"Lord, I don't ask that I should win, but please, please don't let me finish behind Akabusi."
Training Southern Baptist Missionaries To Use Sports As A Tool For Evangelism, Discipleship And Church Planting
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Courtney S Cash, South Western Baptist Theological Seminary, 2002 D Ed Min
The key to this thesis is that it is a Doctorate in Educational Ministry. Thus it focuses on the process of training rather than the content. The purpose is stated as “The project leader had the task of showing missionaries how sports could he used as a tool for evangelism, discipleship and church planting”. (Page 77) [NB Courtney Cash always refers to himself as ‘the project leader’.]
Thus pages 9-59 are a very descriptive summary of the process of the development and delivery of a seminar, “Winning with Sports” to Southern Baptist Missionaries.
The value of sports ministry is asserted “Sports missions provide an effective and efficient means of developing relationships with many types of people. Though it has not been scientifically proven to be a universal method of missions, it has been a successful mission method in more than eighty-five countries on six continents”.(Page 1) and “Southern Baptist missionaries have documented success using sports as a tool to establish relationships that lead to evangelism and discipleship opportunities” (Page 5) but no evidence or references are cited to support the assertion.
The nearest to evidence would be some of the case studies (pages120ff) and the reference to Bill Cashion planting more than twenty churches in Caracas, Venezuela through baseball. (Page 15).
There is no evaluation of the project. The statement, “The ultimate and most rewarding proof that participants understood what they learned about sports missions came in the completion of successful sports projects” (Page 105) does not define success nor does it give any details of the projects.
There is a section called “Theological reflection” (Pages 60-84) but the reflection is on the theology of evangelism and mission. There is no reflection on sport theologically. Statements like “sports could be used as a ministry tool”, “Sports ministry is designed to be a mission tool” (Page 60) and “Sports was simply a helpful tool” (Page 62) might imply that sport is seen as having no intrinsic value to the writer.
This is more explicit in the statement, “The primary theological basis for teaching missionaries how they can better use sports activities as a part of their mission strategy must be to evangelise the lost”. Page 61
Moreover, sports must not only serve mission but specifically serve the organization, “Olympic ministry can be effectively used to accomplish the purposes of the International Mission Board”. (Page 40) and “The primary goal of the project leader was to develop a seminar for missionaries that explained sports missions and how to use sports in a church planting movement.” (Page 85)
The only external reference in the theological reflection section is the statement that “Roger Oswald has compiled a curriculum of resources to teach the philosophy of sports evangelism. His material was a helpful resource for examining Biblical principles that support the use of sports as a mission tool”. (Page 91) The wording shows the writer’s approach. Incidentally my book “What the book says about sport” is included in the bibliography. Intriguingly the author is described as “Weir, J Stuart”. While this is my preferred nomenclature. the “J” is not on the book. Does this suggest that the book details were taken from a list rather than the book itself?
Establishing what constitutes effective evangelism is well beyond the scope of this review. Suffice it to say that I had some reservations about:
(i) The concept of “reaching” a village of 300 through one sports clinic.
(ii) The effectiveness (or the wisdom) of sharing “the plan of salvation” as people are having drinks break in a sports clinic.
(iii) Nor was I convinced by the statistics that “ more than thirteen hundred people accepted Christ as their personal savior” during a basketball tour in South
Africa.
The thesis is unlikely to be of interest beyond the narrow confines of someone wanting to train missionaries to use sport for church planting.