Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey there. You're listening to Rooted at Home with Christian Lloyd, kids pastor at Edmonds First Baptist Church, diving into real life topics that impact kids, parents and families today and discovering what God's word has to say about them.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: All right, everyone, thanks for joining us back on Rooted at Home, a podcast about faith, family and everything in between.
I'm excited to talk about today a topic that maybe kind of taboo a little bit, one that I think families are always battling. But I brought in some backup for this one because I think it's an important one and I think it's a good thing to get a perspective, a different perspective than just my own. So I have Aaron Ramirez with me, who's our preschool director, and we're excited to have have you on board.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited.
Yep, my name is Aaron Ramirez. I'm the preschool director here at Edmonds First Baptist Church and married to Trent and got two kids, a 17 year old and a 13 year old. So been at the church for five years on staff. But we've been members here since May of 2018. So it'll be fun to just get a little bit different perspective.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Yeah. See, we're excited to talk about the topic that we're going to be approaching is family and faith, but specifically talking about how sports and other activities can impact church life. And so how do you find the balance between going to church on Sunday and Wednesday and other activities with also sports. And we've got, you know, travel ball that people go to, do tournaments on Sundays. And then we've got other activities, even some my own daughters and dance. And so she's got sometimes Mrs. Church on for dance activities and things. And so talking about just the struggle that parents and families have that is it okay to miss church to go to sports sometimes or what's the balance? Or is there a balance? And so I think it'll be good for us to talk about it.
There's an article that Lifeway Research put out, which if you're listening and you haven't been to Lifeway and looked at the research page specifically, they have a lot of good articles that talk about just the gambit of different things, whether it's what we're talking about today in sports and things like that. But there's also articles about interesting articles about church and how a certain number of at a certain age you have kids that are leaving the church in droves at alarming rates and things and they go out and they regularly update their percentages and things. And so It's a really good information if you haven't looked at it, but this article specifically talked about different percentages and research that they did that was talking about sports and the different beliefs that pastors have specifically versus the different beliefs that families have just, they call it as views from the pew. And so just families that aren't pastor, that don't have pastors and things like that. And so their, their percentages are really different. And so just to kind of get going with it, they have some percentages that. About 36% of pastors just in general say that it is never okay to miss church at all for sports. There's not a, there's not any reason for you to take a Sunday off and go watch your kids play soccer or take a Sunday off and go do some other activity. Um, while 29% say it's okay if you do it once or twice a year, but 26% of pastors will say that it's okay if you miss a few times a year. And, and it says 3% of pastors say it's okay if you do it all the time. If you just miss church three, four times.
Well, I guess you can't miss church four times out of a month, but I mean, you can, but that'd be pretty much all of church. So if you miss three weeks out of the. It's.3% of pastors say that's okay. But if you look at the families, and aside from the pew, those that aren't pastors, that's a little bit different. And so the percentages there are, they're interesting. So it says that fewer than 1 in 5 Protestant churchgoers, 18% say it's never okay to church to miss church at all for sports. And so you see, 36% of pastors say it's okay, and 18% say that, well, you should never miss church. But this is the big difference. It says that 74% believe that it's okay to miss church occasionally, every so often.
Uh, 39% say it's just a few times a year. And 13% say you can miss church a lot as, as often as you want. Well, it says 9% say, well, they don't really know. I don't know what the answer is. And honestly, I'm not sure that we're going to be able to figure out the answer either. But it's at least important for us to talk about it. So what do you think about the percentages? Is that kind of shocky or anything? Or is that what you expected.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: I mean I think a little bit it was, it was shocking.
It.
Yeah. Especially the. The was that 3% of the pastors say many times a year like what so it. I mean I've never seen the statistics or anything like that. So I think it was a little bit of a. Eye openening for sure. This article was just. It was great.
I really enjoyed it and I think it's a topic. I mean even from when my kids were little of they weren't really heavenly. Heavily.
Heavily. There we go. Involved in sports like they did. You know the soccer and just like the club soccer and stuff. We were never really involved in a lot.
I remember there are a few times that my daughter had to.
