back in the early 1970's a Detroit sportswriter by the name of Watson Spoelstra noticed that some Major League Baseball players were trying to organize chapel services for their teams on Sunday mornings. He thought that worship for those who work in professional baseball was important enough that it should be supported in some official way by the league. He presented this idea to the MLB commissioner at the time, Bowie Kuhn. The commissioner approved Spoelstra's proposal and in 1973 Baseball Chapel began. By 1975 every team offered a chapel service at the ballpark every Sunday morning of the season. Baseball Chapel spread to the minor leagues in 1978 and now every single MLB-affiliated Minor League ball club has Baseball Chapel on Sunday mornings.
We like to spend a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark. We saw evidence of this last Sunday when some fortunate members of our church family headed out right at the end of worship to go to watch the Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals play. Our enjoyment of Sunday games, however, means that not just the players, coaches, and umpires, but every single person that works at the ballpark has to be at work on Sunday. Boo hoo, right? Multi-millionaires have to work on Sundays. Big deal. Well, first of all, multi-millionaires are created in the image of God, loved by God, saved by Christ, and in need of worship and Christian community too. Secondly, what about the guy or gal that sells hot dogs and cotton candy? Lots of people have to work on Sundays these days. We can't complain about people working on Sundays and then expect to be able to eat lunch at a restaurant or fill our car with gas or go shopping a the grocery store on Sundays. The only reason they have to work--and players have to play--is because you and I value their services on Sundays. So if they can't go to worship, worship has to go to them.
That being said, too many of us in the church still live in a past during which the vast majority of folks had Sunday off and people could be expected to come to the church's building on Sunday for Sunday school and worship. We still expect for people to come to us in order to have their lives touched by the gospel and how it is lived out by this community of faith. Here we are on the corner of Market and Hinde Streets. The doors are unlocked early on Sunday mornings. Come to us. It is time for us, however, to have a reality check and the place to start is with the Scriptures. You see, Jesus didn't tell his disciples, "Find a place to hang out and then people will come from all over the world to hear what you have to say." Nope. He said, "Go and make disciples of all nations." The key word is, "GO!" In the Bible, the Holy Spirit is constantly sending the early church out to spread the gospel, taking the gospel to people, meeting them where they are. I applaud the folks of Baseball Chapel for doing just that.
Not one place in the Scriptures does it say that Christians have to meet in a certain place, in a certain building, or even at a certain time. Worship at a ballpark is just as valid as worship in a cathedral. Worship in a breakroom in a factory, or in the lounge of a dormitory, or on a submarine, or in a bean field is just as glorifying to God as the pope leading mass at St. Peter's Basilica (and maybe more so depending on the hearts of the participants). If what we want is to perpetuate the institution of the church as it currently is then it might make sense to sit around waiting for people to come to us. If what we want to do, however, is what Jesus called us to do, which is spreading the gospel, then we are going to have to follow Baseball Chapel's example and go to them. As A.A. Milne, the author of the Winnie the Pooh books, once wrote, "You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes."
