Adventist Varsity Sports?

A response to the ten most frequent arguments for interschool sports.

"Varsity Sports teaches sportsmanship and team play, indispensable coping skills for today's complex society."

This is a non-issue now. We crossed that bridge for better or for worse back in the late forties and early fifties. At that time, on the basis of this very rationale, we as a church and school system made the pivotal decision to embrace team sports, building gymnasiums at all our secondary schools and colleges for on-campus play.

The issue today is not about competition and innocent play (or even rivalry, for that matter—though that is a worrisome and difficult-to-control aspect of team sports). It is about going off-campus, in varsity athletics. It has to do with the best way to accomplish the educational objectives of a school's physical education program. And more importantly, it's all about an Adventist school's spiritual mission in the society.

It's about ratcheting the whole operation up several notches in one wrench, by greatly upping the stakes—introducing the element of school pride, a powerful stimulus to win. Varsity League play is serious business—no longer "play," really. This business of winning for alma mater's sake is work now—and intense, pressureful work at that, for both students and physical education teachers, far from "innocent sports." That is self-evident from the experience other schools have had. What makes us think that ours will be different?

The educational objectives we have for team sports may be accomplished right on campus, without all this accessory hype and risk. The onus lies with its advocates to answer the Big Question here: Why do we need to go off-campus? They probably have answers, but they surely are going to be hard put, it seems to me, to justify them educationally.

So there must be some other reasons. Why not get them on top of the table to determine if they are worthy motivations for a Seventh-day Adventist school, given its historic mission? Secular schools are under the gun these days to justify this outlay of faculty/student energy and school funds; shouldn't we apply the same self-scrutiny? Putting a team on the road represents big money. With the financial crunch that is hitting us too, and our parents and conferences sacrificing to make Christian education possible, how can we justify this institutional vanity? How high on our priority scale is this, anyway?

"Varsity Sports is a part of the larger 20th century culture—the American media sports culture, which for our North American Adventist youth is inescapable. This is a reality we have to accept. It is essential that the church be contemporary and relevant, changing with the times in order to keep our youth. If that's where they're at, then that's where we have to be, and guide them!"

We are here to transform the secular culture, not merely to be assimilated into it. Reflecting the culture is certainly not our mission. If our first century forebears who launched Christianity had "changed with the times" and spent their time readying entries into the Roman chariot races, you and I probably wouldn't be here today—and most likely neither would our church (if our Seventh-day Adventist pioneers had reasoned this way). "Cultural conformity" seems to be the new word for worldliness.

"Varsity Sports aren't as bad as... So interschool sports is certainly an approvable alternative to drugs, street gang violence, pornography, illicit sex, rock music, etc. We can't say No to everything with our youth; let's approve whatever we can that's innocuous."

Reasoning down to the lowest common denominator has never been our response to the High Calling. Being one or two cuts above the bottom has no real redeeming value, and in the end will be considered a sell-out by the very youth we are trying to appease. This argument is raw accommodationism. I doubt it will wash when we have to face them and the Judge of All Ages, when accounting time comes for the thrust and weight of our influence and leadership with the lambs of the flock.

Call it redneck rhetoric if you wish, but there is a subterranean apprehension among many of our people who see this as a school system agenda change where winning souls moves off the corporate educational agenda, and winning ball games moves on. With that shift comes a whole new set of play heroes. (Campus heroes have always been a reliable indicator of real campus values.)

We are not just good private high schools and colleges who happen to have a religious sponsor. It is time to remind ourselves that we have distinctly different goals, foremost of which is the development of Christian character, in anticipation of the School of the Hereafter. So the inherent nature of varsity sports, an adversarial context and relationship that promotes and idealizes the killer instinct, is seen by our people as inimical to the spirit of the Gospel.

Though varsity sports are not explicitly forbidden in the Bible, that does not make them neutral or innocuous. There's nothing in the Bible that says not to smoke, either, but we all know that the matter is governed by a higher spiritual law. A growing segment of our people feel that varsity sports definitely must be measured this way.

"Varsity Sports provides a good form of physical exercise, especially critical now since few viable alternatives to outdoor manual labor remain for students these days, with all the school industries being phased out. Especially does this need exist for the Black Adventist youth of the inner cities."

Again, clearly a non-issue in this present discussion. Our existing intramural (on-campus) sports programs amply care for these imperative physical activity needs. The Big Question still remains: Why do we need to go off-campus?

