Are church and hockey at odds?
The NHL playoffs are finally upon us, and for many of us Canadian hockey fans this is the most wonderful time of the year. Teams are now finally prepared to push all their chips and truly do whatever it takes to get sixteen wins and hoist Lord Stanley’s glorious cup. My family has always been invested in the NHL playoffs—we fill out playoff brackets, pick overtime goal scorers, and stay up past midnight on a school night to see how that West Coast game turns out.
Craig Cornelsen at 25 years old when he played for the Augustana Vikings in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC).
What is it about hockey and especially the playoffs that draws us in? I believe there is something about the drama of ratcheted up intensity and desperation to win. It is the willingness to sacrifice one’s body blocking slapshots, taking body checks and eating punches all for the good of your city’s team. We watch these young men, the premier hockey players in the world, passionately chasing a childhood dream. They are aiming to join the list of Stanley Cup champions that flash across the screen during the Hockey Night in Canada introduction, their name forever immortalized, hand-engraved into the silver trophy. The storyline is enough to get swept up into; as a fan, when you have a horse in the playoff race, your heart enters into the narrative.
This dream of Stanley Cup glory is one that I very much embraced as a kid and even chased into my twenties! Though I never made it to “the show,” the NHL playoffs give me and hockey fans around the world an opportunity to vicariously live out those dreams. Sports in general are so much fun and captivate our imagination, but like someone recently reminded me, “the results are not going to affect my paycheque.” As Christians, we know that there is so much more to life than playing and following sports, and we know how sports can become an idol, but we can recognize its benefits as well.
So, in light of this playoff season, and for the purposes of this article, the question was posed to me: How do you explain or resolve the tension between church and sports? I will begin my answer with some context of my own upbringing and experience of said tension.
Growing up just outside of Rosenort, Manitoba, immersing myself in sports was my favorite pastime. My three brothers and I grew up on the generational family acreage and our yard was used to play every sport you can imagine. At school, my classmates and I embraced all the sports as well as minor hockey and baseball. We all had our parents and grandparents in the stands proudly watching and cheering (and neverheckling the refs) as we would take on our cross-prairie rivals of jantsied-Mennonite or French-Catholic descent.
But in our family, hockey was our first love. We were good Canadians that way, embracing Don Cherry’s hockey culture as gleaned from his popular Rock ’em Sock ’em videos. “Play the game the Canadian way!” he would exclaim with a stoic face and hearty thumbs-up. This meant playing with passion and courage; working hard, staying humble and always standing up for your teammates. Cherry was overtly critical of Russians and Europeans that played “selfish hockey and lacked toughness.” There was a selfless, yet tough-as-nails, Canadian hockey culture and identity that we absorbed growing up.
Nine-year-old Cornelsen wears the jersey for Prairie Storm, a travelling summer hockey team based out of Southern Manitoba.
At times this hockey culture and identity clashed with my Mennonite-ness, being brought up in the EMC. I attended church and Sunday school every Sunday, Awana and then youth group during the week and Bible camp in the summer. The good news of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour as well as his life-giving teachings were implanted in my heart from a very young age, and I was blessed to have countless godly role models to water and fertilize that soil. Mennonite values such as hard work, humility, serving in the church and, most importantly, a life-long loving allegiance to King Jesus were instilled in me, though these virtues may not have been blasted with Don Cherry’s same intensity.
Thus, growing up as both “hockey player” and EMC Mennonite, I had a difficult time reconciling these emerging aspects of my identity. I certainly loved Jesus—my family, friends and church; and I also loved hockey—the competition, the challenge, the achievement. But was there room in my heart for both at the same time?
God gifted me with some hockey skills and the game opened a lot of doors for me—some good, some bad. When I was 12 years old, our team merged with neighbouring towns in order to have enough players, which meant new teammates and friendships, but also exposure to explicit language and conversation topics in the dressing room. Over time, I was invited to play on travelling spring/summer teams and the pursuit of this hockey dream would take my parents and me all over Western Canada for tournaments, training camps and tryouts.
Over the course of my career that culminated in three years of Junior A hockey, I wrestled with this crisis of identity. My Christian faith was always real and yet the temptations, influence and failure that came along with this good ol’ Canadian game took a toll on my soul. I emerged from my 20-year-old season sick of hockey and disoriented about my future.
Craig Cornelsen with Briercrest Clippers teammates Josh Dufresne, Matthew Chenard, and Jarren Schultz.