She had gymnastics meet on a Sunday and we, we did. We missed it because that was always our stance on church is that we're. We're not going to miss it. You know, if they have practice on Wednesdays then we don't go. Tanner has swim on Wednesday evenings and our, the coaches know that we won't be there and they're okay with that. They.
They agree.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: So yeah. Say it's. It's interesting too. Some coaches will.
They'll agree with you and they'll support you especially if they're believers. But there's also a lot of coaches out there that think that's ridiculous and.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: That you're for sure definitely got some pushback when. When we did baseball. I mean. Yeah, they were. They kind of gave us a weird look of well, how come you won't be here? Sorry, we're at church. Like we have to set those. I don't want to say ground rules, but we have to set the precedent for precedents for our kids on a. As early as we can because eventually they're going to be on their own and they get to make those same decisions or their own decisions. And prayerfully that we have raised them in the godly home, that the Lord entrusted them to us and that we were instructed to do that.
They have that firm foundation of knowing this is what is. This is what we're supposed to do.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah. If you don't start early, I mean then it makes it 10 times harder to try and get those now is you have teenagers now. So yeah, if you didn't start that instill that earlier, then it'd be just as hard or if not harder.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Now to try and say, well wait a second, actually we're going to go to church instead of sports. But yeah, if you hadn't done that early, then the pushback would be a lot harder.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Of course there's always pushback in general because kids are kids and they want to do sports and be a part of things and you don't want them to miss out on it.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: But it's still important to at least that they understand that it's important to be at church and that it's a priority.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: One thing that I really liked interesting on this article is that it changes based on age between pastors and those in the pew. It said that Those that are 50 and older are more likely than adults that are 35 and younger around that area to say that it's never acceptable. It says 20% of those 50 and older say that it's never acceptable at all to miss church, while those 35 around that age group say, well, 12% say it's actually.
And six churchgoers, 6 or 5% and older, sorry, 65 and older. Seven percent of those say that it's. Are less likely to say that it's okay to skip church a few times a year, while Those that are 35 and under 26% percent say it's more likely.
And so it just shows that age does play a factor as well. Depends on the. Generally speaking, the older generations in general, I think, have had more of a more staunch belief that you have to be at church if the doors are open. I mean, I know growing up, I don't know how it was with you, but I know growing up for me it was if the church doors were open, then we're here. That's just what it was. Whether that's five nights a week or seven or whatever it is, we were here at the church.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: I think it's just a generation thing.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that's how Trent grew up. They. He believed or his parents believed that anytime the doors were opened, we were there or he was there. And then when we got married, any church event, anytime they were open, we were there.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: So yeah, I'm just. It's interesting to see those age things, but. Well, we've got a few questions that we've kind of thought about and wanted to kind of touch base on what with this article specifically and things.
And so one of the questions I saw was just about the priorities and things and how do we think that families decide between church and sports? When you've got this Sunday, it says, well, my kid has a soccer game and it's at 11 o'. Clock. Well, that's when churches. Well, when they collide and decide. I mean, what, what's the deciding factor on those.
I know, at least personally, I want to jump on the bandwagon of well, it's not really a decision. It's church is church. We're here.
The eternal impact of church is way more significant than the eternal impact of soccer. But we know it's also occasionally, at least in my belief, it's okay to miss church every so often.
I kind of fall in the it's okay to miss miss church occasionally for those things because also think it's important for kids to get to participate in those things.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: But what do you, what do you think about the that when they collide.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: And I think that's a hard, a hard thing to to navigate. I think it's just sometimes you might have to divide and conquer and one parent stays back with the kids at church and maybe the other parent takes the kid that's in the sport to the, you know, to the sporting event.
I think it also depends on how I don't know what I'm trying to say.