"Varsity Sports is a must, if we are to present a consistent position before our youth. Adventist congregations are fielding teams. Why not schools?"

Is the consistency argument unanswerable, the grand tour de force of persuasive logic? Not when we look at the broad picture of Adventist culture. Our church traditionally allows home, school, and congregation each to maintain its own set of expectancies and lifestyle requirements with its members, without the specter of "inconsistency" rearing its head. That is, what we serve on the tables in our institutional dining halls, allow for student entertainment on our campus stages, or require for acceptable school dress, is by deliberate policy not imposed on congregations, families, or individuals. The church has traditionally recognized that these are relatively inviolate spheres of Adventist life that have operated side by side without invidious comparison or reciprocal intrusion.

There is no hint of corporate hypocrisy here, just because one group functions a little differently from another. The church has charged our faculties and school boards with the responsibility of maintaining a campus environment that is calculated to ensure the accomplishment of the Adventist mission in Christian education. I doubt that this will ever change. The assignment is professionally sound as a curricular mandate and altogether reasonable; and we see no reason to abdicate that mission responsibility now, despite a steady erosion of Adventist lifestyle and values that may obtain in some other segments of contemporary Adventist life.

Yes, our people expect our schools to "hold steady the course"—to continue to steer by their stars, boldly and without apology. To do so is no "inconsistency;" in fact, many of our people will regard it as a virtue. They do not believe that a few Adventist youth playing ball with their home church team requires the whole Adventist school system to launch into a program of varsity athletics!

"Varsity Sports builds school spirit and school pride, on- and off-campus, because of the wholesome, collective spirit it generates ('Our Team, win or lose'). It constitutes a natural, non-obtrusive public-relations vehicle for our schools and the church—especially with other non-Adventist Christian youth who need to interface with our kids in a positive way and see Adventists as non-clannish, regular fellows."

No doubt it does build school pride—but what kind? And is that on the Adventist Christian education agenda as a worthy objective? The whole miserable sin chapter began by the question, "Who is the greatest?" Do we want to see our schools in the business of answering that question?

"Varsity Sports affirms the 'athletically gifted' in our schools. They, too, deserve the opportunity to cultivate their art and skill before an admiring audience, as do the student musicians, artists, leaders, etc. Games are in themselves actually an art form (witness the beauty of the slam dunk, certainly a symphony of motion!), and therefore educationally defensible."

Believe it or not, that's exactly the argument presented forty years ago to legitimize intramurals on campus. And it does have a compelling ring to it—if doing your thing in the "big time" is the only authentic stage for athletic practice and performance before an affirming, encouraging audience. But the central question still persists: Why do we need to go off-campus when the student's peers are all present at the intramural games to affirm and encourage his or her "giftedness"?

And as for the affirming audience, varsity sports invariably generates the "cult of the athlete" on campus, and spawns groupies—a hero-following phenomenon. Intramurals, on the other hand, have not demonstrated this genre of hero worship. This and other extra-curricular activities take their place quite appropriately on campus as educational corollaries, without bestowing on anyone superstar status (which is very difficult for the young and even the older to carry). You know, I haven't seen any senior tuba players in the school ensemble swaggering around campus with a klatch of awe-struck freshmen toeing in behind them. Incidentally, considerable study has been done in this field of educational sociology, by Brookover, et al., including the sub-phenomenon known as "the cult of the Coach," who has bigger than life control over his or her young charges. (Talk about power!)

For what do the "athletically gifted" need the big-time arena of varsity sports? Is it to get a better test for their skills on their way to commercial sports? If so, we need to confront that educational objective directly, and ask the question, "Are we ready to derail a school of the many, to so serve the special needs of this few?"

We're talking about spectator sports events and potentially major outlays of money. And there are a lot of other potentials we'd rather not think about—like pressure on the teaching faculty to soften grades for sports stars, Sabbath travel to Saturday night games, as well as drugs, gambling, alumni pressure, etc., to have a winning team, with their school support tied directly into it. We need any one of these problems in the Adventist school system like we need a mild case of AIDS.

Sure, we're a long way from most of those abuses now. But other schools thought they could keep themselves free and uncontaminated from the inherent problems, only to discover that they got drawn into the vortex. As two of our Adventist Review editors so aptly put it, that road has been well-traveled by other schools, and we can learn from their experience. We as a church would do well to take a long, sobering look before we start down that road.

