Last week major league baseball's World Series came to a close as the Los Angeles Dodgers outlasted the Toronto Bluejays in a 7 game marathon that included an 18 inning game and the final 11 inning game. (A normal game is 9 innings.) On the surface it was a success for major league baseball as the stadiums were full, the tv ratings good, and the competition fierce. In one series you had east versus west, north versus south, the defending champs against the team that hadn't been there for 28 years, and even the US against Canada. As a child I played little league and a bit of church league softball, but I always thought watching baseball was a bit boring. I remember taking my two oldest boys to a couple of Spokane Indians minor league games. We mostly walked around eating snacks and exploring the stadium. And while I watched a few minutes of the series off and on through the games, nothing really inspired me to stick with it. It still seemed boring to watch. But for my dad there was no comparison. Baseball was king, and to this day I have my dad's old softball mitt setting on my dresser, because even though I have no use for it and it has no value, I can't reconcile throwing a piece of my dad in the trash.

Baseball was America's game because anyone could play it anywhere, and everyone wanted to. There was no town or school where a game wasn't going, backyards where dads and sons weren't playing catch, and no lunch where kids weren't sharing and showing off their baseball card collection. Because baseball was never just about a game. It was about community and culture. It was about barbequed chicken, brownies, and lemonade, about the local hometown heroes, the smell of well cared for grass, mowed short and even, bleachers full of cheering family and friends, and about a game where you can fail 75% of the time and still be considered successful.

But that's not baseball anymore. It's now about big television and player contracts, big stadiums, millions in ticket sales, apparel profits, and $16 hotdogs. The wonder has been lost. At best it's families gathered around a tv or computer.

But thinking about the game made me think about selling pizzas in Bellingham, WA. where we used to live. One of the locations we set up to sell was at the huge soccer fields, where we would park in the mist of 10 soccer fields, as thousands of kids and parents would rotate through in non-stop games from 8 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon. The reason I thought about it while watching the World Series was how I drove the truck in to the soccer fields. They had us drive in right across the four abandoned baseball fields. The grass was knee high, and the dirt infields were overgrown as well. If it wasn't for the backstops, I don't think I would have recognized them as baseball fields. Thinking about those abandoned fields and the contrast of the glitzy World Series inspired me to do a media search. Here are just a few of the hundreds of headlines that popped up.

How did Major League Baseball decline in popularity so much ... (Reddit)

Why is Baseball Not Popular Anymore? (Huffington Sports)

Is Baseball a "Dying" Sport? (Michigan Journal of Economics)

Why is baseball no longer America's Game? (CNN)

The articles go on and on, and they all reflect my own experience. When I was in grade school everyone played little league. It was the thing to do. It was part of childhood. I played shortstop and second base, was a good fielder, and due to wearing really strong glasses since I was 6 years old, I was a lousy batter. By the time I hit junior high I had abandoned the baseball field for the basketball court, and never really looked back. And so, it would seem, have many others for a whole lot of years now.

Why am I going on and on about baseball? Because I think it's a lot like what we call the church in our western world. In every city "mega churches" house professional bands, rock star preachers, and extensive media production departments. Just over a year ago I visited Cornwall Church in Bellingham, one of the two largest churches in town, where a good friend had been asked to speak. The entire service was scripted down to the second. There were a half dozen cameras all over the auditorium, and a huge screen directly over the front of the stage. If you watched the screen you saw a well choreographed show in which there was an engaging band, with occasional pans seeming to show passionately worshipping crowds. If you were in the crowd, as I was, all the cameras and screens were terribly distracting, the auditorium was maybe one third full, and the whole thing felt rather lifeless. The "gospel" has been packaged into nicely digestible video and sound bites so people can get their quick meal, maybe feel better about themselves, and move on with their lives. Here's the thing, for the most part these churches are led by good people who actually care about God and are trying to do good things. And yet statistics tell us that the people attending churches in the west are no different than those who don't. In fact the people attending church are more likely to divorce, more likely to cheat on their taxes, just as likely to be addicted to pornography, just as likely to steal from their boss, just as consumed with their image and their stuff, and just as empty and lost in their souls, wondering why this God thing doesn't seem to be making any difference. And really "difference" is the key word. God isn't making any difference because their lives aren't any different. And churches aren't changing lives because our churches aren't any different. They have become one more tentacle of the consumer machine which is eating the world.

Church was never supposed to be a show. You're not supposed to go for what you get. It's supposed to be the community amidst which our broken places get healed, our empty places get filled, our dark places get exposed and chased out, and our lives get transformed. It is the place where we become intentional about recognizing the divine needs we carry in our hearts, how we have tried to fill those needs with things other than God, and through transforming community we lay down our idols and start chasing our Creator.

If that is going to happen, the church has to leave the auditoriums and return to the backyards, the kitchens, the living rooms. We have to stop going to church and start being the church everywhere we go. We have to stop thinking about adding church to our lives, and start seeing everything we're doing as a place to engage in transforming relationships. Over the next few months we're going to continue to explore what that looks like for The Barn in Grass Valley. As we do so I encourage you to adopt the hope of a baseball batter. I'm sure we'll swing and miss more than we get it all right. But let embrace a culture of encouragement. Let's give people the freedom to try, fail, and then still be able to dream and try again. Let's commit to becoming a radical community that is constantly aligning itself to the heart of God as we serve and love each other.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13: 34-35)