The Gospel According to Youth Sports

I am the grandson of a Pentecostal preacher. Not the snake-handling kind, but the everything-but-snake-handling kind. In our particular brand of Pentecostalism, salvation was very much earned, not given. After all, one sin can keep you out of heaven, so if you sin, you better ask for forgiveness lest you get hit by a bus immediately after said sin and end up in hell.

While my childhood was great, I spent my teenage years intensely scared the rapture could happen at any moment while also believing one single sin could separate me from Jesus. Every single hormonal thought required a procedural recitation of the sinner’s prayer to make sure I was safe. Growing up in that theological culture meant living a life of performance and anxiety. The idea of grace was so foreign to me that, when I first started to understand it in college, I thought there was no way it could be true. We’d always laughed at those once-saved-always-saved Christians (I was taught once-saved-always-saved was just an excuse to sin). But grace was teaching me how much Jesus loved me despite my mistakes and failures.

The tricky part of spending two decades around that belief system is that even after I deconstructed it and rebuilt my faith around a more grace-centric theology, the fear of failure still popped up out of nowhere when I least expected it.

Imagine my surprise standing on the sidelines of a six-year-old’s soccer game when that fear of failure — and in this case pursuit of perfection — reared its ugly head. Intellectually, I knew this game didn’t matter. My son couldn’t even dribble the ball! But when you spend so many years focusing on getting everything right and making sure you’re not making mistakes, it’s hard to completely rid yourself of that.

The sneaky piece of youth sports no one warns you about is that watching those little kids run around a field or a court holds a mirror up to all the little pieces of us we haven’t fully processed or healed. They shine a light on the dark recesses deep within us and, before we even realize it, we begin projecting those insecurities onto our kids.

Their lack of hustle is met with yelling because we’ve equated performance with worth. Their success elicits an unhealthy pride because it validates the parts of us still looking for approval. Their failure triggers the parts of us still trying to earn God’s love.

Maybe that last one is just me.

But what if we had the chance to teach our kids the unshakable, never-ending, never-changing grace and love of Jesus through the sports they’re playing?

The Gospel Has Nothing to Do with the Scoreboard

I remember being at my aunt’s house while home on Christmas break from college. She’d gone to Bible school and was the music minister at the church where my grandpa pastored. The entire church was a family affair. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandma, and Peepaw — my spiritual hero, the Pentecostal preacher. Everyone was there that morning.

I don’t remember how the conversation started, but we began to talk about grace. I vividly remember my aunt standing by the stairs at the edge of the room as I was giving my two cents. She had a little smirk on her face as if to give me the courage to keep going. The kind you give your kid when they first start walking that says, “C’mon. You can do it! You’re almost there!” I had no clue she had moved away from the theology I was raised under to this scandalous grace-based theology, but her look gave me the encouragement to keep going in my pursuit of Jesus.

What I came to realize was that if I really believe the gospel — if I really believe I am loved not because of how I perform but in spite of it — then that changes how I respond to failure.

As I’ve grown up and become a parent, I’ve had to learn, unlearn, and relearn how to respond when my kids fail. And as a sports parent, those beliefs are challenged at every single practice and game. Do I actually believe failure can be redemptive? Do I actually believe grace covers every mistake?

The scandal of grace is that it is unearned love at the exact moment it makes the least sense. It’s an encouragement when you’ve messed up, kneeling down to pick you off the ground when you missed the shot — the I-still-love-you when the game ends and your kid doesn’t win.

Youth sports provide continual opportunities for parents to model the grace and love of Jesus in real, tangible ways. Because whether we like it or not, the way we parent our kids is going to be the way they view God. As dads, if we’re constantly yelling or screaming because we’re mad our kids didn’t perform well, they’re going to grow up viewing the Father as a God who gets mad when they mess up. As moms, if you’re showing disappointment and disdain because your kid isn’t the best on the field, they’re going to grow up viewing Jesus as someone who expects them to live up to the standard they never met with you. When that’s their picture of God, grace becomes a threat, not a gift.

But if we can model unconditional grace and love through these years on the sidelines, our kids will grow up knowing they’re loved despite their performance. They’ll have confidence that nothing they do will shake or separate them from your unrelenting love.

