(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to A Shot of Ag, my name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

Today I want to talk about something that's near and dear to my family's heart, Christian Center, baseball, basketball, soccer.

I don't know, hockey.

I don't know what all you do.

How many sports do you guys have?

- Well, we got baseball.

Fall and summer baseball.

- Yeah.

- Winter basketball.

Spring soccer, fall soccer, and bowling.

- Oh, and bowling's like a legit, you can compete in that?

- Yes sir, you betcha, yeah.

- We have Chad Bailey.

Now you are the managing director of the Christian Center, and we have Joe Monahan.

You are the head of coaching and program development at the Christian Center.

- That's right.

- Okay.

Start with you, Chad.

How long have you been there?

- Long time.

- Okay, you're not saying, huh?

- Started in '93, December of '93.

- Wow.

That's a long time, that's a long commitment.

- It has been, it's been a huge blessing.

The plan wasn't to start there, but I think God had other plans.

- Well, what was the original plan?

- Well, I was gonna run the Cubs or Cardinals and if I wasn't gonna play for 'em, I was gonna be the general manager or so, yeah, yeah.

- I guess nobody told them this.

- I know.

As far as the playing, I think I had the NT syndrome.

Have you ever heard that before?

- The NT?

- NT syndrome, yes.

- No.

- No talent.

- Oh.

(overlapping chatter) - That's clever.

And Joe, what about you?

How long have you been there?

- Coming up on seven years.

- Seven years.

So between the both of you, fairly significant amount of time of helping kids and all that stuff?

I mean, it's gotta be a good feeling because, well, I'll let you guys describe it, what is the Christian Center?

- So we celebrate 75 years next year.

So we started at Hamilton and Perry downtown in 1948.

And so the vision of the Christian Center was a place where Christians can go and the lost could find Christ.

- Okay.

- And so it's kind of evolved.

We moved up to Knoxville and Frye probably in 1949.

- Across from the old Cheddars?

- No, that was Knoxville and Frye.

I think that was by the old driver's licenses place.

Yes.

And so they were there from about 1949 to 1962.

1962, we moved across from the old Cheddar's, Perkins.

- I'm just trying to show that I know Peoria.

- So they said when they built the Christian Center, it's too far outta town, you're crazy.

You built that so far out of town.

- Funny how that works.

- Funny how that works, yeah.

- For a family like ours that lives on a farm, a lot of times the smaller towns don't have access to, even baseball.

We didn't have baseball, didn't have soccer, but it just allowed our kids a chance to come and play organized baseball, organized soccer, they loved it.

Plus, it's an environment, and maybe I can say this, but you guys can't, it's in a very nice environment.

You go to some of the other sporting events and the parents and the players get a little rowdy.

You guys, you put a stop to that.

You don't allow that, do you?

- We try not to.

- One of the things that I think sets the Christian Center apart is that environment that you just spoke to.

We wanna do sports differently.

And just the fact that you said that I think is evidence that the Christian Center is a different environment.

- It does.

Now, my wife, every once in a while, your umpires will make a call that's not in agreeance with her and sometimes something slips out, right?

And she gets a little frustrated and throws come on you blind ref and stuff like that.

And so, I mean, you just try to encourage a positive attitude and especially with the players too.

- In basketball, we just started games for basketball.

And I run the third and fourth grade league at Woodland Baptist.

As you would say, the carpeted gym.

- Yes.

And so I tell the parents, and now I'm the ref, so, but cheer and don't jeer.

Your son or daughter want to hear you be their loudest cheerleader and not their coach.

And also, I'm the ref, so don't jeer at me please.

- Just kinda helping yourself out, isn't it?

- Well, a little bit, yeah.

Because I mean, I've been around Christian Center.

You're not a very good ref.

(laughs) - Well, I try.

How's that?

I try.

- It is tough because, I mean, finding people to be umps and refs.

I mean, a lot of times it's one person doing a game, they're gonna miss calls.

It's just gonna happen.