"Varsity Sports is a new, effective, and acceptable vehicle for Christian youth-to-youth witnessing to other sportsminded youth who are not likely to be reached by the traditional evangelism of the older generation."

It is highly debatable whether or not this mock warfare arena, with its self-glorification, rivalry, and killer instinct requirement (taking advantage of your brother's mistakes and missteps) is within the spirit of the gospel. Strange setting indeed for sharing sacred truths!

I talked with two Adventist varsity heavies who are actively involved with the "witnessing athletes," and they freely shared with me their feelings about this Trojan horse: "Who are they kidding, anyway? We're out there to WIN, and little else matters. We know that, and the coach knows that, but we keep up a little pretense, like praying before the game in full view of the grandstands, and giving the full P.R. push to it whenever we can generate a good story—and being model, gracious winners and losers, in order to preserve our privilege of play. We guys on the team occasionally laugh together about it; privately we think it's a glaring sham and are amazed that our coach and president have actually brought it off with the church powers-that-be. (What a con job!)"

That's not verbatim, but it's not far off from their sentiments. And I suspect it's more representative of student assessment than our faculty advocates of varsity sports would like to admit. I'm amazed at what becomes admissible in the church if you can only link it in some way with evangelism. That is always the sure-fire winner. Nobody has fielded a team yet named "The Harvest 90 Hornets," but who knows? We have seen some pretty creative end-runs around time-honored traditions and policies of the church!

"Varsity Sports is not an incorrigible activity; with appropriate good rules strictly enforced, we can adequately control the undesirable aspects of rivalry. The payoff is worth it; give us a chance to try."

A great many people (including some relatively young ones) seriously doubt whether this activity can be controlled, given the kind of negative modeling being constantly presented before our society by commercial athletes and big time teams in the media. In their view, this activity has been irreparably spoiled; it is essentially non-controllable, incorrigible now. Tougher "guidelines" and "trust us" are not all that persuasive. It really comes off as rather romantic and naive. Everyone except the varsity do-or-die club seems to sense instinctively what kind of formidable odds we're up against in dealing with this problem.

"Varsity sports is already in place, having gone on now for a number of years. It has become an integral part of Adventist culture, impossible to redirect at this late date—certainly not by ecclesiastical fiat or heavy-handed social engineering."

Yes, in a few places, it is indeed "in place" as a serious institutional pursuit, but it is far from unquestioned emplacement in the culture of Adventists. This present situation (with half of our schools in North America engaging now in some form of league play) deserves more than just passing comment.

It was born twenty years ago in defiance of church policy. It is indeed a sad commentary on our corporate discipline that we as a church, and as a school system, had no pro forma sanctions in place to deal with this type of organizational mutiny. When a public school district defies local, state, or federal policy, it is just automatically cut off the funding arrangement; it no longer qualifies for inclusion. Break-aways from system policy and programs are not tolerated—at least not funded with public money.

The church has yet to develop that kind of nerve and muscle to ensure its objectives. If we had possessed sufficient conviction about this matter a decade or more ago, and dealt decisively with it administratively then, we wouldn't be facing the problem we have now. We could have just told the errant institutions, "You're not in line with church policy, no longer an accredited Seventh-day Adventist school, and your annual subsidy is being withheld until you rejoin the system."

The very real constitutional problem with such hands-on control in our case is that only conferences and unions have that prerogative; world divisions and the General Conference do not subsidize union colleges and conference academies, so the unions are pretty well autonomous in this respect. Though this arrangement has the potential of breeding organizational anarchy, that's the reality, the way we're organized.

Strategy

Only very recently, however, has the varsity sports problem become epidemic. This is not coincidental. Obviously there has been a concerted effort in the last three to five years by some of the adult sports enthusiasts to effect a fait accompli, where the problem would become so widespread that it would be impossible for the church to attempt to enforce its time-honored policy.

Such a spirit and method are deplorable, of course; that's not the way we effect change in God's church. I just don't think it should be rewarded. It's bad modeling before our youth, the future leaders who are watching and taking their cues from us as to how to be "change agents." Leadership modeling is pretty powerful stuff.

Elder Bradford, the North American Division President, put it very well at the Board of Higher Education session in California last summer. He said something to this effect: "We shouldn't have to be spending our time here like this, the world church having to corral us back into the fold; a word to the wise should have been sufficient. There's more important business for us to get on with in planning and carrying out God's work on earth." Amen!

Our Calling

We've seen this church accomplish whatever it sets its mind to, and there's no doubt in my mind that if we really want to rid ourselves of this virus, by God's grace we can will it, and do it! It remains to be seen if we really mean business about it, or whether our church administrators at all levels will treat the slippage with a deliberate policy of benign neglect and permit us to slide further into mission drift.

The trite argument that the "horse is out of the barn, and we'll never be able to get him back in," is defeatist mentality—echoed persistently, of course, by the backstage architects of the fait accompli strategy. I have said all along that if we really are serious about dealing with the critter, we can shoot him with a tranquilizer, drag him back in, and slam the barn door shut! The 1989 Annual Council did just that, sensing that this was probably the last window of opportunity for dealing with runaway sports in the Adventist school system.

As this matter was being debated at Annual Council, I felt a sure sense of high destiny for our church, that we were indeed holding the future of the church in our hands, and maybe even the future of the school system itself, particularly as the decision would impact on the confidence of our people.

New Game Plan

"What will we say to the kids?" ask the varsity administrators. That shouldn't be all that difficult now, with all the fine training in sportsmanship and good team mentality that has taken place in the varsity program. Just remind them that church and school administrators belong to a team also, a professional team, and that the team (the Seventh-day Adventist church and school leadership) has adopted a new game plan; even though it doesn't accommodate your private preference in the matter, yet as a disciplined team player, a real pro, you have no choice but to practice (and model) the very ideals you have so forcibly impressed upon them as your students, personally painful though it may be. They'll understand and see the consistency.

Remind them that the bootleg varsity play that has been going on was calculated as an all-for-broke gamble, which did not pay out for its tacticians, and now it's time to heel to authority, the authority of the official owners and sponsors of the system, the Seventh-day Adventist Church—that the debate is over, the decision made, and that the decision is final. And let's again ask the kids (and their adult varsity sports mentors) the Big Question: Why do we have to go off-campus? What educational objectives (especially Adventist educational objectives) are to be served?

"Heavy-handed social engineering"? No way! not our style, patently manipulative. Our corporate conscience won't allow it. Any hint of this would be an insult to the intelligence and integrity of our youth. Let us communicate our philosophy and mission clearly to them, and candidly tell them why the need for such a direct salvage intervention. Our young people are idealists; we might be surprised how many of them would rally to the effort!

"Ecclesiastical fiat"? You bet! Decision time unavoidably arrives when the elected rulers of the church must rule on policy and practice, in keeping with our grand mission. Our people are looking for clear-headed, clear-cut leadership to represent their convictions. The rank and file feel that we've drifted long enough.

The delegates at the 1989 Annual Council who voted this re-affirmed policy on varsity sports were no isolated, out-of-touch graybeards from headquarters. They were the elected leadership of this church from all over the world, the most representative group we have short of a General Conference session. They were acting as trustees-at-large of our educational system, the highest "school board" in this church—entrusted with the destiny of the whole Adventist education system. That's an awesome and sobering responsibility, and they felt it keenly. They knew that Adventist history would judge them either as men and women of conviction and courage—true church leaders and statesmen worthy of their appointment there—or just time-serving functionaries.

Consequently they did not talk about "containment" or "damage control;" that would be political talk. They knew that they were confronted with a principled decision about excising an ideological tumor from the system. Everyone understood that the debate was about putting varsity sports completely aside—about its total prohibition.

I feel our leaders acted very responsibly, by a margin of 3-to-1 for the world church. Likewise, in the North American Division Year-end Meeting immediately following Annual Council, our division leaders voted by a 2-to-1 margin to stand solidly with the world church and allow no exceptions to the re-affirmed policy. In both arenas the matter was carefully and soberly considered. After full review of the implications, the church stepped away from varsity sports in our schools.

Yes, the '89 Annual Council and North American Division Year-end Session delegates rightly comprehended that varsity sports just don't belong; they are not a part of our mission in Christian education. It was as simple as that. That was the macro-issue at stake in the Annual Council debate, and it was dealt with decisively. The historians of the future will note that the church leadership of 1989 had some keen convictions about keeping Adventist education on-track! (Thank you for leading, Holy Spirit.)