Bristol Community Church offers basketball outreach program

A hallmark of a healthy church can often be evidenced by its outreach to the community it serves.

Such is the case at Bristol Community Church, where Pastor Gary Lewis and others in the church’s leadership identified a void in its ministry and took action to fill that need.

This winter, the church embarked on its first season of Upward basketball, a faithbased organization dedicated to blending Christian teachings and the teaching of the game to boys and girls in the com- munity, many of whom might otherwise not have the opportunity to learn of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“We’ve had an AWANA program on Wednesday nights,” said Pastor Gary Lewis, who has led the church since 2017.

“We began evaluating the types of families who were missing and decided we could offer a sports program to get them involved.”

Lewis and his team eventually settled on Upward basketball, as it would allow them to utilize the church’s existing gym to host the winter program. Upward is nothing new to families in area, as it has previously been offered at other churches in other towns in Elkhart County. However, many of those programs have dissolved or morphed into non-branded youth basketball leagues.

The program in Bristol was made available to kids age 4 through second grade. Lewis said the initial registration was slow, but once word got out they had to put some who wanted to participate on a waiting list. Eventually, they compiled four teams with 10 kids on each roster. The children came not only from Bristol, but from Goshen, Elkhart, Middlebury and other nearby communities.

The registered players first came to an evaluation session, at which they were graded on their basketball abilities. They were then sorted by a computer program provided by Upward to evenly divide the teams. Beginning the first week of January, the teams practiced at the church Monday evenings, with games played each Saturday morning for eight weeks.

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At practices and during halftime of each game, which are divided into six, six-minute periods, a devotional is provided by Lewis or another program volunteer. Lewis said the devotionals are geared not only to the children, but also indirectly to the parents in attendance.

“I’ve been very impressed by the coaches and volunteers,” said Lewis. “Every child gets to play in a preset rotation. They are given a colored band to wear so they know who to guard on the other team. They only play ‘man-to-man.’ There aren’t any zone defenses.”

Lewis said that the score is not kept, only the time. He is responsible for running the clock during the game.

While Lewis acknowledged the Upward program is a little more expensive to operate as opposed to creating a nonbranded league, he appreciates many details it offers that make its overall execution very smooth. For example, after the church submitted the rosters to Upward, they received in return sealed individual boxes with each player’s name attached that included a reversible jersey, T-shirt and other Upward branded material. Upward also provided a game schedule for the league.

The church did make scholar- ships available to families who needed financial assistance to participate.

Lewis said the church plans to offer the program again next year, perhaps expanding to include more teams. The age range will remain basically the same, with the exception of possibly raising the minimum age to 5. He does not anticipate raising the upper end past second grade, however, since the church’s facilities are more suitable to the younger children and because other programs are available in the area for older kids to play the game. For further information about Bristol Community Church, visit bristolumc.org. To learn more about the Upward program, go to upward.org.