- Yeah, yeah.

I always said this, coaching and umpire from the stands, I've never lost a game coaching from the stands and umpiring from the stands, I've never missed a call.

- Yeah, it's amazing.

Amazing how that works.

Okay, Chad, let's go back to your background.

- Yes.

- And where are you from originally?

- East Peoria and Washington.

So I grew up in the area.

Okay.

- Yes, sir.

And your dad actually played ball?

- He did.

So my dad grew up in Creve Coeur, went to Pekin High School, and signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

- That's going back.

- That's going back a little ways.

So he was in their minor league system and they found a heart condition, so they let him go.

But he came back and was gonna play for Letourneau which is now Komatsu.

But he was on another team and they never trade him.

And he worked 40 plus years at Komatsu.

Yeah, so I think we were born with a ball in the crib.

Yeah.

- Your sister also played?

- Yeah, she was the real athlete in the family.

So she played at Illinois State University, softball.

Well, she grew up in East Peoria little league with the boys because they didn't have really girl softball back in the day.

So my dad says, I'm gonna sign this little girl up and you're gonna tell her she can't play.

And they didn't have the guts enough to tell this little girl.

So she made all the traveling teams, all the all star teams with the boys.

- Oh, really?

- And she played hardball with the boys until like seventh or eighth grade, and then transitioned to softball, and then played Illinois State when they're in the top 25 in the country.

- Oh really?

- Yeah.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- Okay, then there was you.

- There was me.

- With the NT.

- NT, no talent, that's right.

- But obviously a love of the game.

- Oh yeah.

- Now you do have some farm background in your family, correct?

- We do.

My wife grew up on a farm in Everly, close to Spencer, Iowa.

- Okay.

- And so they, I think... - You married an Iowa girl?

- I did, yes, I did.

- Okay.

(laughs) - So she grew up, she didn't have any brothers.

And so I think I was just telling you the story before we came on that she was cultivating like at age 10 and her dad forgot to tell her where the brake was.

So she came to the end of the field, was like, how do I stop this thing?

And she actually went up the guide wire and is like this.

So the cultivator didn't, 'cause it was on the back, didn't flip her.

Screamed her head off.

And so her dad comes running and says, honey, let's not tell mom about this.

(laughs) So she grew up on a farm riding horses and helping around the farm.

And she grew up, Everly, the mascot was the cattle feeders.

- The High school?

- High school.

- Was the cattle feeders.

- And I said, how would you like to be on the cheerleading squad of the cattle feeders?

- What was your mascot, a bucket?

- I don't know.

(laughs) - Oh my gosh, I've never even heard of that.

- So, yes.

So she is more handy than I am, Rob, for sure.

- What kind of farm?

- Just, I think, soy, soybean, corn.

I think they raised hogs.

- Gotcha.

- They did a little bit of everything, so yeah.

- No dairy?

- I don't think so.

- All right.

Well you take a gamble when you date or marry an Iowa female so I'm glad it worked out.

- That's right.

- Now, Joe, as far as you and your background, what'd you grow up doing?

- I grew up here in Peoria and grew up playing sports.

That was the big thing for me.

- What was your sport of choice?

- When I was young, I played 'em all.

Basketball was probably my favorite, but as I got older, soccer became the main sport for me and really for my whole family.

- Yeah, see Chad and I are of the age where soccer's really not a sport.

(laughs) - Believe me, Rob, I hear things like that regularly from this guy.

- So Joe actually grew up at the Christian Center.

So Joe was a Christian Center kid.

- The Christian Center's a part of my story.

- And Joe was a very good athlete.

Yeah.

So he was always one of the best players on his team.

So yeah, he played college soccer.

- Okay, where at?

- Judson University, it's up in Chicagoland.

- Gotcha.

- A small school up there.

- It's a lot of running.

- It is, it is.

- Cross country with a ball, that's what I say.

- It's amazing to me because you and I did grow up in a different time when it wasn't a sport.

And now you go to like these kid events and there's a thousand kids out there all playing soccer and they all know how to play it.

I'm sitting there, I don't know anything about the rules, but I mean, is it to the point like the Christian Center, as far as a number of kids, what's the biggest sport?

- Soccer.

- We do two seasons of soccer and those two seasons are combined to make our biggest sport.

And particularly the younger ages, soccer is our biggest sport by far.

- Gotcha.

- The number of young kids we have running around on the field is, we have hundreds of kids.

- I think we had what, 440 in spring soccer and then about 450 in fall soccer.

- Think a little more in fall.

- So we're between nine and a thousand kids in soccer.

And we think soccer's a very kid friendly sport.

You don't double dribble, you don't travel, you don't strike out, you don't make an error.

You just run around and kick the ball.

- The game doesn't stop.

If you make a mistake, you can get up and keep playing.

And so it allows you to learn on the fly.

Learn by playing.

- I personally don't trust a sport you don't use your hands.

- You can use your hands, it's not allowed.

(laughs) - So the soccer, obviously it takes a lot of room to have that many soccer fields.

So you guys, are you just out at Bethany?

- So we were blessed to partner with Bethany, matter of fact, I think it was a cornfield or soybean field.

And they partnered with us to transform that, we were at three different locations playing soccer.

And so we're able to combine everything right there for our fall soccer.

And then we do spring soccer, we did it outside, but it gets a little cold and wet in March and April in Illinois, 'cause you don't know if you're gonna have a foot of snow.

So we went inside to Louisville Slugger in their dome.

- Oh yeah.

- And we had about 400 and some kids last year with about a hundred kids on the waiting list.

- Okay.

- And Joe, how many years have we done that?

- This will be our fourth spring coming up inside.

- Okay.

- Okay, explain this to me, why you guys are so successful because every school has all these sports, but yet you guys, you seem to be at capacity every single year.

Why do you think that is?

- I'll start.

- Go ahead.

- You referenced, I think, a big factor in that success.

We have a different environment.

We treat sports differently.

You see lots of headlines in the news about youth sports and they're all bad or most of them are bad.

You hear about the parents that ran onto the field or the coach that lost his mind and argued with referees.

And we want to treat it differently.

And that's because of our faith in Jesus.

Jesus is the reason it's different.

And we want people to see that in the way we play sports, even as believers in Jesus, even as Christians, we can separate our faith from sports.

We step on the field and now we become the boss and we want to communicate something different because God's word shows us a different way of doing things.

And that translates to a different environment.

One that's more positive.

Yet we still want to teach the games well.

We still want to bring a high level to these different sports, but help kids understand there's more to life than just soccer, more to life than just baseball.

- It might be intimidating because some people don't know, it's like, all right, do I have to be a Christian to play there or are they gonna give me a Bible quiz when I show up and sign my kid up?

- Sure, yeah, yeah.

- What do you say to that?

- Nope.

Just like signing up at a part district or any other place, there's no litmus test.

You come, we do share, we do a devotion before every game.

And so we do share God's word, but we don't cram it down, quote, anybody's throat.

But we're not ashamed of sharing the good news of the gospel, so yeah.

- It's pretty amazing to me because I've seen you do it.

You get, I don't know, let's say 50 kids that are ready to play baseball.

And it's your job to keep their attention and give them a message about God right before the game.

And that has to be incredibly hard 'cause they're all ready to go.

- My wife says I speak really loud too often because I'm used to trying to corral the kids.

But you know what, it's just an opportunity that both Joe and I had to place our faith in Christ during our lifetime.

And so we just feel like that the gospel tells us that we're supposed to proclaim the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, so we do that.

And sometimes maybe a devotion is maybe better than another devotion, but God's word says it does not return void.

And so we have that opportunity.

- Yeah and there are times, obviously, when it's more challenging than others as we're sharing those devotional thoughts.

But we wanna start each practice and each game off on the right foot.

We want to refocus and make sure our minds are on the right thing as we start to play.

- You're dealing with kids and they're at the age where they're learning to be competitive, which is a great thing.

- Right, right.

- Right.

- You've gotta learn to be a teammate, you've gotta learn to want to win, but at the same time not be overdrawn by that, to have that, the driving force.

That's gotta be hard to maintain that balance to where they're having fun, they wanna succeed in what they're doing, but at the same time understand that this is not, that's all in life.

- It's not the World Series.

- Yeah.

- So one thing is that we talk about love God and love others, love Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And that, like during basketball this Saturday, I say, hey, God wants you to be a great player.

He wants to maximize your potential, but he also I think cares more about your attitude and your effort, he cares about your heart.

Are you a great teammate?

You could have 30 points or 10 rebounds, but still do it with a heart of, hey, this is all about me.

And so I think God wants us to love him and love others and cares more about how we treat the other team and how we treat our teammates.

And that's part of what Joe does with our coaches.

- Right.

And we just don't know.

Kids probably aren't hearing this anywhere else.

When we play sports, when we watch sports on TV, we are kind of trained up from young ages.

It's kind of about ourselves.

I mean, even in a team concept, yeah, we focus on team, but there's a lot of glory that we can find for ourselves in sports.

And there's just a lot of a me attitude.

I'm gonna do what's best for myself.

And so we have an opportunity to show kids there's a different way of doing it.

- So like, the argument against us, I'm gonna play devil's advocate.

Is that you aren't going to teach these kids that the real way in order to win in life.

- Sure.

- You're going to teach them it's okay to not keep score.

- Sure.

- What's your argument to that?

- I think Jesus would've been the most competitive player on the field.

Now he would've done it with love and he would've done it, with kindness.

But when he went to the cross, I mean the agony, the pain, he could have quit, he didn't quit.

You know what I'm saying?

He could have called down the angels and said, hey, get me off this cross, but he didn't.

So I think Christians and people don't understand this, are probably the most focused and competitive people because they're playing for a different reason.

They're playing for the glory of God, not just the glory of self.

So anything to add to that?

- No, that's exactly right.

The Bible has a lot to say about competition.

Doesn't use that word maybe, but there's lots of principles that we can apply to competition and just one of the core verses, and I'll just share it, Colossians 3:23 says, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for man."

We should approach it with an attitude of we're gonna give this everything we've got.

It's just who are we doing that for?

Are we doing it for ourselves, are we doing it for the Lord?

And if we understand what God has done for us, it should change our approach to competition.

He gave everything for me.

I ought to give everything for him.

Is the scoreboard the ultimate goal?

And the world would say it is.

And we'd say it isn't, doesn't mean our approach and our effort is any different.

I think that the stereotype is that the Christian athlete is soft.

And I don't think anything about Jesus is soft.

But again, the world has a different perspective on it.

- Yeah, I've never really thought about that.

Like if you're picking teams and you had Jesus and Barry Bonds, who would you go with?

(laughs) - Can I share a story about that?

I asked, I went on a mission trip to Albania a year and a half ago, and we asked this group of Albanian men, what would it look like to have Jesus on the field with you?

Like God's word says that Jesus is with us.

What would that look like?

And one of 'em said, we'd score lots of goals.

Jesus would score lots of goals.

(laughs) Jesus would be awesome to have on the field with you.

- Yeah, you'd probably have to behave yourself.

(laughs) - Well, sometimes, Jesus probably played some kind of game.

- Probably.

- Whatever it was back in the day.

He probably played some kind of quote sports, you know?

And again, he would've went as hard as anybody.

Why?

Because he is playing for the glory of God, not just his own self-gratification.

And you know what I'm saying?

So yeah.

- Yeah, that would be tough.

So what are you hoping for with the future of the Christian Center?

- As far as like facilities or programs?

- Are you wanting to grow or you wanting to I don't know, anything?

- And again, like you said, I've been there a long time and I've just seen God's hand.

And like right now we're doing a baseball field upgrade.

I've seen God's Hand where one of our board members was, and I think you had Pastor Rich on here, was Rich's uncle.

So he called Rich up and said, hey, let's build kids instead of corn on the field.

You know what I mean?

And so I just think that we can have some visions, but I think we kind of see where God's working.

Like soccer, we had one soccer, we didn't, we started soccer and I think our first year we had 89 kids.

89 kids.

Yeah.

And so we were at Great Central Insurance.

- Yeah, I remember that.

- Yeah.

I mean... - Horrible parking.

- Horrible parking.

And you're hoping a kid didn't kick it on War Memorial.

And so, but then we expanded, we were at Northwoods Church, we're down in Bielfeldt Park, and then God just keep opening doors.

Basketball, I mean, Rob, where's our gym at?

Can you tell us?

- There's a whole bunch of 'em.

- We don't have a gym, but God's opened the doors, Woodland Baptist, North Minister Pres, First English Lutheran, Redeemer Lutheran, Peoria Christian School, Peoria First Church, anything else did I miss?

Oh, Dream Center.

So we played at all those different facilities over the course of the year.

So we just kind of see where God's working and jump on.

But we're doing the field upgrade right now.

We're actually putting artificial turf in one field at the Christian Center and gonna do that.

And then we actually built a field, the church next to us, a lot of people don't know this, they're neighbors, they're great neighbors.

Peoria First.

- Oh, I thought they were affiliated.

- No, so we're non-denominational.

We're not affiliated with a given church.

- Gotcha.

- And so they let us build a little tee-ball field behind the church.

- Nice.

- And because we had to have our kids go play somewhere else around the community, so we're able to bring them kind of in-house, yeah.

- Well, all of our kids were involved in Christian Center.

I mean, it has been such a big part of our family and I can tell you that it is probably one of the best things that have ever happened to us because the kids, yes, they learned how to play the games.

But also, they dealt with coaches that were looking after them personally, not just their stats.

They were dealing with teammates that learned how to be a friend instead of just push somebody to hit a home run and that, so it definitely meant a lot to our family.

And I'm so happy to see it succeed.

I'm so happy for it to be such a strong organization because in a world of a lot of crap, it's really good to see something strong and positive and continue to grow.

- Thank you, yes.

And God's blessed us.

And for those that don't know, we offer 10 lanes of bowling.

- 10 lanes?

- 10 lanes, alcohol, smoke-free, always been.

- Are you good at it?

- No, I can't remember the last time I bowled.

I'm too busy.

- Really, you've never bowled there?

- No, I have bowled, but I honestly can't remember the last time I bowled 'cause we're just busy.

- Joe, what's your average score?

- Joe is probably pretty good.

- I'm okay.

I bowled in a league for the first time over the summer.

But it was a nine pin league.

Do you know what nine pin is?

- Yeah, it would probably be one less than 10.

- It is, but on your first ball, if you only knock nine of 'em down, it counts as a strike.

- What?

- I know, it's our kind of bowling.

- Dumb?

(laughs) - So my scores were elevated.

I don't really know what my average is.

- Well, yeah.

- And we do offer open bowling to the community.

Anybody can walk in the door when we don't have leagues.

We do have adult leagues, we have a youth bowling league, real strong youth bowling league.

But anybody can walk in the door.

And we are cheapest price in town.

We've got pool room, we offer a pool league on Tuesday nights.

We've got a video game room, so it's a place for people to hang out.

- If people wanna find out more about the Christian Center, where do they go?

- They can go on our website, www.thechristiancenter.cc and then they could give us a call, 309-685-4218.

And yeah, we'd love to talk to anybody.

We start at age five.

The kids at age five, all of our sports, and all of our sports go through age 18.

- Okay.

And I will say I, if you're even thinking about it, I would suggest that you go ahead and contact them.

Have your kid try it.

It's an amazing program that's really helped our family.

So guys, thank you so very much.

- Thank you.

- Everybody else, we'll catch you next week.

(upbeat music)