By Chris Claeys
I was recently watching the movie, “Gridiron Gang,” that is based on a true story and it really got me thinking. If you haven’t seen it, I will give you a quick rundown of what happens. It takes place in a juvenile detention center where the probation officer decides he wants to teach life lessons to kids through sports. After pleading his case he finally gets the approval to start a football team. Through all kinds of struggles he finally puts together a decent team and shapes them into a pretty respectable group of kids. He starts the movie with a group of kids that he has to force to play from different gangs and backgrounds that can’t even be put into the same room together without trying to kill each other. He ends the movie with a team that is a well-oiled machine working together as one, on and off the field.
There were three parts to this movie that really stood out to me and made me think. The first was when the coach had to go visit his dying mother in the hospital. The team, who didn’t seem to have a caring, loving bone in their body up to this point, got the coach flowers and a card for his mother and dedicated their next game to her (one of the players even dedicated his next touchdown to her). The second was when the football team got shut down and was told they had to cancel there season. Despite being told they were done, the players took the initiative to go out during their free time and run their own practice. The last time, and possibly the most influential part of the movie in my eyes, was when a player stopped one of his gang member friends from shooting his teammate who was in a rival gang. Seeing these three things in the movie got me thinking, “Do we really understand how much we can do through sports?” This team, who didn’t have much going for them in life, became transformed into a family. Risking their lives by turning on their own gang to protect their teammate, who is from a rival gang, all because they are now part of something bigger then themselves: The team!
Some of you might be saying, “Well that is only a movie. That doesn’t happen in real life.” Lets take a look at other examples that aren’t in the movies. When can you see countries from all over the globe coming together for something that isn’t war related? A couple things come to my mind. One is something that just got over not too long ago, World Cup Soccer. Second one that pops in my head would be the Olympics. Thirdly–something that’s happening right now–FIBA World Championship Basketball. Sports can bring together people that other things can’t, from small scale like in the detention center from “Gridiron Gang” or just kids playing a pickup football game in a neighborhood to big scale like the world with World Cup Soccer or FIBA Basketball.
Do you truly understand what kind of impact you can have using sports? Are you staying comfortable in your ministry, settling for ministering to the “good” kids who are already churched or are you reaching out of your comfort zone to reach people who society might think we shouldn’t be interacting with: poor, violent, foreign, etc? Two thoughts come to mind of why we might not be reaching our potential with sport ministry. The first is that we don’t truly realize how much of an impact sports can make. We know it can bring people together who have nowhere else to play sports or who aren’t good enough to make their middle/high school team, but do we realize that it can bring people together who grow up in terrible families, people who might participate in violent and illegal activity, and just everyone who has never been a part of something bigger than themselves or been part of a family or “team” atmosphere. The second thought is that we are too afraid to step out of our comfort zone. We don’t want to try to minister to certain communities or the convicts in prison or a juvenile detention center because it is “unsafe”. There are so many people that get left out of things because we aren’t comfortable reaching out to them. Half the time they are in those situations because they haven’t had anyone show them God’s love and we are just adding to the problem. It is almost as if we put a limit on who should receive God’s love because we don’t trust that He will protect us. It says in 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.” So many times in the Bible God says that He is our rock, our strength, and our shield. In Psalm 144:1 it says He trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle. Let’s not put a limit on what God can do through sports. If He puts something on your heart, GO FOR IT! Most of the time God is sitting there waiting for you to go after things so He can help us with them. We don’t reach our full potential because we decide that it is too hard or unsafe when God already knows the outcome and is saying, “just trust in me and I’ll be your shield.” I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. –Philippians 4:13
