This Ky. town’s churches formed a sports league. Here’s how it transformed the community.
Two years ago, my town of Winchester was a broken community. A 2017 report by the Harwood Institute found that there was “a sense of being beaten down,” that “people (couldn’t) catch a break.” Many residents had nicknamed the town ‘Deadchester’. Racial division was prominent. Drugs were sold openly on the streets. Single-parent homes were common. Over a quarter of children lived below the poverty line.
Winchester doesn’t have a community center, a skating rink or a bowling alley. But it does have something special: It has a lot of churches, and a lot of faith. And so our church and four others decided to do something about our community’s slow decline. We joined together to create a local, faith-based sports league. We engaged the local hospital and business community to provide scholarships for families who couldn’t afford it (about a third of the league).
A sports league doesn’t seem like a big step toward re-igniting a spirit of hope and engagement in a depressed community. But after just two seasons, some remarkable transformations began to occur. In the 2017 season, 861 kids participated in basketball and cheerleading — double the number of kids in any previous league in the county. By 2018, that number had risen to 940.
Winchester began wrapping its arms around the children in the league. One 14-year-old boy with autism, who had endured over ten surgeries and hospitalizations in his lifetime, was enthusiastically welcomed in the basketball league, which accepted players of all social and physical skill levels. When he scored, everyone celebrated with him.
When single parents couldn’t make the games or practices because they were working, other parents and church members stepped in. Over 150 adults served as coaches and positive role models. The teams provided stability that was missing for many of our town’s kids.
It also broke down barriers and bridged the gap between sectors of the community that had never interacted before. Teams included players from black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods, black churches and white churches, wealthy neighborhoods and struggling neighborhoods. Kids who would never otherwise have met started forming friendships and playing together outside practices. Three additional churches joined the league. When one church needed $28,000 for a new basketball floor to host games, congregants from the other churches chipped in to raise the money.
This year, after the second season, the University of Kentucky conducted a survey of league families; our league received a 9.1 on a 10-point scale on the topic of “Instilling Hope, Optimism and Confidence in Our Kids.” According to Gallup, these elements are the building blocks of engagement, and engagement is exactly what the kids of our community needed. Instead of waiting for someone from the outside to step in, they realized they can initiate the change.
Our teams teach players to be better players on the court and better people on and off the court. With this shared aspiration, both kids and parents begin to re-evaluate their relationships, their assumptions of others and their interaction with their community.
Our church leaders began to see and serve differently. Instead of focusing on competition, we focused on collaboration. We cared less about each of our churches being “the best in the community” and began to care more about being “the best churches we could be together for the community.” Churches are called to be active in identifying and healing brokenness in the communities they operate in, and sports can be the vehicle to do this. With relational ministry on the rise, churches going into the community can be one of the most effective ways to reach people with the gospel.
Loneliness is an epidemic in America today; according to a 2018 survey conducted by Cigna, almost half of Americans say they feel alone sometimes or always, and a fifth say they rarely or never feel close to other people. By providing our neighbors with a support network they can rely on through life’s ups and downs, we can minister to a real need and show the truth of God’s words when He says, “It is not good for man to be alone.”
Today, poverty still plagues the Winchester community; many homes still have no internet or cell service. Drugs are still too easy to find. But residents have two things they didn’t have before: They have hope, and they have support. And with those, we have begun to rebuild our community.
We truly are better together. When churches look upward and outward to partner with other churches and utilize unconventional ministries, remarkable things can happen. And I have seen it with my own eyes.
Mike McCormick is Lead Pastor of Calvary Christian Church in Winchester, Kentucky (CalvaryChristian.net) and one of the founders of Winchester’s league with Upward Sports, a national organization that partners with churches to leverage the power of sports to engage local communities with the gospel. He is the co-author of a new book on servant leadership and community transformation called House on Fire! A Story of Loss, Love & Servant Leadership.