Appleton Alliance Church’s sports ministry, Xcel Sports, seeks to use sports, fitness, and the outdoors to connect people with God and one another. The ministry began in 2006 and has experienced significant growth in the last few years. We recently connected with the Director of Xcel Sports, Ryan Borowicz, to learn more about their sports ministry and how they are making a huge impact in their community.
How long have you been in sports ministry?
I’ve been at the church for about 9 years. I’ve spent some time in the business world, been a pharmaceutical rep, and teacher. I participated with Athletes in Action when I was younger and spent time at Camp Kannakuk in Missouri which is a kids camp focused on sports ministry. I also played professional basketball in Australia for one year and was involved in sports ministry through the rec center and church who owned the team.
What initiatives do you offer?
Xcel Sports has 3 ministry areas: sports, fitness, and outdoors. We offer basketball for adults and kids (5th grade and up), football for adults, volleyball for adults, youth camps in the summer (5th grade and up). At this time we don’t offer any options for young children. For fitness, we have a sportsplex and fitness center that is open to the church body and the community. It’s open for use for several hours each day. We also offer 30 fitness classes per week, personal training, and other special events and programs. Our outdoor ministry provides opportunities for those interested in hunting, fishing and archery, and we host a Sportsmen’s Banquet each year.
What are you excited about in your sports ministry?
I’m always excited about the summer. My role changes and allows me to be very hands on in the summer. I’m able to run the leagues rather than be in the managerial/facilities role I have during the school year. We have a great volume of people that participate in the programs, 98% of them don’t attend our church so there’s a lot of outreach opportunity.
We’ve also recently added a youth archery program (Centershot) in our gym. We’ve had about 25 kids (7-14 yrs) get involved in this launch and it has brought in a whole different group of people than our other sports programs. We use a biblical curriculum and spend time shooting bows and arrows.
What are the challenges in your sports ministry?
It was a huge challenge to establish our credibility when we first started our ministry. We didn’t have any type of building to use for sports so we started outdoor leagues and constructed a few outdoor basketball courts. We knew we wanted to do something different and unique and proved that we would conduct ourselves with excellence, be legitimate, and provide quality instruction. We offered a broad range of sports in an attempt to reach the full demographic of our area. Once we saw what sports stuck, we narrowed our focus. Now, if proposed offerings don’t fall under current categories, we don’t offer them. We went from being broad and shallow to doing a few things very well.
One of our current challenges is trying to fit everything in. I struggle with knowing they are all good things, but how do we balance them? Will we have enough volunteers? What do we want the scope of our programming to be? We’re trying to determine how to add new opportunities, maintain some of the old ones, and keep everything current.
What hopes for the future do you have for your sports ministry?
It’s my desire that we never grow stale, and that we stay outreach focused. We always want to be current in our offerings and discontinue things that may not be keeping that focus. We have about 2200 members at our fitness center, 60-65% don’t go to our church and that’s how we want it to be. We want to keep an eye on that number to make sure we’re doing it right. If that number drops, we lose our outreach focus. I’d also like to be able to increase our staff so we can include more sports opportunities for young children.
What does it mean for your sports ministry to strive to be gospel-centered?
Most people don’t know anything about our church other than that it’s big. If people have built up walls about God or the church, we want them to come and have a positive experience and be able to knock down that wall. We recognize that they first have to be listening in order for us to be able to share the gospel with them. We balance what we do with credible programming, and want to be present in all we do. There’s a 3 on 3 basketball league (5th-10th grades) that we run in summer and we purposefully don’t do anything spiritual until the very last week. Our approach is this: If we spend a chunk of time each week and dig in spiritually each week, we won’t accomplish much as they are not coming to hear the gospel but to play basketball. During the last night, we share the gospel while the parents are there and it makes sense in the context of the reason for them being there. In our fitness center, we don’t share the gospel with every person running on the treadmill. We play Christian music, place Scripture on the wall, etc. We get to know names, talk to them, build relationships, and leave room for the Holy Spirit to work. We always want to leave room for God to work through every program we offer.
What motivated you to get involved with CSO?
We actually got involved with CSO before I was on staff and before we even started our sports ministry. Our Senior Pastor knew that sports could be an outreach tool to connect with the community, but he didn’t know how to go about it. A volunteer couple, Jim and Debbie Bashleben, that was helping to get things going connected with Bob Schindler and Bob Dyar. When I came on staff, I didn’t know what I was doing and had never worked at a church so it was instrumental to have a team that could show us the ropes and encourage us as we got started. CSO walked beside us and coached us in various ways. It’s been great to have someone like Bob (Schindler), who provides constant support and who we can be in touch with regularly. There’s no other group out there like CSO.
How has CSO helped you?
CSO provides a great network of people to relate with and also provides a conference each year to encourage us and unify us in our ministry. Sometimes you feel like you’re on an island a bit, especially here in Wisconsin where there are not a lot of sports ministries. It’s been great to plug into the network to know what to do, how to do it, and see it happen. CSO helps us keep focused on the ministry aspect of what we do, so we’re not just running programs. Also, Bob provides great accountability.
What CSO resources do you use the most?
The blog is always really helpful. I took some of the leadership classes at the beginning of my time at Xcel Sports. I also really appreciate the network of people I can connect with through CSO that are in the same place I am. We can share ideas, troubleshoot, and encourage one another. The annual conference has been a great experience also.
