

Sports Expose Character

Another practical issue that parents face in guiding and leading their children through the highs and lows of athletic competition is how to respond to a child’s performance. How hard should we push our children toward athletic excellence in sports? How important should sporting success be? Is having fun all that really matters? We

have all seen parents who seem to be pushing their kids in an unhealthy way. A 2014 article by Brad Griffin from the Fuller Youth Institute (research-based training for Christian youth workers and parents) rightly takes issue with this dynamic of parents obsessing over a child’s on-the-field performance. He writes, “All kinds of parental anxiety and dysfunction plays out on the sidelines and in the bleachers, and you only need to walk to your local park to catch a glimpse for yourself.” In fact, if we look close enough, we might not even need to leave our home to see this type of1 dysfunction.

Griffin’s article rightly diagnoses a genuine and prevalent problem in many families, but I find his solution inadequate. He suggests, based on psychological research, that parents limit their comments to their children who compete in sports to the six healthiest statements moms and dads can make. The statements are:

Before the competition: Have fun. Play hard. I love you.

After the competition: Did you have fun? I am proud of you. I love you.

While all of these statements are helpful, they are far from sufficient in utilizing a child’s participation in sports as a tool for cultivating Christian discipleship and a cruciform worldview.

Surely Griffin would not provide the same advice to parents regarding a child’s work in school. What if the child has fun in school because he or she enjoys being the class clown? What if the fun he or she has competing in sports is because he or she plays selfishly or does not execute what the coach tells him or her to do? Should a parent always be proud of a child after competition no matter his or her effort or lack thereof? It seems to me that Griffin’s advice trades a self-centered parent’s obsession about performance for a self-centered apathy about competition and the priority of team.

Christian parents must say far more than, “I love to watch you play,” to their children. I suggest parents say, “I love to watch you compete because it gives us a window into your character that we can shape and form as we focus on Christ.” After all, Paul’s admonition, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31), demands self-sacrificial focus and effort that cannot be promoted through sentiment alone. Playing sports “heartily, as for the Lord” (Col. 3:23), will often be visible in sweat, bruises, and occasionally blood.

Sports and Self-Denial

One of my favorite stories related to the cultivation of Christian character in youth sports comes from a friend of mine whose son is a fantastic baseball player. His son was playing first base for his team in a big tournament game and made an uncharacteristic error that cost his team the lead. His son’s response was to drop his head and slump his shoulders in self-pity. When he was in the dugout during the rest of the game, he sat on the bench and pouted over

his mistake. My friend’s son ended up coming to the plate in the final inning with the bases loaded and his team down three

runs. With two outs and the game on the line, his son hit a grand slam walk-off homerun to win the game for his team. His coach awarded him the game ball for his performance, but his father was far more concerned with his son’s character than his performance. He told his son that he would have to give the ball back to his coach and apologize to

both his coach and his teammates for his self-centered attitude during the game. The father told his son that he was not proud of his selfishness and that he hoped he would learn from this how to respond in a self-sacrificial and others- centered way that would honor Christ.

If the dad would have responded, “Did you have fun?” then his son would have certainly said, “Yes!” He would have then learned that his “fun” was contingent upon playing for his own satisfaction. If the dad would have said, “I am proud of you,” then his response would encourage a self-centered performance-based attitude. Instead of responding in these unhelpful ways, my friend proved that he loved his son enough to use sports to teach him about something much more important than the game. My friend also proved that he loved to watch his son play so that he could learn the priority of self-sacrificial, others-centered effort.

Below are some gospel-centered options that I would recommend for parents to say to their children before and after competitions:

Before the competition: Enjoy the opportunity to compete. Play in a self-sacrificial way that places your teammates and coaches ahead of yourself. When you make a mistake, respond by cheering all the harder for your teammates. When your teammates make a mistake, encourage them. Honor the officials/umpires by showing respect and thanking them after the game. Cheer as hard on the bench as you would if you were in the game. I love you.

After the competition: What did you learn about yourself? Did you compete to the absolute best of your ability with no regrets about your effort? In what ways did you sacrifice for your team? How did you respond when you failed? Were you others-centered? Did you honor your coaches and the officials/umpires? Did you thank them? I love you. I love to watch you play and to see you learn, through competing, about living for Christ.

The Glory of Bench-Warming

Something great happened a few years ago during basketball season for one of my sons. He sat the bench. You may be thinking that such news sounds more like a cause for depression than celebration—and at the beginning of

the season, my middle-school son would have agreed with you. The truth is, I do not want him to want to sit the bench. I want him to try with every ounce of his ability to earn a starting position. Yet, I also want him to know how to be a leader even when he finds himself sitting on the bench despite his best efforts. In most sports leagues he participated in prior to middle school, the focus had been teaching the fundamentals of the game and giving everyone an opportunity to play. This philosophy, coupled with the fact that my son was consistently one of the better players on past teams, meant that he rarely spent much time on the bench. But in sports, as with other areas of life, greater age brings greater responsibility and accountability—not to mention a strong dose of maturing reality. On athletic teams this shift means, appropriately, a transition from playing time being given to playing time being earned. It also means recognizing that God has gifted some people with superior athletic ability.

