Love God, love sport

Vicky Hendry reports on this year's Sport Faith Life weekend.

What happens when people who love God and love sport, from many different churches, come together for a weekend? Something really special.

This year, 36 attendees gathered to be encouraged and challenged at Sport Faith Life. We shared, sharpened and supported one another and, in doing so, we built a yet stronger community of sports mission practitioners sharing the Jesus story in our own communities.

We started Saturday with a pilates class, reflecting on why we were there and how we use our bodies and our movement to worship and glorify God.

Captain John Clifton (Blackpool Citadel) helped us consider how we can be faithful athletes, as individuals – through nurturing our relationships with God, through being relational with other people in everyday one‐to‐one conversations, and through stories and testimonies.

Then, collectively, as sporting communities – through simple games and passing the ball to people further away, not just the people next door. Even though that’s harder, we still have to love them too – and we can do this through sport.

The weekend continued with sport options, including a picturesque run round the university campus, stopping off at the outside gyms placed along a circular route, more pilates, and multi‐sports games.

What was a joy to see, during these initial hours together, was people from all over the country – some who have never met before or haven’t seen each other in a year – sharing conversation, stories and opportunities, speaking of who they are engaging with and asking questions about what could be.

All these conversations were made possible through our common passion for sport and love of Jesus. As Sports Mission Specialist Rob Moye (THQ) re‐reminded us, God smiles when churches work together. Because the Church is our team and we need to cheer each other on through the wins and the hard times, just as we do in sport.

The afternoon continued with spotlight talks focusing on the concept of starting with ‘why’ as opposed to starting with ‘what’, followed by being athletic Christians who consider the orientations, disorientation and reorientation of both our sporting journeys and our faith journeys.

More sport followed – football, tchoukball and Spikeball. All hinged, once again, on playing sport and talking life. We were encouraged to ask simple questions – What can we do in this game to make what we’re trying to achieve easier? What one simple thing can we do this week to make our lives easier? – then to pray over our conversations. Because it’s that simple.

Sunday morning was spent in intentional reflection, following on from our walk on Saturday. We considered our ‘outstanding’ questions, what the encouragements, challenges and changes are and will be as we go beyond this God‐blessed gift of a weekend together, before it was time to say ‘see you soon’ to those strangers who had become friends and the friends we continue to journey with.

All this happened through God, who is already at work in our sporting lives. The community of sports mission is growing, Jesus is already there – are you involved yet? Because if you’re not, you’re missing out.