Sports & Recreation on Mission
Sports is a universal language. You can take a ball into the poorests of villages or into some of the most expensive places on the globe and find a connection. I’ve shared the Gospel with a Chinese basketball team through a Buddhist. The Buddhist translator was willing to do it because we had found a common language in basketball.
Traveling on mission with sports takes some preparation. Let’s take a journey together on the road that starts with the mission organization or church, all the way to debriefing after your team arrives back home. It’s important to know the vision of the organization you are planning to serve. You should meet with them and understand how they are currently doing ministry and outreach. They should be the ones determining this as we guide them about sports and recreation. We should never try to push our vision into their space.
The next step is to determine if using a specific sport or recreational camp is appropriate. If they’d like a competitive team to come and play games against a local team then you’ll need to judge the level of play. This can be tricky. For example, I spoke with a local gentleman and he said they have a really good group of guys that practice basketball together three or four times a week. He was wanting to get them ready for large tournaments they had planned to participate in that year. He had a gym we could use and had planned to invite the community to come watch a few nights of basketball. We would also be able to present the Gospel at the games. I had access to a university team that was looking to compete and be on mission. English is not his first language and I didn’t speak his language at all. We ended up having to get videos together so I could see his guys play. We determined that their level of play was not going to match ours. We decided to do 3 nights of basketball clinics with them. It was amazing how we all bonded together around the game and Jesus. We did end up getting to compete against their national team. We split games with them so the level of play was just right.
You never want to embarrass the host team, you will lose their respect. You also don’t want to get blown out by the host team because you won’t gain respect from that either. It’s important to win when you can because it will give you a platform that will allow you to share deeper stories about life and faith. One protip, be prepared to exchange gifts at the game or match. Ask your host but it’s very customary around the world that this takes place before the first competition.
It can be a very valuable experience to allow time for the teams that are competing against each other to get to know one another. This can be done in a variety of ways. Ask the missionary if there are ways the teams can serve the community together. Sharing meals together is a great way to exchange cultures and have conversations. The host could take the athletes on tours of the area and have the host athletes help be the guides. Try to be creative and set aside time for the athletes to simply relax together and hangout.
If the missionary or church would like you to bring a sports camp it’s important to know what sports are valued in that area. It’s possible that introducing a new sport would attract people to come participate. Our organization often does a mixture of sport specific camps and multi-sport camps throughout the year. Next, you need to determine if there is a space that can be used and what type of conditions exist on the court, field or in the area. You should find out if they have equipment you can use or if you’ll need to bring or purchase equipment. As you build a mission team to serve, you will need to find out what level of camp they would like you to put on. It’s fairly simple for volunteers to do a multi-sport camp for kids ages 5 years old to 12 year old. It can be more challenging and the skill level changes the older the kids are.
The most important thing about sending sports and recreation teams is that they are prepared spiritually for what they are about to experience. Satan is always working against us as we plan to go on mission. We train our teams in a variety of ways but the some key components are:
Can they share the Gospel one on one? Ask the missionary about being culturally sensitive.
Can they share their testimony in under 3 minutes using culturally appropriate language. We can often use “christaineese” words that do not translate well.
Are they prepared to lead four or five sessions of small group bible study?
If requested, can someone share to a large group of people at one time? For example, at the halftime of a game that could have thousands in attendance.
At all of our camps no matter the level of play or training it’s our desire that we develop relationships. It’s been my experience that small is better. If you are doing a camp and have the ability to create small groups of 12 or less then the relational level goes up. I also encourage those small groups to stay the same throughout the week. Again, the relationship grows and at the end of the week everyone will feel like they have made a friend they can trust. The trust level will allow our volunteers to speak life and truth to them.
Author: Jason Smith, International Sports Federation | For questions reach out to Jason on NASM Online
