Brian's Sports Friends Update for August 09:
May 26th to July 30th was my most recent global road trip which took me to Thailand and Ethiopia. Thank you for your prayers for traveling mercies and productive initiatives. My time was well spent and extremely valuable towards moving the overall ministry of Sports Friends forward. Here is the quick gist of what I did (kinda boring so don't feel you have to read it...feel free to skip over it and just get to the pictures) on this two month journey.
May 26-June 4th
While in Thailand at the start of this journey I was able to have strategic meetings with Jill Ireland and Tripp Johnston at our Thai Summit for SF International. The focused time was spent on structure, personnel, and future ministry initiatives in Africa & Asia for 2010 and beyond. Also, while in Chiang Mai I was able to spend time with Graham and Lori West (we love these guys a ton) and other members of the ministry team focused on CCSM in the SE Asia region. It's a strong and capable team with an impossible task facing them -penetrate the darkness of a buddhist culture with the truth claims of Jesus Christ utilizing the platform of sports! Pray for this team and that God would direct them to some strong Thai Christian sports leaders to lead the ministry.
In Ethiopia from June 4th -July 28th I served the SF ministry by:
1. Conducting a week long Coaching Education initiative with Anson Dorrance of UNC Chapel Hill for 60 plus coaches from the football federation and Sports Friends ministry (25). Many of them were able to receive a credible coaching diploma and all of them benefited from the training. 3 of our SF coaches were recognized as being in the top 10 participants for the course. At the conclusion of the course I spent 2 days with our coaches to focus on how to be a Life Influencer. It was a awesome week together.
2. Observing and critiquing our summer camp ministry at Langano. It was exciting to see so many positive attributes of the Ethiopian camping ministry -awesome and loving staff, great team building activities, wholehearted commitment to ministering through singing and drama, a tremendous desire to serve, intensity in praying for the campers, incredible energy level with the kids and much much more. Area's of improvement were needed in transitioning from the sport to biblical truth teachable moments during the football competitions, little organizational and management details, investment in leaders who came with their kids, and a couple of other ministry related matters. All in all a great camp program is being run by the Ethiopian staff. Of course the new facilities were awesome, but even those paled in comparison to the joy of seeing lives being deeply impacted in the name of Jesus Christ.
3. One week African Gathering was next with 12 representatives participating from 5 countries. We had the heads or General Sect's of 4 major denominations in Africa, a dynamic former Iman now focusing on Muslim evangelism and church planting in East Africa, 2 key leaders from a major church planting movement in India, and a half dozen other leaders interested in Church Centered Sports Ministry. This week couldn't have gone much better. With so many "big wigs" we wondered how they would respond to a week's worth of seeing various CCSM models, discussions and traveling around the country. We had a unique approach to our time together which focused on seeing, touching and meeting the actual leaders and participants in the ministry. We, Tripp and I, said very little for the first 5 days of the gathering and our SF Ethiopia staff was only minimally involved. They were taken straight to the source to hear from Ethiopian denominational leaders (7 of them), the actual sports ministry leaders and the kids participating in the ministry. They saw local churches in the urban and rural area's empowered to use sports for Kingdom purposes and they traveled downcountry to see a church planted in a distant way off the beaten road Muslim community where the sports minister had been beaten for his faith. The power of the Gospel and the platform of football enabled us to go to this leaders church to witness what God had done in bringing 65 to faith in this former 100% Muslim community. It was quite a joy and privilege to pray over this man's life and ministry. We also visited Camp Langano for a whole days activities and ministry initiatives. Then it was back to Addis for individual meetings, and group discussions on key topics for building a CCSM movement. The feedback we have received from these top leaders has been so encouraging. We can't wait to see how God uses them and their experiences to minister through the platform of sports in their churches and church planting strategies. Many of these guys are men you can't get a meeting with for one hour in their home countries and they gave us 1 week.
4. Our final week was spent having a Ethiopian Summit which focused on evaluating existing ministries and staff management with an eye towards some revitalization initiatives. We absolutely love Berhanu, Ephraim and Girma. Our time together was was well spent and productive. The ministry now has 53,000 youth participating in the sports ministries around the country which presents lots of challenges. However, there are many blessings as well especially in the form of great life transforming stories...new creations, young Christians becoming more committed in their faith, young leaders emerging, new churches being planted and so on. Exciting times these days in our SF Ethiopia CCSM that's for sure. Pray for the 4 new staff we will be taking on in the coming few weeks to meet the ever increasing need to manage our ministry effectively, to train our coaches. to develop our camping ministry and to free up our leaders for involvement in our African expansion initiatives.
A very productive 2 month journey....thanks for partnering with me!!
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