Athletes in Action: Sports Missionary Method

No matter where I go, it's hard to find a place that hasn't been impacted by the missiological interaction between missions and sports. Athletes in Action (AIA) is a Great Commission Christian agency at work in Russia as well as in seventy-four other countries. Athletes in Action is an Ohio-based international missions arm of Campus Crusade for Christ (CRU) and was begun in 1966 by Dave Hannah. At work around the world, AIA uses sports as a medium for sharing the gospel sometimes in places where a traditional missionary is not allowed a public religious ministry. In 2008, AIA published Vision and Direction for the Future, an annual report from its trustees to its constituents and financial supporters. Another more brief document, the AIA Fact Sheet, highlights its strategic projects and events as well as its domestic and international ministry teams. Its board of trustees has a broad range of representatives from many aspects of Christian and secular business as well as many sports authorities. With a budget of almost $23 million and over two hundred thousand volunteers, AIA uses sports not just as an avenue for witnessing but also discipleship, taking the principles of Christianity and applying them to sportsmanship. As an arm of Campus Crusade for Christ, founded by Dr. Bill Bright in 1951, AIA clearly has the same evangelism philosophy for showing “people how to know and experience God’s love and plan for their lives” (AIA Fact Sheet, p. 2). Whereas Campus Crusade has a broad range of missions applications, most notably its international broadcasting of the Jesus Film, AIA is focused specifically on athletic venues for reaching a more targeted audience. My personal interaction with AIA began in 2000 when sports missionary John McIntosh helped Pennsylvania-based Push the Rock do a sports missions trip to Bryansk, Russia. We continued to work with AIA in St. Petersburg and Moscow as we hired two young women to serve as sports missionaries with our team. One of those, Jessica Lenderman, has continued her sports missions endeavors through the International Sports Federation.

             

The AIA Missionary Method

AIA’s missionary method revolves around “five focus areas” that it calls its “key measurements” (Vision, p. 2). Using evangelism, discipleship, staff growth, staff recruitment, and finances as the baselines for evaluating its performance, AIA builds a quantitative foundation for discussing its missionary method.

AIA utilizes a decision-based approach to gospel presentations and seeks to use sports events as both the drawing medium and the opportune moment for establishing contact with unsaved athletes and young sports enthusiasts. After initial contact is established through the universal language of sports, a gospel presentation is translated and materials such as sports-oriented Bibles and other Christian literature are freely distributed. Because initial contact is usually brief and nonrepetitive, there is a strong draw for immediate decision-based conversion through a prayer of commitment. For follow-up, the new believers complete a commitment card that is then passed on to either residential AIA representatives or local church partners. For deeper discipleship with its athletes, AIA workers establish regular contact for bible study. Local websites are also maintained for ongoing follow-up.

            In essence, AIA defines its goals each year in terms of how many witnessing opportunities its representative had, how many first time decisions were made for Christ, how many athletes were involved in local chapters of AIA, and how many people AIA maintained on staff. In 2008, 914 staff were able to present the gospel to “over 85 million people in 75 countries around the world” (Vision, p. 1). AIA recorded over seven thousand first-time decisions for Christ and attracted almost three thousand athletes into AIA discipleship programs. The agency  was able to establish a presence on 125 college campuses and among “35 professional sports teams” (Vision, p. 7).

            AIA is a missions agency, albeit not necessarily in the traditional sense. It is an international agency designed to reach other cultures and people groups through the use of nontraditional and “universal” language, the language of sports (Vision, p. 1). The Vision and Direction for the Future document contains five testimonials from 2008 as to how AIA met its strategic missional goals in Poland, China, Holland, Canada, Nicaragua, Israel and America. According to a second strategy document entitled AIA Fact Sheet, AIA was involved also in some other key missional events like a Super-bowl breakfast, an All-Star Celebrity Golf Classic Breakfast, and some international ministry events in eighty-five countries around the world. In the fact sheet, AIA states that its goal is “to use the unique platform of sport to help people around the world with questions of faith” (Fact Sheet, p. 1).

            According to these two documents, AIA sees its missionary activity as primarily evangelism and discipleship. Local church planting or church growth does not play into AIA’s strategy, but as a branch of Campus Crusade for Christ, AIA sees itself as a parachurch organization in support of the larger activity of the universal church. AIA does not seek to train local church leadership in any way other than to perform specific tasks related to its own sports activities. It also does not employ church polity in its direction or performance, but it does partner with local evangelical church leaders for ongoing projects in targeted locations. AIA seeks to embody the fuller essence of being parachurch while at the same time maintaining its own autonomy from any local church.

Missiological Implications

The missiological implications for AIA’s method are tremendous. Because it is a decision-based approach for conversion, it represents a western rational model for evangelism. As such, AIA may have to work to overcome some cultural barriers within eastern settings where individual decision is not as highly valued as group thinking. The application of Christianity to specific western cultural behaviors as evidenced in sports is their method for discipleship. One disciple admitted that “competing hard is okay” after he learned that it was a tenet of Christianity (Vision, p. 3). This too is a cultural difference in countries where competition is seen as a negative trait, much less a Christian one.

It is project based designed to reach large masses with evangelism but target specific groups for discipleship. For example, in one event in Nicaragua an AIA mission team “spoke to 1000 people, with an estimated 100,000 more potential viewers” in a television broadcast (Vision, p. 3). It maximizes short-term trips rather than establishing long-term incarnational presence. Usually these trips are one week long.

It uses internationally recognized avenues such as the Olympics as platforms for sharing the gospel. These large-scale events are often nationally recognized and therefore hold greater potential than any one church’s missionary activities. Moreover, this stance contradicts the church planting movement mentality behind some of the more recent evangelical missions agencies’ work to maintain outside foreign influence at a lower profile.

Like many other American ministries, AIA’s strategy is numerically-based and results-driven. Therefore, careful attention is required for reporting witnessing opportunities, decisions made, and disciples gathered. However, it does not record baptisms or church plants as these are activities of a local church. When AIA presents itself not as a missional arm of the church but as a parachurch missional agency, it stays true to its primary task as an external pioneering presence.

AIA is support-based through business. It is not a tent-makers’ ministry. Many involved in AIA’s international missionary service support themselves or either find their support from independent businesses, but no outright solicitation is made from local churches.

It is talent-based leadership equipping. It is cutting edge in that sportsmen can see themselves as missionaries. There was a time when missionaries would not have thought of sports as a gospel medium, let alone as a platform for ministry, but AIA is proving successful in changing the paradigm of traditional missions within this venue.

It opens doors in locations where traditional missionaries might not be able to go. This leads to a discussion of the target not as geographic or ethnic but cultural or subcultural, with the specific affinity being sports. Whether or not interest-based affinity grouping can be considered part of a biblical missiology is a question that missiologists have only begun to ask recently.

That is why there is a question of indigeneity. AIA does not address any cross-cultural training or language acquisition for these one-week trips. There is no specific cultural training outside of intensive preparation for survival as an expat in a foreign field. Therefore, the long term impact of these short term trips can truly only be measured with the evangelism results that AIA has set in place. A trip is designed to produce converts to Christ and volunteers to the sports projects.

            Sports is a medium for evangelism, like teaching English as a Second Language, drama presentations, or humanitarian aid. It is a language for reaching those that the local church might not reach otherwise. AIA is standing in the gap as an independent missions arm to garner those who only speak “sports”. AIA’s strategy is make that medium a missionary tool is both unique and successful.