Sorry.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: What does it can definitely I think it depends on. Also one of the things article talked about that is good is it talked about how you're not going to change your, you're not going to change your church attendance just because sports all of a sudden show up. If you go to church and you're attending twice a month, once a month anyways. Well, that decision, you're pretty much just going to make that decision where, well, sports is you're going to go do the sports because you're only at church once or twice a year or once or twice a month. And so I think that is something that factors into well, if that decision happens, well, then you're going to go soccer. But if you're at church every Sunday and those things, you clearly have almost a higher view, if you will, of church that you need to be at church every Sunday. And so I think that that can play a factor the what the article talked about too. But one thing that I think is really the biggest topic of sports and church and that kind of thing is the question here, that is how can repeated absences from church affect a child's spiritual growth and development?
So when we if you're gone from church, whether that be because of sports or other activities or things like that, then how, how does that affect the child and their spiritual growth and how can that also affect the spiritual growth of you as a parent?
So what do you think about that? How do you think that?
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Well, actually, in my quiet time this morning, I was Reading My Devotion and it's putting Jesus the 21 day devotional journey Through Colossians by Courtney Tracy.
And this morning she was talking about how she was a student athlete. She loved soccer.
It.
And in part of it, she talked about it wasn't just a hobby, it was everything.
It was her identity. She had moved past being one of the many things in her life that she loved to being ultimate.
She said it no longer held a proper place in her heart because it was elevated above my love for Jesus.
And as you probably know, when this happens, she goes to say it leads to even more, more greater issues like pridefulness, idolatry, and false security.
Again, she says, but in reality that sin and other issues noted above were already there. Soccer had just brought those things out of me. And I think it's putting those things above our relationship with Christ.
Like, those are the idolatry that we are. Those are. We're, again, we're putting. That's prioritizing above our, our walk in our relationship.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's when you start to attend sports things regularly on Sundays and other activities and things like that, it definitely, I think, can put a hindrance because you start to, oh, well, I'm just really tired because last night the game was on really late and it'll probably be okay if I just miss this one Sunday. And the for lack of better term is excuses. And maybe that's not the lack of better term, I don't know. But you start to kind of just get more lax about your attendance and then you just start to see other things start to kind of plummet. And so attending church, I think is.
It has a drastic effect on development for the kids spiritually and for the families. Because if you're not being fed, then you're not growing.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: But again, that also isn't to say, well, in our day and age that we live in, you can go on Facebook right now and you can stream our service. And so if you're gone and you're on the road and. Or you're traveling to Tulsa or wherever else, you can always pull up the service and watch and be fed that way. But I think it's important to know, and I think we saw during COVID especially, that watching church online isn't a replacement for being in church.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: It's okay every so often. But watching it online isn't being a part of the local church. And so I think you have to be careful too, of not just automatically assuming, well, hey, I can just watch it online. It's fine. I can stay home on my PJs and be all snuggly and watch church and then, you know, grow from that.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Because I don't know, I mean with your kids are older so it's a little different for you all. But I mean during COVID we had our almost 7 year old now was around the younger like 2 age which is crazy that it's been that long since COVID But trying to watch church online with her in the room is just impossible.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: When you have a child running around, is distracted, they're not going to pay attention as much. And so it's definitely hard. But, but I do think it brings up another good thing, is that there are ways that if you are going to go attend activities on a Sunday or a Wednesday and they're going to be gone. It seems like Sundays happen regularly, but it seems like Wednesdays are also becoming a big one where parents would even say, hey, you have a lot of homework to get done. We're going to stay home today so you can focus on your homework. We'll, we'll miss church for that. Which, that I guess that's not really another topic. But that is a, it's also I think part of this. And so but I think that does does lead us into the fact that that are ways that you can as I think the article even said that you can use, you can take discipleship and be able to apply it to when you're gone. And so whether that be having gospel conversations in the car, I think is one of the examples they used or going out and watching service online or maybe before the soccer game, you take a moment and do a little devotional with your child or even the other children on the team. I think there's different ways that you could probably do that where you're still getting fed some and you're not just entirely saying, you know what, I'm, I'm just going to skip church completely. It'll be all right for one week, which unfortunately does happen. But again, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with missing church every so often because of an activity. I truly don't think there's anything wrong with it.