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Winning off the field

The Messiah College soccer teams are passionate about finding ways to use their talent to impact the lives around them, reaching beyond the fan section at Shoemaker Field. What started with tutoring at local churches elevated into summer camps with local refugees and eventually led to a new vision for sports ministry at Messiah College.

The call to engage in local outreach began when Aaron Faro, the assistant coach for the men’s soccer team, joined the Messiah community in 2009. Before accepting a coaching position at Messiah, Faro played for the Charlotte Eagles, a professional soccer team that engages in sport ministry. His experiences were testimony to the power of using sport as a form of ministry, and he passed a shared enthusiasm onto his players at Messiah.

Tutoring
Thanks to a partnership Faro established with a local church, players from the men’s soccer team dedicated time weekly to tutor a refugee population from Somalia. Every Wednesday, they would spend an hour with young students on academic subjects such as math, science and basic English.  Of course, after closing the books, the soccer players would head outside to bond with the students over their favorite sport. They even coined a name for their new team: Walaalos, which means brothers in Somali.

The following fall, junior Christian ministries major Josh Wood caught the fervor for Faro’s vision and began brainstorming ideas to elevate the team’s relationship with local refugees. “I was injured my sophomore year, so I was looking for other things to fill my energy and mind,” he explained.

Wood was impacted by the need for literacy among the local refugees. He remembers an encounter with a young student, Abshir, during a tutoring session. “He couldn’t read, but he could copy English,” Wood said. “He would tell me, ‘I don’t know how to read this, but I can pass if I copy it.’ That’s the moment that it really hit me: than an hour a week is good, but it’s not enough.”

 Summer soccer camp
Wood used his time on the sideline to brainstorm the launch of a summer camp to further minister to the local refugee population. He met with several different churches about the idea of a weeklong camp, and West Shore Evangelical Free Church agreed to help turn Wood’s vision into reality. West Shore E-Free hospitably provided food and housing for the Messiah soccer players who would run the camp as well as transportation for the youth who would attend.

This past summer, eight players from the men’s soccer team and four players from the women’s team ran two weeks of summer camp for the refugee population.   After a first week dedicated to establishing relationships and trust with the youth and their families, they began a second week of organized camp for 24 boys between the ages of 12 and 18, mostly from Somalia.

The soccer players spent the first hour of camp tutoring the students, another hour playing soccer and a third hour doing team building activities and sharing the gospel. “We tried to share the gospel in culturally sensitive ways,” Wood said, based on proactive conversations he had with local pastors. “For example, we shared a parable about being brothers. We presented Christ as a storyteller who tells stories with a deeper meaning which is highly valued in the Somali culture.”

While sharing the love of Christ is a long term goal of their ministry, Wood also expressed their objective of educating these refugees. “Without literacy, the cycle of poverty would just start over,” Wood explained. “We saw an opportunity to reach out and break this cycle that would have kept them oppressed, and this correlates with our Christian conviction. We are meeting a great need, and we are doing that with the love of Christ. Then, we just use what we are good at. We know how to play soccer.”

Wood adopted this philosophy from an analogy of Faro’s. “He describes it as a bridge,” Wood explained. “If you lay the message of the gospel on a bridge with no foundation, it will break down.”

 The future of sports ministry at Messiah College
After the summer came to an end, and the fall air welcomed a new season of Messiah soccer, West Shore E-Free bused the group of Somali boys to Messiah to watch a men’s soccer game. This time, an older man from Somalia was present, and he introduced himself to Wood as Jama, a community organizer responsible for refugee families in the greater Harrisburg area. He gratefully spoke of the neighborhood buzz that’s been happening in the refugee community since the summer camp.

The confirmation that they were making an impact was inspirational, and it only emphasized the capabilities of sports ministry. “Sports are powerful,” Wood expressed. “They cross language barriers to allow us to demonstrate the love of Christ by letting our actions speak truth to people.”

This realization also inspired Wood to found a new student organization on campus. He and two other soccer players, Logan Thompson and Lisa Wingard, proposed the start of an organization called A.R.O.M.A., “A Revolution of Missional Athletes.” The group of mission-minded students will seek to facilitate, enable and participate in local and international ministry beginning in January. With responsibilities such as hosting culture workshops and choosing dedicated student athletes for trips, a “Core Team” of 8-12 students will assist the planning of local sports ministry programming, service trips and summer outreach.

These student athletes at Messiah want to take advantage of sports ministry more than ever before. After all, soccer isn’t their purpose; soccer—or any sport—is simply a tool to carry out their mission to share the love of Christ.

Story by Mary-Grace MacNeil `13.

2 Responses to “Winning off the field”

  1. Phil Naegely Says:

    This is awesome to hear. As a first year student at Messiah, I was just blown away by the soccer team as I watched them. They truly are soccer players second, and lovers of Christ first.

  2. Messiah College: Prospective Student Portal - Interests » Soccer Ministry Says:

    […] The Messiah College soccer teams are passionate about finding ways to use their talent to impact the lives around them, reaching beyond the fan section at Shoemaker Field. What started with tutoring at local churches elevated into summer camps with local refugees and eventually led to a new vision for sports ministry at Messiah College. Read more. […]