Sports, Art & Kids

A couple of weeks ago, our church hosted our 2nd Annual KidsGames, a free sports and arts camp for the community.  It was an awesome week, and was reminded at the power of sports and arts in the lives of children.  The cool thing about KidsGames is there are kids out there with no background mixed with kids with a lot experience.  The kids with no experience in organized sports got coaching they'd never gotten, and they were delighted by it.  The kids with a lot of experience were happy to be playing without the pressure to perform or their dad breathing down their necks.  It's fun again.

Art teaches the kids to use their creativity, to be the unique creation that only they can be.  Moreover, they build relationships in art that they never would have in sports.  They find that it's okay to like music and baseball, to like drawing and basketball, to like dancing and softball.  None of us are ONE thing.  We do a disservice to our children when we make them into one thing and nothing else.  Sports and the arts are also incredibly important ways to build relationships with children.  Nothing provides opportunities to mentor quite like sports and art.

Education is extremely important.  We need to educate our kids the very best we can because there truly is power in knowledge, but kids need the influence of sports and arts in their lives.  They need to learn competition.  There is something important about winning and losing.  Life includes winning and losing.  Kids need to experience expressing themselves in art.  God made them unique in His image.  In a world of conformity that says we have to know specific answers on specific tests, art teaches kids that there is an answer within them that has never been given.  Let us not teach the next generation that they are a test score.  Let us help them create things that we never would have dreamed of, and let us teach them to compete, to give it their all.  They'll need those skills in life.  They'll need them MORE in life.  I haven't taken a test in a long time, but life calls me to create and compete daily.