The Church of Baseball

My dad was in town for spring break a few weeks ago.  He's a presbytery executive, so of course we talked about church and seminary stuff (my mom is also a pastor, so he has some experience as a seminary spouse and can dialogue with the best of them).  Having taken a lot of pictures and posted them on Flickr, he wanted to know about my Evangelism via Storytelling and Multimedia class, because it's unlike anything my mom ever took.  So I gave him the rundown: one picture on Flickr every day, one video a week, one blog post a week, etc...  Before I knew it we were talking about the emerging church and whether or not it's truly necessary.  In his view, the next church is all about "me."  It's okay to meet people where they're at in a lot of circumstances, but when did we throw personal responsibility, sacrifice and accountability out the window in favor of Saturday night partying which precludes an 11 AM worship service?  Okay, Dad, you make a good point.  When we ask the church to change to meet our needs, it's no longer about Jesus.

On Tuesday night of that week, we went with Courtney and Sam up to the Gwinnett Braves stadium to see the All-Stars vs. Future Stars game.  Bobby Cox, the former manager of the Braves, was managing the Future Stars team, which was made up of kids from all the Braves' farm teams.  As the four of us sat there, Courtney, Sam and me taking pictures for Flickr, Dad was ruminating on our conversation about the church from earlier.  We watched as Bobby Cox was announced (to wild cheering) and as each young farm team member came out and shook his hand.  Dad leaned over to the three of us and said, "You see that?  You see those kids all shaking Bobby's hand?  That's the church."  Preach.

His point was that baseball hasn't changed just because a new generation is coming to play it.  It's still the same as it ever was, still just as thrilling, and a model for how we can do church for a new generation of players.