This news article discusses how members from Community Christian Church have been volunteering at local schools teaching the students skills such as: crochet, carpentry, ballet, cooking, sewing and arts and crafts. “The church’s goal is to help people get out of the poverty cycle. In East Aurora, the church has renovated homes and offered after-school programs for academics and sports.”
For most people, this doesn’t sound like sports ministry. It’s not on the site of a church. It’s not programmatic. It includes more than sports (hobbies, skills). The ministry’s primary focus in the reduction of poverty. None of these facts fit into the “box” of sports ministry that we traditionally think of. However, these volunteers from Community Christian Church are using the context of sports (as well as hobbies and skills) to not only teach the children life lessons but also to build relationships. While we don’t know this from the article, I’m almost positive that through these relationships, they hope the children come to a saving knowledge of Christ.
Whether this is on-site or off, whether it’s programmatic or organic–doesn’t really matter. They are leveraging the tool of sports as a bridge to reach the lost and as a laboratory to develop people. That sounds like sports ministry to me.