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: But I think when it becomes a habit and you are constantly having to miss church because of things or you're choosing other things over church on the regular, that's when it becomes a true problem.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. Yeah. Well, and like he said, I was trying to find the, the part where he in the article it talks about Being intentional, if you are at the ball field or wherever you may be with your kids on your, on the Sundays is whether it's, you know, if you're with your daughter and you're at a dance competition or the ball fields or wherever, swim meets, you know, have those gospel engagements. But he said in here. But those gospel engagements won't happen accidentally. So you'll have to be proactive and intentional. And it's praying that the Lord would give you, you know, those people that you're around because we, we have our teams and our mom groups or dad groups or whatever, and just praying that the Lord would open those doors and the chances to, to have those gospel conversations because they might not ever go to church, you know.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Yeah, see, and I mean, parents, it's our responsibility as parents to guide and grow our kids. A lot of times it's easy to think of, well, the church is there and they're investing in my kids and. And so they've got it. If I miss on a Sunday, it's. It's okay if we don't talk about, you know, the gospel necessarily, or we don't take a moment to do that. But I think that parents, we, we just all have to understand that it's not the church's job to disciple our kids. It's our job. The Bible's pretty clear on that. We're the parents. And so you're right. We have to, we have to make a conscious effort to choose to disciple our kids. If we're not going to be there on a Sunday or a Wednesday or even during the week. I mean, if you look at the hours that you're, you know, at church, you only have a very short amount of time across an entire year to disciple kids. And as much as we love our job and we are thankful that God has given us the ability and the talents to, you know, for you to work with preschoolers and meet with children, ultimately, it's not our job to spiritually disciple the kids to the level that they need to be. It's the parents job. And so taking those opportunities is something that's incredibly important. One thing that is talked about that a question that we had, or not even a question but kind of thought that I didn't think about is ways that we as a church can come alongside those that do play sports regularly, that do go to tournaments and are gone Saturday, Sunday and Friday, Saturday, Sunday, sometimes ways that we as a church can come along and help. And so I'm excited to think that there are some surely there's some ways that we can, you know, pray about it and see if there's ways the Lord leads us to help you guys as families that you are. If you are going to be gone, how can we help you? Maybe that's having a devotion or something, some devotions that are ready and available and that we can give you all as parents to be able to take with you to do a devotion for you and the baseball team or the soccer team or something like that, or just something like maybe recommendations even of a book that someone else wrote that we could use. I don't know, just ways that we could kind of help the families if they're going to be gone. How can we help you disciple your children and help equip you for what you're called to do, which is to be a parent. And of course, if you have kids and God's put that calling on your life and something that we need to take seriously and do a good job at as best we can, at least, of course, knowing that God's going to help us really do the job because we're inadequate and we're not able to do it ourselves and we need to rely on him for that.
But I think when you get into the topic and you really think about sports and church, we have to understand the eternal significance of church compared to anything else. I think you could, you know, I don't think it's just sports. You can put in there. It can put. You can put any activities, vacations, the fact that you're just tired and you have to weigh the fact that is eternity worth skipping church as often as you normally would or as often as, you know, you may think you can. Again, that's not saying. Well, you have to be at church. If the door is open, you have to be here. Because even us as staff here on at church, there are times where we're exhausted. And we know that we, like, we may attend or we may not attend this fellowship or this something potentially because we need to rest and recharge. And so it's. We understand, like, it's okay to. Sometimes you need that rest and recharge, but you have to make sure to understand that ultimately what's more important, your child going to play soccer or your child learning the gospel, hearing the gospel and, and prayerfully being transformed by the power of the gospel and being saved. And I think that's something that I know, I feel very passionately and strongly about, is that we have to understand the significance that the gospel in Jesus and the Lord is more important than anything else.
But again, that doesn't not mean that you can't miss every so often to attend these events, especially if you're going to do your job to really disciple your child, even if you're not at church on a Sunday.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: And so what do you have any boundaries or anything in place before we finish up here that maybe you guys as a family use to say that, you know, you can't. I know your kids are older, so it may not be sports, but maybe it's a job or something like that. Do you guys have any boundaries or things that you put in place or are you working towards that or have you ran into that or.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we've ran into it. It's something that my husband and I have just really prayed that the Lord would guide conversations and he would kind of help us through that. We, my kids are in school and so we don't really.
