Kick-off to 2010!

(picture of our 2009-2010 staff team on our trip to Ethiopia in May 2010)

What is STS?

Sports That Serve is back in action in 2010! After an amazing vision trip to Ethiopia with five of our staff team this summer, we are ready for another awesome year of sports ministry in North Carolina!

But as with any vision, you’ve got to know where you’ve been so you can know where you’re going, so I’d like to take a second to share that vision with all of our followers…old and new.

Sports That Serve is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with a mission to use the platform of athletics to influence the character of America’s youth, while raising funds for children living in poverty around the world.

We do this by partnering with local schools and churches and hosting one day sports camps that minister to the kids in the local community, while simultaneously using the money raised on camp day to give to children less fortunate in the country of Ethiopia.

Why Ethiopia?

After graduating from UNC in 2007, the Lord blessed me with the opportunity to spend the next 8 months of my life serving as the sports teacher at a Mother Teresa’s HIV orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It was there that I encountered the worst poverty and suffering I had ever seen. To some extent, I had prepared for that. When you tell people you are going to Africa, it’s the warning you always get. But what came as perhaps the biggest shock to my system was the pure joy I saw in the eyes and hearts of those who had so little. I was not expecting that. A verse in Proverbs rung so true during my time there:

“Better is a little with the fear of the Lord,

            than great treasure and trouble with it”

I always tell people that Africa changed me a heck of a lot more than I changed Africa. And I think that’s important to share in this first post of our 2011 camp season. Sports That Serve is not about rallying the “haves” in America to give to the “have-nots” in Africa. In many ways it’s just the opposite. Our vision is to use the avenue of athletics to share the love of Christ and His model of servant-leadership with kids in our communities (both rich and poor) who are in desperate spiritual need, and then put that faith into action by giving the money we raise to “visit orphans in their affliction” (James 1:27)

Sports That Serve is about being hearers of the Word AND doers of it (James 1:22).

And if the above principles are found in the same chapter of the Bible, it seems fitting they both be incorporated into the same ministry.

-Rob