Sports create an environment for relationships to be forged and for Christ to be shared.
—Greg Asimakoupoulos
Jerry Philpott never attended our church. To the best of my knowledge, he never responded to an altar call. But he did to a telephone call inviting him to play eighteen holes.
A retired cop named Jim who loved golf had started attending our church. One Sunday I suggested we tee it up sometime. That afternoon we set a tee time for Tuesday morning.
On the course, Jim introduced me to two of his friends with whom we would be playing, Jerry and Rod. Before we had finished the front nine, Jim told me that Jerry had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer, though I wouldn’t have guessed it by the way he swung a golf club. Jerry didn’t say much that day, but I drove back to church that morning determined to stay close to him. Tuesdays became our day for golf.
After our second outing, Jerry broke his silence about his death sentence; he was scared. I sent him a greeting card along with an article on golf written by a Christian friend of mine. I conveyed my concern and expressed my appreciation for our time together.
Each week Jerry and I chased our shots up and down the fairways. Occasionally our chats would dip below the surface. I continued sending notes. I’d enclose a devotional thought I had come across that week. Jerry relayed his appreciation.
Three months later, Jerry’s cancer was strangling his strength. He’d join us for coffee, but not for golf. Rod kept me posted on Jerry’s declining condition. Before I left on an extended trip, I asked Jim if he would go with me to Jerry’s home to pray with him. That afternoon, we reminisced about golf. We laughed. We prayed. Just before we left, Jerry acknowledged his need for a Savior. When I returned from my trip, Jerry had gone home to be with Christ.
Sports often feel like a rival to church involvement. A recent Gallup poll revealed that 90 percent of the American population is affected by some kind of sports activity each month, and 75 percent are affected by it each week. Americans are motivated by athletic involvement on the field, in the stands, or from the couch.
But sports can also be the church’s ally. Sports are a natural way to draw close to nonbelievers. The settings create an environment for relationships to be forged and for Christ to be shared.
I decided to learn the sports-evangelism methods churches are using in order to help fulfill the Great Commission.
Intentional start
Eight years ago, Paul Van Camp, pastor of Ogema Baptist Church in rural Wisconsin, sat in his study scratching his head. What could a church with 150 attenders in a town of less than 150 people do for outreach?
As he walked across the church parking lot to the parsonage, Paul looked across the church lawn and visualized young people playing basketball on the property. The leadership of Ogema Baptist latched on to Paul’s dream and voted to blacktop the field. Within months, Hi-Point Christian Basketball Camp was born.
The response was overwhelming. After two years, the old parking lot was repaved and four portable standards were acquired to accommodate the extra participants.
“After seven summers of camps, the positive impact of our sports ministry can clearly be seen,” Paul says. “Even though we’ve had a number of people join our church (including a coach and his wife), the greatest reward has been all the youth who have made commitments to Christ.”
In my former church, the sport of choice was not basketball but golf. We scheduled an annual golf outing that included trophies, food, and novelty-type prizes. We encouraged people to invite unchurched friends and played a scramble format so golfers of all abilities could have a good time. Several men began attending church and committed their lives to Christ.
The key to an effective sports ministry, says Rodger Oswald, director of Church Sports International (a parachurch ministry based in San Jose, California), is that “there is an intentional attempt to involve those who are not yet Christians in your program. The board has to believe that we aren’t just wanting to play games. They must buy into the idea that here is a nonthreatening way to reach people.”
Ogema Baptist Church even eliminated its Sunday evening service during the summer so the basketball camp could begin on Sunday night. The change was acceptable because the leaders of the congregation were clear about the overall purpose of the sports ministry.
Creative measures
Hope Center Church in Pleasant Hill, California, offers a summer sports camp each July for church kids and their friends. For five days, youth ages ten through fifteen are divided into groups based on their sport of choice. Some practice football, others basketball, others soccer.
During the week, the message of salvation is presented, and devotional materials are distributed. At the end of the week, a Christian sports celebrity from a Bay Area professional team shares his testimony. Each participant is given an autographed photo and certificate of achievement.
