Youth Sports and the Church: 8 Ministry Strategies for Engaging Families
One of the top complaints from youth pastors and ministry leaders is how often families are skipping church for travel sports. There’s no survey calculating how many families choose sports over church—and there’s a surprising lack of data surrounding how youth sports impact the local church. The truth is, most of us don’t need statistical evidence to prove what we experience each weekend. We all see it and feel it.
But sports are not the enemy. They actually afford us an opportunity to do what we should do best: help our people learn how to live in the world, but not be of the world.
How do we do that when it comes to youth sports? How can sports become a teammate for our missional community instead of our primary competitor?
What follows are eight ideas for ministry leaders to leverage. Four of them utilize your home field advantage (Church Building) and the other four utilize an away game opportunity (Church Body).
Home Field Advantage (Church Building)
Resource the kids by equipping their parents
One way to resource the kids is by equipping their parents. Deuteronomy 6:7 reminds us of the need for everyday discipleship, and this provides a theological foundation for the support we offer. Most parents feel ill-equipped in this space and default to following the herd mentality. Christian parents need countercultural resources, created and shared by the church, to help them swim against the current.
Send them a weekly email (or post through social media) with tips for using sports as a playing field for spiritual formation. Curate a library of resources (sermons, devotionals, audio books, etc.) for parents to listen to as they drive across state lines for the next competition. It doesn’t even need to be sports-specific content.
Create a devotional for your youth sports parents and/or the kids who can’t make it to church. If you can’t write it yourself, there is a growing list of options for youth sports parents on YouVersion.
Host a one night event for youth sports parents (good luck finding the best night!) specifically aimed at giving them a biblical approach to navigating this space Christianly. Leave plenty of room for Q&A.
Make sports a regular part of your conversation
Families who are involved in sports want to—and need to—know that God cares about the way they think about and engage with sports. They probably know that they “should” glorify God through their sport. But most athletes have no idea what that means—because they’ve never been taught by anyone other than a high-profile athlete in a post-game soundbite. The Church can do this. The Church can teach them what it looks like to approach sports in a way that honors God by doing two things consistently:
Give them a theology of sport. Find ways to help them understand that God created sport as a good gift to be enjoyed. Our sinful nature has fractured this good gift and turned it into one of culture’s most sacred idols. As Christians, we redeem sports back to their original purpose by refusing “to conform to the pattern of this world.”
Give them biblical applications specific to sport. This is really easy to sneak into any talk or sermon. Just contextualize your application to fit an athletic context. For example, if you are teaching on the Good Samaritan, you might add something like this: “For those of you who involved in sports, this means that we need to have eyes to see those who are hurting and frustrated, like the person who just made a mistake or is sitting at the end of the bench—and find ways to encourage them and lift their spirits.”
Host a free middle school sports camp
This has to be scheduled well in advance because sports schedules fill up quickly. But what parent would not want their young athlete to learn how to integrate faith and sport? What kid would not want to spend a couple of days away from the pressure of their current team and play with their friends? A youth sports camp gives the Church an opportunity to show and tell how sports can be experienced as a good gift from God. If you’re interested in learning more about what this could look like, I led a three-day camp for middle school athletes at our church last year and I have the PDF template that we used to do it.
Start a discipleship initiative pairing former coaches and athletes at your church with younger athletes
Did you know that 65% of adult Americans grew up playing sports? That means two-thirds of your church knows what it’s like to think, breathe, and play sports. What if you equipped your discipleship bench with ten to fifteen former athletes or coaches who agreed to meet with any young athlete at your Church to talk about life, faith—and sport? Little Jessica may not want to learn from her parents. But she would probably be willing to sit down and talk with any former female college athletes who attend your church. This uses the platform of sport as a bridge toward discipleship. Get your former athletes in the game!
Away Game Opportunity (Church Body)
Go to them
Showing up at their games sends a few unspoken messages to them and their parents: I care about you. I care about what you care about. I support your passion by being your biggest fan. You don’t need to show up at church for me to show up here. This is also an opportunity to support other kids from the community. And it’s worth noting: We don’t show up on their turf to shame them into showing up on ours. This isn’t a strategy to get butts back into our seats. It’s a missional strategy to support our Body where they spend the majority of their time. If possible, bring another student with you to watch and cheer. This is a great space for shoulder-to-shoulder ministry, but also for the participating athlete to feel the presence of a larger community supporting them.
Pack the stands with your Body
Encourage your entire church to show up at a local game together and cheer like crazy for your home team. You could have a lot of fun with this idea and build some momentum within your church and the local community. Choose a sport that rarely has fans show up. Give your church a roster so they know the names of each athlete participating. You’re not showing up to evangelize, you’re just supporting the team. Imagine the ripple effects if your church became the community that every local athletic team hoped would choose their home game to show up and pack out the stadium. Tell them to cheer for the home team, not against the visiting team. And please, tell them not to yell at the officials!
Be the concession stand MVP
This is straight out of Jesus’s playbook. Meet the people where they are at—and find a way to feed them. Assuming you have a budget for this, give everyone in the stands a ticket for a free concession stand item. This supports your local school (which is a huge partnership win) and it’s a huge win for everyone who gets a free snack/drink. Fight the urge to put all of your service times on the voucher; more on that in the next idea.
Drinks on you
Show up at your local fields and bless the parents with free drinks. Give water when it’s hot and coffee when it’s not! This shows your community that you care, you’re generous, and you’re willing to step into their reality instead of always expecting them to step into yours. You will probably consider giving them a slip of paper that has all of your service times on it. Don’t do it. People expect relationships to be transactional. I do this for you. You must do this for me. Surprise them by showing them generosity without any strings attached.
Bonus Idea: Host or provide a pregame meal
Again, this is the Jesus model of ministry. This can be at your church or you could just send the food to the house that is doing the hosting. The day before a game, sports teams occasionally meet together at one of the parents’ houses and share a meal together. It’s pretty common for football teams and cross country teams. But not every team does this. This just takes a call to one of the high school or middle school coaches. Rarely will a coach turn down an opportunity for team bonding time and free food.
At the end of the day, youth sports don’t have to be the church’s enemy. They can be one of our greatest opportunities to meet families where they are and show them that Jesus cares about every part of life—including the games they play. If we choose to see sports as a mission field rather than a rival, the church can reclaim its role as the ultimate training ground—not just for athletes, but for disciples.
