Faith Night Follow-up: Report from the Field

Washington Nationals Baseball at RFK Stadium-Washington, DC
Originally uploaded by Michael6076

So, last Sunday afternoon Marcus, Nora and I join my friend from seminary, Amy-Ellen and her boyfriend Jason at the Washington Nationals vs. St. Louis Cardinals Baseball game which had been designated as "Faith Night." As I said before, this was actually a coincidence. We weren't there for "Faith Night," even though we are, I suppose, part of the marketing demographic for this sort of thing given that we are Christians. But we were there mainly because of Marcus and Amy-Ellen's inexplicable (in my opinion) love for the St. Louis Cardinals.

But since I wrote about this previously, I thought I would offer a little follow up here.

First of all, the big deal that some people were making about the Washington Nationals "endorsing" this "Christian" event was in my mind totally blown out of proportion. A mountain out of a molehill, I would say. Because during the entire game there wasn't even a single reference to any church (except the church of baseball, of course). There wasn't anyone handing out tracts. There were no Veggie Tale characters mixing it up with the presidents, no Bible verses displayed on the big screen. The only thing that might count was that the contemporary Christian band Mercy Me sang "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch. But they ALWAYS sing that song at that point in the game, and at least Mercy Me sounded good. (Sometimes it isn't even in tune--making it that much more painful.)

Secondly, unless you already knew about the "Faith Night" event that was to take place after the game, you never would have had known it was going on. In fact, as far as I could tell, unless you had already bought your ticket to the concert in advance, you couldn't even stay afterwards for the concert! Which, I think, proves my earlier point, that this was not an effective evangelization tool; this was about marketing Christianity to people who have already bought in. Faith Night was for the already converted. Church groups and individual Christians who heard about the event on the Christian radio stations were the ones who bought the tickets. The two drunks sitting in front of us, the ones who (OK, let me make an assumption here) may really need to hear about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, had no idea about Faith Night, and even if they had, they didn't have tickets to the concert, so too bad for them.

Now, some people that I really like and respect commented on my previous post that "God can use all things for good" and that faith night, though it might be a bit crass and commercial, might offer the opportunity for someones life to be changed. And that's a good point--who am I to doubt the power of God.

I for one would never say that we self-professing Christians don't need need to have our faith strengthened by events like these, if that's what works for you. It's also possible that some good church-going Christians brought some of their seeker friends with them, and maybe that made a connection--I think that kind of person-to-person evangelism is the most effective kind anyway. But as for "Faith Night" being somehow exclusive to people of other faiths, and as for it being some great opportunity for searching people to come to Christ, well, I'm still not buying it.