Answering this question is important to understand what is going on at CSO these days.
To begin, rather than go back in history, we want to give you a snapshot of a church and her Sports Minister, Tyler Sutton, that has been impacted by this movement:
“We have a renewed excitement and energy. We have a renewed passion for pursuing something that’s so much bigger than just sports. We’ve re-designed our programs with the idea of integrating sports and ministry in mind rather than trying to inject ministry into sport which is what we were guilty of doing before. As a result, participants are enjoying a better experience, families are being served better, and volunteers are serving with a higher calling in mind which gives them a lot of significance. We still have a long way to go, but we would not be anywhere near where we are today if it wasn’t for the ministry of CSO!”
CSO, Carolina Sports Outreach, was founded in 1996 on the idea of using sports as a means to reach people with the gospel. Several years ago, we began to understand the gospel more as a story with four chapters – Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation – than as a set of propositional truths, with two significant implications.
The first implication was WHO the gospel is for. Without stating it outright, we thought the gospel was primarily for unbelievers as the message that gets them into heaven. With this four chapter view of the gospel, we now see that the gospel is also for believers as well. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God for everyone who believes…” The tense of verb is present, believes, not past, believed. We experience the power of God in our lives as we presently believe in the gospel, unbeliever and believer alike.
This is why Tim Keller says, “The gospel is not the ABC’s of Christianity, it is the A-Z of Christianity.”
The second implication was WHAT the gospel does. Rather than limiting the effect of the gospel to only the redemption of people, seeing the gospel as this story brought the love of God for all creation and the redemption by Christ to include the reconciliation of “all things” Colossians 1:20 into focus. The Hero comes to overcome all the corruption of the Fall that will be completed in Consummation. For now, we and creation both groan for that day when we will both be set free! (Romans 8:22-23)
Now this expanded view of the WHO and WHAT of the gospel, expanded our view
of the tool of sports. As a universal language, sport forms a great bridge to reach people. As a microcosm of life and revealer of the heart, sport creates a great laboratory to transform these people. The two together bring about the redemption of people and realm of sport.
Therefore, Gospel Centered Sports Ministry has both ends in view – the redemption of people and sports – with the tool of sport used as two means – a bridge and a laboratory – to these ends
We started using these ideas, though not fully formed, in the middle of 2009 when we launched the CSO Network. We formed this Network for several reasons:
- To call churches to this Gospel Centered Sports Ministry
- To clarify the churches that we should work with – those who desired to pursue this kind of ministry
- To clarify what those churches could expect from CSO in helping them pursue this ministry
- To build a more stable and “predictable income” model for funding CSO that would include both support from individuals and organizations and fees from churches for involvement in the CSO Network.
Honestly, while we sensed God’s direction and we did some research, we really didn’t know if any churches would get involved. As far as we could tell, no one had done something like this with churches at this level. Also, you may remember, the middle of 2009 was a time of significant financial crisis that impacted churches as well as individuals and businesses. In spite of these challenges, 15 churches joined in 2009. That number grew to 20 by the end of 2010, 21 by 2011 and 36 in 2012.
View CSO Network Churches in a larger map
The 36 churches in the Network today come from
– 11 different denominations including 6 non-denominational churches
– 12 different states and include 20,000 participants in their ministries and 2,000 volunteer coaches.
The numbers give some evidence that the Gospel Centered Sports Ministry Movement is growing. But, these numbers only represent part of the picture. We hear stories of Network Sports Ministers, such as Wes Bryant of Greenwood Christian Church in Greenwood, IN –
“Through several conversations with CSO, I’ve grown in leadership development and our ministry now has measurable goals that we are striving to reach through God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit. To Him be the glory!…The greatest benefit for me has been my one-on-one conversations with CSO. They keep the word, “Why” at the forefront of my mind. Why does this ministry exist? To spread the gospel and make disciples of Jesus. Otherwise we’re just your average gym.”
Website Growth
In addition, we have seen a growing interest in our website. Along with launching the CSO Network, we launched a website that provided resources for the movement. The interest in the beginning was modest at best with 5448 visits in 2008. As you can see though, for 2012 we are on pace to near 50,000 visits.
With the financial challenges of this time, also came a change in our international strategy. We reduced our travel significantly and focused on putting resources on the website with free access to anyone internationally. In 2009, we had people from 37 countries visit our site and download resources. In 2012, 168 countries have visited the site (we report this information with the qualification that we don’t know exactly how and to 
what end these resources are being used. We do get somewhat regular accounts that do blow us away, however, like “We are using your videos to train churches all throughout our country.”).
Conclusion
We asked the question “What is the Gospel Centered Sports Ministry Movement?” Our hope in asking and answering that question is to highlight the great works of God and as the Psalmist says in Psalm 145 to “commend” the works of God to you so that you will join us as we “celebrate His abundant goodness and joyfully sing of his righteousness.” As we do, we are grateful to all of you who have supported these efforts with prayers, finances, ideas and encouragement all along the way. We know we couldn’t have done it without you. This glimpse of both the work God has done and the people he has given to be with us in this movement fuels our prayers, our passion and our pursuit of our mission “to redeem the idol of sports by leading a global movement of Gospel Centered Sports Ministries in Local Churches.” May it do the same in you.
–From the CSO Team, a part of:
The Sports Outreach Group | One ministry, Two passions
