It is time for Spring Training, and all across the American sports landscape, excitement steadily grows because baseball is back for another season!
You might not know it, but the relationship between baseball and the church is a deep one…
– Early stadiums were once known as Green Cathedrals.
– In both, crowds find their minds wandering during middle inning pitch counts and over-repetitive worship lyrics.
– And today, Cubs fans are entering month five of living-up to God’s miraculous response to their prayers.
With such a close connection between the Church and the Game, here are 22 ways church services would be better if they were more like a baseball game:
- announce attendance count just prior to sermon
- lucky number giveaway in bulletin on preschool volunteer ad
- costumed apostle-races instead of forced-prayer while worship leader capo-segues
- statistic keeping for sermon points: home runs, expository errors, thoughts left on base
- near-constant “adjustment” by skinny-jeans-wearing worship pastor
- sunflower seed spitting from deacons on front row
- senior pastor can pull youth minister during mid-announcement rambling and call groups pastor in from bullpen
- three words: ice cream helmets
- skyboxes with TVs so members can flip over to Joel Osteen, Charles Stanley or CBS Sunday Morning
- play-by-play radio broadcast option for purists
- parking passes guaranteeing best spots up close
- dizzy offering plate races for ushers
- t-shirt cannon (protestant churches only)
- seventy-ith minute stretch with hymn sing-along
- communion element hawkers roving up and down the aisle
- baptism excitement magnified by crowd doing the wave
- no more artificial turf on senior adult men or the executive pastor
- organ sound effects when pastoral jokes don’t land
- last call on communion wine before doxology and closing prayer
- sell ad-space on the baptistry wall
- new “retro” sanctuary design featuring hard wooden pews, teal carpet and big golden chandeliers
- real-time scoreboard with other local church attendance and giving stats, ranked city-wide
Launch Clarity 
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