What are your hopes for your life and ministry? Below are those for Bellevue Recreation and Chris Phillips, Director of Recreation at
Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN.
Bellevue Baptist Church has had a strong ministry there for 110 years. One of the church’s desires is to bring families together for Christ and they do this by offering sports programs for all age groups. The church recognizes that sports are a great avenue for building relationships within and outside the church.
Here is what Chris Phillips, Director of Recreation, has to say about their sports ministry:
How long has the church been in sports ministry?
“The church itself has been in sports ministry over 40 years, 25 years at our new location. I joined the staff in August 2012.”
What initiatives do you offer?
“Bellevue Baptist serves 7000 people each year through its sports initiatives and workout facilities. 5200 people take part in the league sports we offer and thousands utilize the workout facilities. We offer the following sports for both adults and youth: adult basketball, adult golf, adult soccer, adult softball, adult volleyball; youth basketball, baseball, softball, soccer, cheerleading, and flag football.”
What motivated you to get involved in CSO?
“I met Bob Schindler at a Church Sports Recreation Ministers gathering last year. We were looking to get connected to other sports ministries and CSO seemed to have a good platform to do that. We were also looking for help with our greatest challenge – training coaches.
The development of coaches is always our biggest struggle. It’s hard to get our coaches to see sports as more than a program or activity and more as a ministry, even though the sports ministry is a big ministry component of the church. 60% of our participants are non-members, and, when you add up all our volunteers, the sports ministry is one of our largest serving opportunities.”
What has been the impact of your involvement with CSO?
The greatest benefit so far comes from their help in walking our whole Recreation Team through a profile for an “Ideal Coach.” As we wrote these desires down, it really opened our eyes to our expectations for our coaches and for what we needed to do to help these coaches fulfill these expectations. We now know what we need to do and have better tools for making that happen. Having CSO’s support and “outside perspective” has motivated us to keep pressing on and moving forward to address this challenge of coaches training.
What are you excited about in your sports ministry?
I am really excited about our recent steps – what may seem like “baby steps” but are actually “big strides” – in coach development, as I mentioned before. We are also working hard on pursuing ministry excellence across their whole recreation ministry: from schedules, to making information available, to setting up and tearing down – and are making real progress there also.
What does it mean for your sports ministry to strive to be Gospel-centered?
In recent years, the church added a devotional component to our sports seasons. The devotional helps bring the gospel message full circle, and is a tool that is shared with parents at home. Everything we do points back to the gospel and devotionals relate back to the same messages that are taught from the pulpit, Sunday School, and youth group each week.
We are also very intentional in making every decision focused on Christ – from the selection of coaches to placement of players. We strive to create a diverse cultural background so teams can inhabit the full body of Christ.
What hopes for the future do you have for your sports ministry?
We desire that Bellevue Recreation would not just be a program ministry or a sports complex but a place where people are drawn closer in their walk with Christ through the means of sports. We don’t want to just say that our sports ministry is just a “front door” to the church, but through being Gospel-centered and intentional, we want it to become a true “front door” for the church and the Kingdom of God.