The following year I decided to enroll at Briercrest Bible College in Caronport, Sask., and play for their hockey program. It was at that campus where I was able to reconcile my identity crisis and make the connection between faith and sport. I finally embraced the simple truth that while I was a gentle-natured Mennonite EMCer and a hockey-obsessed Canadian, my core identity was first and foremost a child of my heavenly Father. I was able to recognize that God had gifted me with a talent and love for the game and I was blessed with the opportunity to play it to his honour and glory! My worth as a blood-bought, image-bearing son was not affected by wins or losses, and this truth brought back my joy in practicing, training and going to battle on the ice with my brothers. My hockey journey has shown me that resolving the tension between church and sport begins with an identity rooted in Christ Jesus.
Furthermore, a sports team can offer us a lived metaphor for the church.
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul speaks about the one body being made up of many parts as a picture of our common baptism and shared Holy Spirit in the church. He makes it clear that the body needs every part; every part, whether great or small, plays a crucial role in the function, health and success of the body. Hence, the unity of this body is crucial: “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (vv. 26–27). Peter, in 1 Peter 2:5, compares the church to a stone wall being built up as a spiritual house, and we are the individual living stones. As stones are bound together by Holy Spirit mortar, there is a strength and security that stands in the face of adversity.
The apostles helpfully use these simple metaphors to describe the makeup of the church, and my hockey-brain immediately connects these ideas to the concept of team.
Sports teams are “bodies” or “stone walls” in exactly the way Paul and Peter describe them. Teams are made up of an eclectic group of individual parts with unique gifts and talents that depend on one another to succeed. Team coaches have the job of identifying where each skill set is best suited to contribute to the overall success of the team (i.e. forward or defense or goalie, first line or fourth line, power play or penalty kill). Without a culture of humility, genuine care for one’s teammates and willingness to sacrifice for the cause (we see you Don Cherry) the team will not be bound together to achieve its full potential.
I believe that my experience being a part of competitive hockey teams has prepared me to serve in my church in that it has given me crucial insight into how to work as a member of the body and a brick in the wall. Playing hockey has drilled into my character that falling short is inevitable, I cannot succeed on my own, practice and training matter, and I always have an opportunity to build others up. My experience has taught me that being a good church member can be boiled down to being a good teammate.
Sport can also provide opportunities for faith to grow through adversity. Paul E. Miller, in his book A Praying Life, tells a story of his daughter who was passionate about field hockey. Her high school had a superb, well-coached program that regularly challenged for state titles. The coach, however—in his daughter’s mind—tended to play favorites. In her grade 11 year she found herself warming the bench and at times sitting out entire games. After one of the matches, a fellow parent approached Miller saying, “Isn’t that unbelievable, what the coach is doing? Doesn’t that make you mad?” He replied, “Actually no. We are thankful that Emily has this low-level suffering while she is still on our watch. It is a wonderful opportunity for her to grow in faith. She’ll learn far more about God on the bench than on the playing field.”
Cornelsen plays with then five-year-old son, Eli, skating on Black Sturgeon Lake in Ontario.
As the father of a U9 hockey player, I was jolted with conviction upon reading this testimony. So often our goals for ourselves and our children are tied to accomplishments. Sports can provide opportunities to achieve, impress and elevate the name on the back of the jersey. However, the reality according to Hockey Canada is that roughly one in every 4,000 minor hockey players have an NHL career (0.025%). This means that all kids playing sports will eventually end up bench-warming in one way, shape or form, where the dream of on-ice/-field/-court glory gets dashed. While it’s difficult for kids to go through, in the scope of our lives and eternity, bench-warming is truly low-level suffering, which ought to be viewed as an opportunity to grow in faith in preparation for the temptation and trials that await. As Christian parents, as intoxicating as it is to see our kid succeed, and as much time and money as we have invested into our child’s sports, we do well to aspire for a perspective as mature as Miller’s.
Therefore, as we tune in to watch our favourite hockey team embark on this grueling march toward Stanley Cup glory, and continue the practice of driving our kids to the rink/field/gym, I believe it is imperative to maintain the perspective that we are not defined by wins and losses or AAA team track suits. As Christians we must remember that sport is fun, social and good exercise, but most importantly a metaphor for life and the church. I strongly believe that hockey and all sports are gifts from God that have a special way of bringing people together. As his children, we have the opportunity to immerse ourselves in them to his honour and glory.
In this hockey-obsessed EMC pastor’s opinion, when sports are providing opportunities to grow as teammates and in faithfulness through adversity, we will be training up effective and productive leaders for the future church. So may God’s truth and spirit lead us forward as we follow the playoffs and coach our kids (and ourselves) accordingly.
Go Jets Go. 😊