Grace Looks like Rewriting the Script

So what does it look like to model this unconditional grace and love in youth sports? Not theoretically or spiritually, but practically on the sidelines during games.

It looks like making space for big emotions without rushing to fix them. It looks like normalizing mistakes instead of moralizing them. It looks like remembering the scoreboard doesn’t determine the outcome of the game.

But grace doesn’t mean lowering the bar. It doesn’t mean ignoring bad attitudes or pretending effort doesn’t matter. We can still hold our kids to high standards while wrapping everything we do in grace and love. That tension is where true growth happens.

If we’re honest, the reason we sometimes overreact on the sidelines or get too invested in a game our child is playing is usually more about us than it is about them. Sometimes we think winning will make them happier, and happy kids are easier to parent. Or maybe we’re parenting the way we were parented because we never stopped to question if there was a better way.

Or (and this happens way more than we realize) we start feeling better about ourselves when our kids succeed on the field or court. Other parents start congratulating us and we start to believe we had something to do with it. Our kid’s success starts to feel like our success. Conversely, when they don’t play as well, their failure feels like our failure as parents.

Without even noticing that it’s happening, these meaningless games have a sneaky way of holding up a mirror to all the stuff we haven’t dealt with yet.

And that’s why grace is so dang important here. Without it, we’ll default to parenting out of our own insecurities and baggage instead of love. Our unresolved issues will take priority over what our kids actually need from us.

Parenting with grace changes the script completely. It means we correct because we care, not because we’re disappointed. We approach the car ride home with our kid’s well-being at the center of the conversation, not our desire to feel better about ourselves after the next game. Our postgame conversations shift from reacting based on how we feel to helping our kids become who they were made to be.

Grace on the sidelines creates a different posture. Instead of tense pacing, grace shows up as a steady presence in the midst of everything going on. It reminds our kids (and us) that who they are will always matter more than what they do.

Being “and Peter” Parents on the Sideline

One of my favorite stories in the entire Bible happens in Mark 16. After Jesus rises from the dead, the women at the tomb meet an angel. The angel tells the women to go tell the disciples Jesus has risen and is going to meet them in Galilee.

But he adds two little words that tell an incredible story.

Verse 7: But go, tell his disciples and Peter.

If you rewind a couple days, Peter’s the guy who denied Jesus three times after swearing he never would. He was so adamant in his denial that the New Testament scholar I once worked for told me Peter’s third denial was the cultural equivalent of, “I don’t f-ing know the guy!”

Now imagine the shame Peter must’ve felt as Jesus was beaten and hung on the cross. For three days, he was wracked with guilt and disappointment as his savior and friend was lying in a tomb. He swore he’d never walk away, and then not only did he walk away, but Jesus watched him do it. They locked eyes when it happened!

And yet this angel of the Lord tells the women Jesus wants to see his disciples and Peter.

As a parent, I want to be someone who says “and Peter.”

I want to be the parent who shows up with love, grace, and acceptance — especially when it’s not deserved.

I want my kids to look to the sidelines when they mess up and see that kind of love looking back.

What I Hope My Kids Remember

I don’t remember a ton about my own sporting career 30 years ago. There’s the smell of the old gym we played basketball in. The former baseball coach who pulled me aside after a game to give me pointers. The time I laughed so hard after soccer practice that green Gatorade came rushing out of my nose.

And the time in fifth grade when I had to yell at my dad during a game to “please stop!” because he was yelling at me so much while I played.

I don’t know what my kids will remember. My hope is they’ll look back at these games 30 years from now and remember a dad who loved them no matter how they played. Who did his best to model Jesus while sitting in a lawn chair. Who showed them grace and encouragement whenever they messed up. I don’t want my childhood view of Jesus to be passed down to my kids. I want them to grow up knowing grace is the starting point and that their failures don’t change my love for them.

And maybe, just maybe, if I can give them even a small glimpse of the love Jesus showed Peter after his worst mistake, they’ll grow up believing in a God who does the same for them.

Jonathan Carone is the creator of Healthy Sports Parents, a podcast and social platform helping parents lead their kids through youth sports without losing their minds. With a bachelor’s degree in sports management and a master’s in student ministry, Jonathan brings 20 years of experience across all levels of youth sports — from rec leagues to Division I athletics — and now helps parents focus less on raising great athletes and more on raising great humans.