As I wrote about last week, we recently did an assessment for a large sports ministry. One of the biggest takeaways from the assessment was how much disparity there was from the leaders of the church, coaches and participants over what the mission of the ministry was. Most of the responses essentially either said ‘evangelism’ or ‘discipleship’ but there were others as well.
Obviously, every church/sports minister would love to see both evangelism or discipleship take place but when people in the ministry aren’t clear about the mission, it causes confusion…and eventually conflict. The confusion can also lead to a lack of impact.
According to the research, the most effective groups were the most focused groups. People who attend groups in churches that understand the primary purpose of their groups reported a higher level of group effectiveness than those who attend groups in churches with a plethora of purposes.
That above quote is from a blog Eric Geiger recently wrote. Even though it was geared towards small groups, it certainly applies to sports ministry.
Let’s make this real for a moment. Imagine a coach in your ministry. He has a mixture of kids/parents on his team; some are Christians and some aren’t. When he thinks of impacting his team, does he focus on the Christian kids/parents and their growth as believers or the non-Christian kids/parents and their growth and understanding of Christianity? If you say “both” then you might not get either. As Geiger says in the blog, “…identify the chief purpose (or two purposes) the groups are gathered together to accomplish, and to focus energy and attention in that direction.”
Another thing to consider if your ministry’s mission is both evangelism and discipleship is this:
In a two horse race between evangelism and discipleship, discipleship will always win. Why? It’s easier.
That’s one of the many reasons why we encourage sports ministries to emphasize evangelism as their mission. It doesn’t mean discipleship won’t or can’t happen. Discipleship will happen because it’s a natural bi-product of evangelism. There are plenty of ministries/programs in the church to help disciple people. Not many ministries have the potential to impact your lost community like sports ministry does.