My son was excited when team tryouts were announced. He made the team, practices began, and the team moved toward the start of the season. We decided he would get up before school in the morning and run two miles on the treadmill to increase his stamina. Yet, when the team began playing games, he rarely got off the bench, and I began to notice that his demeanor changed. He seemed disinterested and chatty. He was only engaged and focused when he was in the game. On the floor, he was loud and fiery. When he was on the bench, which was most of the time, he rarely left his seat, and his posture was relaxed and slouching.

I heard one parent say about his son in a similar situation, “Well, what do you expect when he is sitting the bench?

You have to feel sorry for him working so hard and not getting to play.” I do not understand that mentality. I was

pleased that my son was on the bench. It provided an opportunity for us as his parents to teach him what God expects from him when he finds himself on the bench. It is actually the same thing required of him when he is a starter: that he would be a leader who uses every ounce of his ability and effort to glorify Jesus. I did not feel one bit sorry for him working so hard and not getting to play. The truth is, my son needed to be a role player on that team; and the truth is, most of us end up being role players in life, not stars or starters.

One day after a game I asked my son, “Why aren’t you being a leader on your team?” He glanced up at me with a perplexed expression that seemed to indicate his bewilderment at whether I had seen him sitting the bench. From that point my son and I developed a strategy for leading from the bench. We sought to answer some questions. How can you sit on the bench in a way that says, “I am as committed to the success of the team here as I would be if I were shooting free throws with the game on the line”? How can you sit the bench and positively affect the other players on the bench and in the game? How can you sit the bench in a way that honors your coach?

Developing our plan began with honest evaluation. I told him, “On this team you are not among the most talented and do not deserve to play very much right now. And that is okay; you can figure out your role and do everything you can to help the team be the best it can be—which is what each player should do anyway.” I was pleased to see that my son responded well to this honest call to courage and self-sacrifice. The truth is that the team as a whole is

more important than any one player and that my son should fulfill his role for the good of the team. Even if his role was not glamorous, his response was a triumph over the selfish individualism that had reared its ugly head earlier in the season; he was learning about far more than basketball at that point. My son was learning a lesson about human pride, grace, temptation, and the wiles of the Evil One (James 4:6–7).

Below I’ve outlined the game plan that my son and I created. Perhaps someday you will have a son or a daughter who sits the bench—or perhaps that situation is already happening. If so, great! Seize the opportunity for the glory of Christ.

Make sure your posture communicates that you are engaged. Sit on the edge of your seat. Be the loudest player on the bench cheering for your team. Leap from your seat every time your team scores or gets a turnover. Get out of your seat during time-outs; go out on the court and greet the players who are in the game. Talk only about the game to your teammates on the bench. Listen to everything your coach says when he speaks, looking him in the eye. Be the first one to volunteer if your coach needs something done. When you do get into the game, remember that you may not be the most talented player out there, but you can

be the toughest player; dive for every loose ball, play tough, and never get out-hustled. Make the more talented players better by being tough on them in practice; challenge them, and make them fight for everything they get.

Baseball, Dads, and Discipleship

Diana Schaub writes, “Without fathers, there is no baseball, only football and basketball.” It was one of those2 lines that paralyzed me when I read it. As a former high school coach, I began reflecting on just how true that sentence was in my experience. In football it was common for a young man with superior brawn or athletic ability to begin playing the game successfully at an older age with no background or former tutelage in the sport. Height alone can equate to some measure of basketball success at younger ages, and skills can be honed in isolation with nothing more than a ball and a hoop. I love football and basketball, but neither of those avenues are true with baseball. In most cases, the way a love of baseball is transmitted is through dads.

No boy will love and pass down the game of baseball simply because someone bought him a glove, ball, and bat. He cannot play catch with himself, hit himself ground balls, or throw himself batting practice. Much less will he ever figure out on his own what in the world a squeeze, sacrifice, infield fly rule, frozen rope, Texas leaguer, or balk means. The mechanics, mystery, nuance, and jargon of baseball demand that one be personally discipled in its craft

and patiently taught its excellencies. A baseball score book resembles mysterious hieroglyphics until the signs and

symbols are enduringly given meaning by a learned tutor. Very little in baseball is seeker-friendly or self-evident, and few people pick up the game on their own.

