Together or Apart?

January 11, 2022

Here at Beech Church, we are about to begin our Upwards Sports program. Have you ever coached a sports team of children 5 an under? While I have not coached one of our Upwards teams, when my children were young, I coached their soccer teams. I had three 5-year-olds, three 4-year-olds, and one 3-year-old on the team. It was not uncommon to have several of the team following after the ball, while one or two of the kids were either chasing butterflies, playing in the dirt, or attempting to get their parents’ attention.

At that age, when teaching a young child to play a game, a significant part of teaching the game is getting them to pay attention and participate, while learning the rules. The 3-year-old on the team was one of my fastest players. Yet, you can imagine that being as young as he was, his attention span was not lengthy. On top of that, his older brother loved to play basketball and so he was accustomed to picking up the ball and dribbling it. So, when I used the familiar term of “dribbling the ball,” he would pick up the ball with his hands. Of course, that is against the rules in soccer. Therefore, to teach him the game, I would call call his name and tell him to put his hands in the air. Watching him run up and down the field with his hands up while dribbling the ball was both funny and rewarding because he was learning the game and working with his teammates.

Unfortunately, I did not have the privilege of coaching him over the next several years. Yet, the issues were usually the same from year to year, but decreasing in frequency and duration. Eventually, we became a team that worked the ball down the field together as a unity and our season was a winning one.

Winning is not everything, by any means. Yet, I have to wonder how often we take lessons from sports, beginning with children and moving up to professional levels, in our faith. Jesus said that we are to make disciples. Part of that is simply teaching others how to believe in and follow Jesus. In the verse above, we are told that the believers were all together. The word “together” addresses that they were working with one another for one purpose – to glorify God. I must wonder how often are we fractured in our modern church, unwittingly separating into cliques, acting more like immature individuals, rather than working through our differences so that we can be together to glorify God in our prayer time, praise time, preaching time, and even play time? Have we allowed differences or unforgiveness in our churches to keep us from being one (together) in Christ? If so, we together cannot expect God to do many mighty works in our midst, because we are unwilling to align our lives with His call on our lives.