Across town from Hope Center, a Southern Baptist church of 200 attenders has started sports evangelism on a smaller scale. The men’s fellowship of Bethel Church sponsors a spring sports banquet.
“It’s a chance for our small church to attempt something pretty big,” says pastor Larry Baker. “We invite one of the Christians on the San Francisco 49ers to speak at a catered dinner in our church fellowship hall.”
The banquet is designed for dads and their kids. The men feel they can invite someone from their work or health club who otherwise wouldn’t darken the door of the church.
Here are some other ways churches have used sports means to reach gospel ends:
Opening church space to the public. For the past ten years, Glen Ellyn Bible Church near Chicago has made its gymnasium available to basketball enthusiasts on Monday and Thursday nights. Members and their colleagues from work meet at the church for pickup games. According to executive pastor Jeff Helton, fifty men and boys show up on any given night.
More than just sweat has come out of those evenings, however. Tom, for example, was brash, his mouth was foul. He had been invited by a friend from work to Glen Ellyn Bible Church’s open gym. He was befriended, but his vocabulary was lovingly challenged. During the several years he played on Thursday nights, he experienced the love of caring Christian men who have responded to his loss of a job and financial setbacks. Tom not only started attending worship, he also became a follower of Christ.
A good question to ask is: What space indoors or outdoors would allow you to reach kids and adults through sports?
Renting outside space. An inner-city church in San Francisco did not own a gymnasium, but its singles wanted to reach the infamous Mission District where the church was located. They contacted a nearby elementary school, which rented their multipurpose room to them to start an adult volleyball league.
Churches limited in their discretionary space can use public parks and school fields. Often corporations also own facilities that can be rented. Even other community churches may be willing to allow use of their gym or field.
A group of men in another church recognized there were neighborhood boys playing catch in the streets, boys uninterested in sitting in a Sunday school class. One man conceived a neighborhood Wiffle ball tournament. He talked the church property committee into painting a ball diamond on the parking lot. Home run lines were painted on the wall of the church that faced the parking lot. The kids stood at home plate and hit toward the building, glass windows and all.
Helping parents parent. Oswald believes many working parents feel guilt over the lack of time they spend with their children. “We recommend that churches offer Parent-Child Field Days,” says Oswald. “It doesn’t take much effort or manpower to plan a day for parents and kids to play silly relay games.” By printing up a flier and spreading the word throughout the neighborhood, your church may reach non-Christian parents looking for ways to spend a few hours on a Saturday.
A Chicago church bought a block of tickets to a Cubs game last summer. The number of tickets allowed each family to invite a family from outside the church. A tailgate party in the church parking lot preceded the caravan of cars into downtown Chicago. Everybody attending received a box of Cracker Jacks—with a gospel tract written by a Chicago sports celebrity taped to the side.
Piggyback on national championships. Another creative method is the Super Bowl Party Video Kit ($79.95, Discovery House, 800-269-5727). The kit, produced by a coalition of sports ministries, is designed for Christians hosting a gathering of friends and neighbors to watch the game in their home. During halftime, an NFL veteran offers insights about what it means to experience a relationship with God.
While Oswald is excited about the video kit, he cautions, “I’d be discerning when showing a video to a nonbelieving neighbor if it’s the first time he or she has been in my home. A kit approach assumes a relationship already exists.”
Leisurely outreach
In the early seventies, Peninsula Covenant Church in Redwood City, California, purchased a financially troubled swim-and-tennis club adjacent to the church. It quickly gained a reputation as a church where recreation was part of its ministry. Pastor Mike Ryan played for the 1972 national champion USC Trojan football team. “If Christians are going to be relevant in the nineties,” he says, “they are going to have to take advantage of our culture’s preoccupation with sports and recreation. That’s where God desires to speak. Beginning where you are might simply mean taking a long walk around your community to see what kinds of sports kids are into.”
Sports is a universal language. Churches finding ways to speak this language may also find people ready to hear the Christian message.
Copyright © 1996 by Christianity Today/Leadership
