Maryland youth baseball team shares love of Christ to elderly residents

By Sports Spectrum Oct 12, 2018

Sports Spectrum believes in highlighting local ministries doing awesome work through sports. Today we feature Mountain View Community Church in Frederick, Md., and the Urbana 8U baseball team, written by their baseball coach, Luke Grimshaw

#LoveFrederick

Not everyone has the opportunity to attend church, so Mountain View Community Church decided to serve the Lord by taking God’s love directly to the community.

#LoveFrederick was an outreach program developed to impact the Frederick, Md., area earlier this month. All weekend, church services were canceled so that the congregation could bring God’s love directly to Frederick County. More than 500 people and 70 teams organized service projects that glorified God and pointed others to Him. Each participant wore a red shirt, to symbolize the redeeming blood that Jesus shed on our behalf. The service projects ranged from helping first responders, doing home repairs for those in need, assisting people at laundromats, and, with the help of our local baseball team, going to an assistance home to bring joy and hope to some elderly residents.

The Urbana 8U baseball team, consisting of kids 6-8 years old, proved you’re never too young to serve God and make an impact in the community. The kids and leaders chose an assistance home because they felt the residents might have difficulty attending church. They also felt the kids’ smiles could bring the residents great joy.

After arriving at the assistance home, the team engaged with the residents and got to know each one of them through a human scavenger hunt activity. But the team’s biggest hit of the day was the craft they made: a framed baseball cross. The crosses were made out of old baseballs. I guess knocking the cover off the ball isn’t so bad after all. Instead of throwing the balls away, the leather was cut off and formed into a cross. At the service event, the kids paired up with a resident and decorated and designed a baseball cross for each resident.

At the end of the service project, Bobby Goddard (a leader of #LoveFrederick and father of one of the Urbana baseball players) spoke to the kids and residents about Jesus and the sacrifice he made.

“The ultimate example of love is what we see in the cross,” he said. “And I think this baseball has a lot of the elements of what Jesus died for. The dirtiness of the baseball symbolizes our sins. The holes for the stitching remind us that Jesus was pinned to the cross for our sins. And the red stitching symbolizes the blood that He shed on our behalf. This (cross) is the ultimate example of love.”

The Urbana baseball team brought joy to the residents, and, more importantly, left them with the symbol of love. The coaches hope this is just the beginning of these kids making an impact in their communities by serving God. The kids, coaches and parents all agree it was their most important win of the season. #LoveFrederick

You can watch highlights from the event below: