Outreach in an ESPN World

Eric Tiansay is a freelance writer and he interviewed nine churches about their sports ministry. The structure of this article is very meaningful:

Introduction – Virtually any American is involved in sports, says Rodger Oswald, founder of Church Sports International.

Obsession … or Outreach Opportunity? – Kerry Wilkerson thinks the apostle Paul would – following 1. Corinthians 9:22 – be heavily involved in sports ministry.

Calling All Kids - “Sports ministry is an effective tool to reach children with the Gospel”, says Caz McCaslin, founder and president of Upward Unlimited.

Winning Extreme Youth - to achieve this just bring Christian skaters from Glory Skateboards to do a skate outreach in the church’s parking lot.

Activating Adults – start a partnership with In His Grip Golf Association and offer Bible Studies in the off-season.
You can get a sports coordinator for your church and Fellowship of Christian Athletes pays half the salary.

read more | digg story

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NFL Europa R.I.P.

After 16 years of great games in Europe
NFL Europa has to cease operations.
The Prophet laments:

“The righteous perish,
and no one takes it to heart;
the devout are taken away,
while no one understands.
For the righteous are taken away from calamity,
and they enter into peace;
those who walk uprightly
will rest on their couches.”

Isaiah 57:1-2

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Mister Wong Groups

What makes Mister Wong special is its Group feature. You can huddle around a more or less specific topic with more or less like-minded Wongers. I just started a group named “closed beta” to share reviews like this.

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Mister Wong starting closed beta test

I have been officially invited to try out Mister Wong as a Beta tester. In March Mister Wong did not yet take part in my social bookmarking test. Even today combining the tags “sport spirituality” does not deliver any results on mister-wong.com. So today is the first day of me entering the wongiverse.

Step # 1 Sign up for free
Sounds meaningful and easy but turns out to be a disaster: Your username must have “At least 2 characters and up to 12″ Hey, PlayersPrayers has 14 characters and works as a username on virtually any web2.0 application. As I am a friendly guy with a lot web2.0 affiliation I accept that restriction and omit the E’s of my username which is a good practice on the modern web.
The rest of the sign up procedure ran smoothly now I may finally wong.

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Physiological Differences between the Sexes

“So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” And as all men and women are creatures of God so are US Marines. In The Marine Corps Publications Electronic Library one finds an ebook on Physical Fitness Training. Appendix A explains the Physiological Differences between the Sexes. Accepting all Soldiers as heavenly creatures “Leaders must use common sense to help both male and female soldiers achieve acceptable levels of fitness.”

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Sports at UCC General Synod

On Friday the Rev. Da Vita McCallister delivered a sermon in which she “praised the over 1,000 youth who are giving up a week of their summer camps not to go to soccer camp or football camp, not to be working or hanging out with friends at the pool but to be here to celebrate their church.”
Grant Smith comments: “The sermon was an awesome, but being in a basketball coliseum thingy and worshiping God is an interesting mixed feeling. I’m used to seeing basketball games when I see college basketball banners hanging from the rafters not singing hymns.”

On Saturday Sen. Barack Obama gave his first major address on faith and politics as a presidential candidate. His sporting abilities are shown in the video above.

On Sunday Ryan Lambert was happy to join “one of the centerpiece worship experiences of the Synod which featuring the preaching of the Rev. John H. Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ. The worship included an inspiring mix of musical styles, the sermon from John Thomas, and beautiful liturgical dance.” Due to crowded committee meeting rooms Ryan Lambert was “able to watch the final game of the College World Series as Oregon State University won to repeat as NCAA champions.”
Oh happy day!

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Muhammad Ali: A Look Back in Photos

Curated by Ali’s daughter Maryum ‘May May’ Ali and his long-time manager and friend Gene Kilroy, time.com collects 17 pictures of Muhammed Ali.
Photo #7 shows Muhammad Ali praying to Allah before defending his crown in London in 1966.

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Religious Sport @ WPThemesFree

Mashable recommends WPThemesFree as it was a “neatly categorized site with a huge selection of themes”.
So we focus on the categories Religious and Sport: Sport prevails by number with 7 themes found. The Religious category just shows 2 themes.

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Mashcodes offering Sports and Religion

Mashable itself launched a social network about 10 days ago. Thus I felt forced to examine in depth what the site has to offer. There is a real lot of MySpace Layouts available. But the religious ones are kitsch and the Sports Layouts are puritan. So what is religion now and what is sport?
Mashable makes a confused impression when it comes to MySpace Layouts.
By the way: Do you see any difference when clicking on a following page in a given category? For me it seems that the first page is repeated and repeated and repeated…

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Week 24 summary of sport and spirituality on twitter

For our daily tweets we perform Twitterment Searches for “workout” and “prayer” every day. Each Sunday there is a weekly update here on this blog.

Week 24 summary of sport and spirituality on twitter:
Total Search Results for workout: 38
Total Search Results for prayer: 12
Most workout results on Wednesday with 9 hits.
Most prayer results on Tuesday and Wednesday with 3 hits each.

Awards:
Workout of the week
Prayer of the week

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