A college of the yarts
Recent calls for Sydney Anglicans to consider investing in a college of the arts have set my mind racing: Christians engaging with their culture, fostering social connections, developing creativity, resourcing churches to run more culturally engaged and excellent meetings, and to form cultural links ... it's inspiring stuff.
In fact, it's so inspiring, it's brought to the surface a long-held dream of mine. For the past two weeks now, I've been walking around in a kind of daze. Everywhere I go, I've been scribbling down the same five words on the back of service sheets, on the back of envelopes and on the back the guy in front of me on the bus:
Sydney Anglican Academy of Footy.
Doesn't that set your heart on fire? Here in our sports-mad city where four different codes compete for the attention of footy-loving fans, we could showcase and promote a Christian brand of footy that connected with the real passions of our culture.
In my view, for too long, Christians have been half-hearted about their commitment to football-based interaction with our culture. The occasional lame evangelistic night during the Rugby World Cup—a few hard-working but unsupported chaplains trying to reach out to the league community—it's not good enough.
Let's be honest: the standard of our own footy is a joke. When was the last time an Anglican team won the Protestant Churches soccer comp? And where is the Protestant Churches League comp, the AFL comp or the Rugby comp?
Our lack of passion and investment is an indictment. It's time to take the cultural blinkers off, put in the hard yards, and connect with real people and their lives! I'm not sure we can wait for our denominational and church leaders to take the lead. It's no secret that our ministry leaders are, on the whole, ageing and unfit, with their best footy years behind them.
Perhaps the most we can hope for is institutional commitment—some cold hard cash to pour into a lay-led Sydney Anglican Academy of Footy. If centralization is a concern, we could regionalize the Academy with a soccer campus in Leichhardt, a league institute in the Illawarra, a rugger centre in Gordon and an AFL academy based at the SCG.
Imagine the possibilities for evangelistic outreach when properly trained, theologically aware footy players are unleashed into the cultural heartland of our metropolis! Not to mention what this would do for the quality of our church ministries. Want men to stop hating church? Organize high-quality, professionally refereed games of touch or five-a-side soccer after the service in the rectory grounds. Want youth group games nights to enter the 21st century? Showcase the kind of ball skills, passion and excellence the discerning visitor now demands. Want men's outreaches to have some real street cred? Hold events during half-time at the big game. The possibilities and benefits are self-evident.
So let's invest in a college of the yarts. Bring it on. But if we don't match it dollar for dollar with a Sydney Anglican Academy of Footy, we're being fools to ourselves, fools to our families and fools to the footy-loving people of our great city.