Baseball is uniquely a sport that fathers pass on to their children. When Willie Mays speaks of his dad teaching him how to walk when he was six months old by enticing him with a rolling baseball, he is telling the story of baseball. Atlanta Braves first-baseman, Freddie Freeman, tells how his CPA father took a late lunch every single day so that he could throw him batting practice after school. After sixteen years in the big leagues, Chipper Jones headed home and had his mom video record his swing so his dad could help him rebuild it. In historian Doris Kearns

Goodwin’s memoir, , she explains the formative role her father’s love of baseball had on her lifeWait Till Next Year and career pursuits, “By the time I had mastered the art of scorekeeping, a lasting bond had been forged among my father, baseball, and me. . . . These nightly recountings of the Dodgers’ progress provided my first lessons in the narrative art.”3

It is not uncommon for friends to ask me how I can continue to love the game in light of exorbitant salaries and the shame of the steroids era. The answer is simple: my passion and love for the game did not begin in multimillion dollar parks with forty thousand seats, and it cannot be taken away by what happens there. It began with my dad rolling a baseball to me at six months of age and grew with countless times of catch, ground balls, and batting practice with my father.

The soil of little Joe Marshall Field in Montgomery, Alabama, will always be more sacred to me than Fenway or any other big league park. As we picked up balls after another round of hitting, those conversations between father and son helped usher me from boyhood to manhood. My dad taught me important lessons like how the DH (designated hitter) was a corruption of the game of baseball and many things far more important. I cannot separate those lessons from the game that provided a glorious context in which to learn them, nor would I want to. There is nothing Major League scandals can do to take that away from me. Similar testimonies could be shared by almost every true baseball fan.

I fear that the diminishing popularity of baseball in recent years has less to do with the sport and more to do with the diminishing popularity of intentional fatherhood in our culture. Absentee fathers have contributed to the cultural decline of baseball as the national pastime in America, but it must be noted that there are varying kinds of absentee fathers. Some tragically do not live in the home with their children, but others who are in the home hire or farm out much of the parenting. Even in Christian families, providing entertainment and paying for opportunities is often counted as engaged parental involvement because we have lost a theology of personal presence. The central reality of our Christian faith is the awe-inspiring truth that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). In John 20:21, Jesus, the eternal Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, says, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” Ours is a technologically driven, cyber-saturated, smartphone age, where it is easy to confuse impersonal communication of information with the genuine communion of embodied presence.

The emergence of baseball academies, specialized paid instructors, and travel baseball teams is a symptom of a larger cultural problem. All of these opportunities can be helpful and have a place as a supplement to a player’s baseball development, but they too often become substitutes for what has made the game of baseball great and deeply entrenched in American culture. Absentee dads, whether physically absent or emotionally absent, will not hand down a love and passion for baseball. A father who lacks the kind of patience to teach a game like baseball will probably not take time for other complex and mysterious things either—far more important things.

Every time I see a father fiddling with his iPhone while paying another man $40 an hour to sit a ball on a tee or soft toss for his son, I realize we are losing the game. Baseball is a game enamored with history and conversation, which have linked generations with a connectedness and shared language. The familial rootedness of baseball contributed to its emergence as the national pastime, and the hectic, virtual world we inhabit today makes its value largely unintelligible. Our industrialized, mass production culture has led to an unthinking value of quick, cheap, and disposable over slow, valuable, and lasting. The downgrade is evident in a full range of the performing arts— including sports.

It is not just baseball that demands a parent’s engaged presence. The good news of Jesus Christ is a simple, yet infinitely profound message. The Bible takes us through the most important story in the history of the cosmos. The

biblical gospel story has all kinds of twists and turns, nuances, and mystery (Eph. 3:3–10; 5:32; Col. 1:26–27). It is

the story that defines every one of our personal stories. Passing on “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) to the next generation takes time, patience, never-ending conversations (Deut. 6:4–9; Ps. 78:1–8), and presence.

Just like the dad dropping off his son with the baseball professionals, too many Christian parents act as if they do not have time to disciple their children in the gospel story. It is much easier and more efficient to drop them off and allow the “professionals” at the church with seminary degrees to take care of the serious religious stuff. Too many parents think that paying for their children to have the best opportunities and college choices is what really matters. They tend to prefer the gospel-tract approach to teaching faith and life: just the facts, hopefully they get saved, and make sure they get a good education and well-paying job. In a faith with a Savior who took on human flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), we ought to know better than to think such a faith can be transmitted so inattentively. Faithfully teaching our children about the glory of the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected Christ demands time, patience, and presence.

Without fathers, there is no baseball—and unfortunately, that is one of the smallest tragedies of absentee dads.

There is a reason grown men have often cried when ends with Ray playing catch with his dad. I fearField of Dreams we are heading toward a time when many men will be unmoved and puzzled by what they see as a strange ending to the movie. If so, we will have lost far more than baseball.

On Your Mark

Parents are responsible before God for leading their children to keep Christ at the center of athletic competition. Whether we are protecting the Lord’s Day to prioritize worship with the local church, having conversations with our children to help them think rightly before and after competitions, or guiding them through the disappointment of bench-warming, Christian parents must lead with intentionality in every area of our children’s involvement in sports. Every decision we make regarding sports communicates to our children what we value as ultimate. Let us lead in such a way that there is no question we value the glory of Christ above all else, and let us lead the way Christ did: remaining personally present and available for our children. May we hear, “Play ball!”, the opening whistle, “On your mark,” and countless other sounds of the sports we love as a call to discipleship.