City of Light Church pairs community barbecue with kickball in West Allis

LaFollette Park in West Allis hosted City of Light Church’s Community BBQ & Kickball on Friday, June 26, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., a free, all-ages event built to make the first inning feel as casual as the cookout line. The setup mattered as much as the schedule. Kickball, paired with barbecue, gave the church a simple way to bring in families, neighbors and people who may not have planned on a formal church night.

The park fit the assignment. LaFollette Park, at 9418 W. Washington St., is a space for children to play, families to gather and organized sports to take place, which made it a natural stage for a game that works best when nobody has to overthink it. City of Light Church’s own upcoming-events page included June 26 in its June and July lineup, putting the kickball night inside a broader summer run rather than treating it like a one-off promotion. The message was plain: come for the food, stay for the game, and do it without any barrier to entry.

That simplicity is why kickball still shows up on community calendars. It does not ask for cleats, league experience or a practiced swing, and that makes it a useful connector in a city like West Allis, which says it has nearly 60,000 diverse residents. When a church plants that kind of gathering in a public park instead of a private hall, the social math changes. People can drift in, eat, watch a few innings and decide whether to join the next game without the pressure that usually comes with a formal service or a competitive league night.

The city’s events calendar currently showed no city-run events scheduled for June 2026, which left privately organized gatherings like this one carrying more of the summer calendar’s load. City of Light Church chose a familiar American backyard sport and a barbecue to do it, and in a park built for family traffic, the formula was as direct as it gets.