Baseball

Behind Enemy Lines

I went to watch one of our third graders play baseball. I didn’t play as a kid, so I didn’t realize how terrifying it can be for these young batters.

All eyes on you - parents, players, refs. Everyone glaring as you carry your steal junior bat to the plastic dirty plate. You’re alone and exposed - like an paratrooper dropped behind enemy lines. Your brothers-in-arms are stuck in a wire-cage dugout. They can’t help. You stare at the pitcher but can’t help notice the rest of the enemy gunning for you. The only way to escape is to swing that bat, make contact and run. So you take your stance...

Soon it’s over. You’ve hit or struck out. Either way at least you’re safe and out of the lime light.

It’s so good to travel into a kid’s world - to see, hear, and feel it how they do and then be able to articulate it. My perspective is wider and I understand these kids a little better. For that I’m so thankful.

There’s No Crying in Little League:

This kid - smaller than the others - wasn’t having a good day. He managed to get on first. A walk or hit? I can’t remember. Eventually, he made it around first. Second. Third. He’s on his way home. Slides. He’s just inches away when, the catcher taps him out. The kid was crushed. Devastated. Embarrassed. Broken. Hurt.

He grumbles to the dugout, sits on the bench and bawls. His mother, on the outer side of the dugout, declares, “Don’t you cry. Don’t. Only cry when you get hurt.”

I get her intentions. She’s wants her boy to have perspective and not get too wound up over a game. Noble. But she missed a great teaching moment.

Regardless of how that play fits into the grand scheme of the universe, this kid has feeling - which she didn’t help him articulate. She just suppressed it. People think men have two emotions - mad and hungry. But men, just like women, are complex emotional beings. Yet, a majority of men are less-equipped to articulate their inner emotions.

If we want boys to grow up to be healthy men, one thing we have to do is teach them how to express their inner selves. This takes an emotional vocabulary that extends beyond - mad, sad, bad.

When kids are showing intense emotions - positive or negative - help them verbalize it properly.

The Balance

I love seeing elementary-age kiddos know Jesus. They have so much capacity for spiritual participation and I love helping them realize it.

I find this age ministry to be the perfect sweet spot. No teenage “One Tree Hill” relationship drama. And no baby poop! Just energetic, moldable children searching for truth and acceptance.

Luckily, I get to do it for a living. Like any ministry post there are challenges. Getting volunteers. Managing space and supplies. Parents. But the real struggle is the balance - that delicate pendulum that if you swing it too far, too long in one direction you fail. For instance - balancing feeding kids steady Biblical instruction while keeping it from becoming an academic exercise that never connects or transforms. Balancing being entertaining without being superficial. Utilizing the faith practices of the past with the technology of tomorrow. Leading 5th graders - who aren’t cute tots anymore but certainly aren’t youth either.

Ahhh. I want to rip my hair out trying to do right for the kids I’ve been entrusted with.

Since most of you reading are ministers in some capacity I know what you’re saying. “Just give it to God.” “They’re not your kids, they’re God’s.”

I do. They’re His. Got it.

Here’s the thing, as frustrating as this tension is - often to the point of deep sadness - I hope to always live in it. Always. Ministers should be struggling, wresting, tussling, contending and cajoling with the balance. It’s through that tension we stay sharpest and most attune. There is no super curriculum that forces perfect balance. No book. No blog. No Sunday format. The minute you think you’ve found the magic formula is minute you’ve been duped.

So if you’re struggling and frustrated with this tension please be thankful. You’re right where you need to be.