It's school sports.
So again, it's kind of throughout the week during the day. We've never really had Sundays and Wednesdays are not a problem at the moment.
But there are some other things going on in our lives that we've just.
It's hard. They're hard conversations.
But God again, he entrusted them to us and these, I mean he's never, he's not going to be upset that we told our kids of sorry, like, you can go do your thing in Ms. Church. Like no, we are instructed to tell them and give them those, those boundaries of this is what you still live in our house. Like. And this is what we, we believe that the Lord has given us those instructions.
And so we're, we're still working through that and just kind of praying through that and trying to figure out the best move. And.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: So yeah, yeah, definitely. I think it's the, the fact that you to spend time to think through it and to really feel like what the Lord has placed on your heart and yalls as a family and knowing that maybe that may be slightly different from you than it would be for another family.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: That they may also feel the importance of it, but feel like they, they could miss once a month in order to go, you know, play baseball or some other activity. But. And that's great for them, but they need to also understand that if they're going to miss regularly that God calls us to be as a part of a church and to be active, you know, participating and being a part of the church and that really missing church on the regular is something that, I mean, if God Is physically, if Jesus was standing right here in the room, would you really just say, hey, sorry, Jesus, we're. We're gonna go to a soccer game this morning instead of. I mean, you wouldn't do that.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Right?
[00:25:22] Speaker B: But oftentimes we still kind of make that decision where we say, oh, well, it's okay. It's okay. There's this one.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Sunday. And then it's a kind of a slippery slope down into. Well, it's okay to miss because I'm tired. And then it's okay to this. And Wednesday has homework, and so we're gonna stay home. And the next thing you know, you haven't been to church in a month because this has come up in this and this and this. And so it just. You have to set. Set it as a priority. And once it's a priority, you gotta keep it that way.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: And I'm just like you. And we're still figuring that out with Parker, because I talked about in another previous episode, but she's in competitive dance now. And so she's got dance coming up on, where she's got competition for over a weekend, a Saturday and a Sunday and things. And we're still trying to figure out, well, what does that look like for us? Thankfully, it's not a. I mean, it's like a once every few months kind of a thing.
But it's still important that she's excited and wants to do dance, and we want her to. We want to encourage that. But how. How do you balance that? It's definitely hard. And I don't think that either one of us have a good answer on that. That it's hard. And again, some. You may say, no, it's not hard at all. You're at church.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: That's.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: That's what you do. That's your activity. You turn 18, then, great. I've prayed and prayed that I've instilled that church is important. But then you ask someone else, and it may be different.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: They may say, it's okay, which is hard. I mean, when your kids turn 18 or close to it, it's hard to.
Especially on a mama, you know? And that's one thing that my husband and I have prayed about for both of our kids.
We hope that we have instilled in them, again, a firm foundation in the way that the Lord will direct them. And we. It's. It's scary. It's very scary.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Absolutely. So if you guys have the answer, as you're listening and you say, hey, I've got it, I have it all figured out.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Well then please let us know.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Give me a call or text or I don't know, something come by the office.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Because I definitely would love to have the clear cut answer for that.
But yeah, well, hopefully you guys have, we've been able to talk and at the very least give you something to think about at the end of the day.
Obviously we can't.
I can't make that decision for you. Aaron can't make that decision for you. We just have to talk about the importance of being in church and what scripture does say that we need to be a part of a body of believers on the regular basis. But hopefully we've at least talked a little bit about some questions and things that maybe you can think through and have an opportunity to talk together as a family and pray about at home and so. Well, I'd love for, you know, to join us again some other time.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Think it'd be fun to keep chatting about things, but I unfortunately don't have a great dad joke. I normally ended on dad jokes.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Oh darn.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: Yeah, the last episode was. It was really good. I liked the. It was the shellfish. So fishticated. But anyways, sorry I don't have a dad joke for you, but thanks for tuning in and listening and we'll see you next time.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Rootedome, where faith and family take root together. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like, share and subscribe so you never miss a conversation that helps kids, parents and families grow in God's word.
