There are a lot of opinions about this question that range from “We don’t redeem sports. People are the 
only thing that can be redeemed.” to “We redeem sports when we use sports to redeem the people of sports.” But is there a way to actually redeem the realm of sports?
This question about redeeming sports will be addressed in a free webinar April 9, Thursday afternoon, at 3:00 pm EST as part of the monthly combined efforts of CSO and CSRM to serve the sports ministry community. The presenters for this webinar include
- Greg Linville, Executive Director of CSRM and author of Christmanship: A Theology of Competition and Sport
- Steve Quatro, Director of SOLA (Sports Outreach Los Angeles, and Sports Ministry Instructor at Azuza Pacific University
- Bob Schindler, Executive Director of CSO and author of For the Love of the Game – a call for the redemption of sports (video series)
To participate in this webinar, please click here to RSVP. You will receive instructions on how to connect with the webinar after you have RSVP-ed.
To illustrate the confusion surrounding this topic, please check out the following quote from Jeremy Lin during his time at Harvard.
My faith and my basketball began separately, then slowly converged, and now they influence each other. But when I first started playing basketball, I was five years old, and my dad put a ball in my hands. Ever since I was a little kid, I just loved to play this game. I was always in the gym. I loved playing. That’s what I did for fun, all the time.
My parents also took me to church ever since I was a little kid. I grew up in the church, but I didn’t really become a Christian until I was a freshman in high school. That’s when the gospel really started to make sense to me and I was ready to give my life to God.
Then, Christianity didn’t become a significant part of my approach to basketball until the end of my high school career and into college. That’s when I began to learn what it means to play for the glory of God. My parents had often talked about it and told me that I should play for God’s glory, but I never understood quite what that meant. That was something that really boggled my mind. My parents hadn’t gone through what I was going through, being an Asian-American basketball player in America. I thought, “I want to do well for myself and for my team. How can I possibly give that up and play selflessly for God?”
