On the same team

As some of you may know, David and I are up here at Ridgecrest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. We are attending a Sports Ministry Summit with other churches across the country. As much as I have grown to dislike being away from my family, David and I needed this trip, more than I think even we realized. We are among 250 or so Sports Ministers/Directors, activity leaders, recreational directors, organizers, etc. There are people here from as far away as California and some here from Egypt! Some churches have less than 100 members and there are churches like Christ's Church of the Valley that have well over 10,000 each Sunday. We have all come to share ideas and to grow our Ministries in a way we can't do on our own.

After talking to only 4 or 5 people, it became evident that God sent us here for an unexpected reason. And as much as we sometimes think we know what He has in store for us, as usual, I really couldn't grasp it. God showed us how amazingly blessed we truly are at Christ's Church. We have so many resources at our fingertips and sometimes God show us by putting people in our paths that do not. For me, the best part has been seeing others facing similar problems and being able to trade ideas. We are all striving for the same goal...to make sports a way to lead people to Christ.

I was blown away when the very first presenter I sat in with talked about making our coaches’ disciple makers. Basically he was talking about how he had to come up with a way to make his coaches more involved with the spiritual growth of the kids and less focused on winning. This is the exact same bridge I crossed last year which led to the Certified Coaches training. He outlined his whole process and where they stood now and I was reenergized. We had broken our process down a layer “deeper” than his by actively recruiting those who had no coaching experience. By being three years into his new training process, he had things to share with me about what might be coming my way as we approach the three year mark. I now had a person to contact along the way who could keep me updated on what our Certified Coaches program might encounter. I was honored when he took several aspects we use that he doesn’t and asked if he could use them! Absolutely. And afterward there were people who came up to me and asked if I would send them our Certified Coaches program and of course I said “yes.” That is what this conference is all about. Encouraging one another and exchanging ideas to better this awesome ministry we are in.