Church, Parenthood, and Baseball

My wife and I love watching the NBC show Parenthood. We are, after all, parents. It’s a great show about life, love, and the struggles and challenges of parenting. We watch it through NBC.com, rather than on TV (less commercials that way).

Tonight we watched Episode 3 from Season 2. If you scroll through to about 29:30, there is a great little dialogue between Crosby, one of the fathers, and Renee, his mother-in-law. She thinks he should take his son, Jabar, to church on Sunday, and he wants to take Jabar to a baseball game. Here is the exchange:

Renee: You’ll forgive me if I don’t applaud when you want to take Jabar to a baseball game.

Crosby: Well now, hold on. You love your church and your church rocks, and I’m glad I got to go. But my family, we went to the baseball game every Sunday, and we sat together on the bleachers, and we cheered together, and my dad narrated the whole thing, and it was special. It was our ritual.

Renee: So baseball is your church? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?

Crosby: …Yeah.

Renee: That’s ridiculous.

Crosby: Hold on. That’s not ridiculous. I want my son Jabar to have the same experience with all the other people and the camaraderie. So I disagree.

As I heard this, I was reminded of something I read recently by Jacques Ellul in his book, The Presence of the Kingdom. He said, “In a civilization which has lost the meaning of life, the most useful thing a Christian can do is to live” (p. 77).

Crosby and Ellul are saying the same thing. In a culture like ours, as important as it might be for some people to enter a building where they sing songs and listen to a sermon, it is just as important to others to go to a baseball game and cheer on the home team…especially if it brings family together and strengthens bonds of love and care. Churches often talk about bringing families together, but if we’re honest, the simple act of “attending church” rips a lot of families apart. And along the same lines, if worship of God is to pervade everything in life, can’t attending a baseball game with your family and friends also be true worship?

I’m convinced Ellul is correct. One of the best things Christians can do in our time is just to live life. With each other. With family. With friends. With Jesus. That is the greatest witness we can have and the greatest worship we can give.

If you want to watch the video, here it is: