A fellowship built around stewardship, practice, and service.
Project Grow the Game exists to explore what happens when people take seriously the responsibility to grow themselves, care for what they have been given, and use what they learn in service of something beyond themselves.
The Game is Life
We use the word 'game' because life continually asks us to participate in conditions we did not fully choose and cannot completely control. Every meaningful discipline becomes a smaller arena in which we practice meeting those realities. The deeper question is not simply whether we win. It is how we choose to participate, what kind of person that participation is forming, and what becomes possible for others because we were willing to learn.
A Note from the Founder
My name is Julian Sidon, and I founded Project Grow the Game. I use the word “founded” carefully because I do not feel that I invented this project in the way someone invents a product. It emerged over time through experiences, relationships, failures, opportunities, and communities that I could never have designed in advance.
I grew up around questions of faith and meaning, eventually studied philosophy at UC Santa Barbara, and spent much of my education outside the classroom learning through work, entrepreneurship, golf, fishing, documentary production, community building, and the strange collection of places life kept leading me. For a long time, those experiences seemed unrelated. Eventually I realized they were teaching me many of the same things.
People need meaningful responsibility. Community requires contribution. Trust matters. Skills are meant to be shared. Leadership is stewardship. And growth becomes real when it changes how we behave toward other people. Project Grow the Game became a way of pulling those threads together.
I believe the Lord has been present throughout that process, and I understand my role less as ownership of the mission than stewardship of whatever I have been asked to carry forward. I do not think that means I am always right. Quite the opposite. If this is going to remain rooted in God, then correction, humility, surrender, discernment, and accountability have to remain part of the process.
Our Foundation
- Our lives are gifts entrusted to us, not possessions we own.
- We believe in a God who is real and whose truth matters.
- Our gifts are meant to be used in service to something greater.
- Discipline is the quiet accumulation of choices made when motivation is absent.
- Service is the natural consequence of genuine growth and contribution.
- Community asks members to participate rather than merely entertain them.
Core Practices
The disciplines through which we learn to care for what has been entrusted to us.
Truth
Seeing clearly and speaking honestly, especially when reality contradicts the story we would rather tell ourselves.
Stewardship
Recognizing that much of what matters in our lives is temporarily placed in our care rather than permanently possessed.
Discipline
The quiet accumulation of choices made when motivation is absent and progress feels slow.
Service
Knowledge becomes more valuable when it can be passed forward and opportunity becomes more meaningful when it can be extended.
Humility
Remaining teachable is one of the conditions of continuing to grow and competence should deepen humility rather than eliminate it.
Community
A healthy community asks its members to participate, showing up, contributing, and learning to take responsibility together.
Growing the game
To grow the game means developing people capable of caring for it. We believe that stewardship is the central responsibility of human life, and that growth is the quiet accumulation of choices made when nobody is applauding.
Where We Are Now
Project Grow the Game is intentionally still becoming. We would rather let the work grow from real relationships and meaningful opportunities than rush to create an elaborate institutional structure before it is needed. Right now, that means continuing to gather people, build relationships, support worthwhile work, and create opportunities for mentorship and participation.
The Founder
Julian Sidon is the founder of Project Grow the Game. He studied philosophy at UC Santa Barbara, where he founded a student golf community that grew into a network of mentorship and friendship. His broader experience spans commercial fishing, documentary production, and entrepreneurship. Julian understands the project as one manifestation of the Lord’s will in his own life, seeing his role as stewardship rather than ownership of the mission.