DALLAS—This summer, more than six million people visited Texas for the FIFA World Cup. The Texas Baptists Evangelism Team launched an initiative called “Sharing Christ at the Cup” that saw 150 churches engage in outreach opportunities and more than 500 salvations during the five weeks of games.
On March 28, the Evangelism Team hosted a training at First Baptist Church in Arlington, equipping church leaders with three evangelism strategies to help them share the gospel with their communities during the World Cup.
Believers share Christ at outreach events
On June 27, five churches joined together in Grand Prairie to host a TellGate, a door-to-door evangelism strategy where a team can purchase a grill to walk through a neighborhood, grill hot dogs for the community, and share the gospel. The team of 60 volunteers saw 30 accept Christ during the event.
On July 5, at an outreach event called “Super Soccer Sunday,” hosted by First Baptist Church in Garland, 13 people accepted Jesus.
Texas Baptists Evangelism Director Oza Jones said the purpose of equipping churches to host outreach events is to help them create a culture of outreach and evangelism in their communities beyond the “Share Christ at the Cup” initiative.
“We want [churches] to adopt and practice this [until] it becomes a normal thing for them to do every month or every few weeks in their communities,” Jones said.
Jones said one of the most impactful moments for him was seeing believers share their faith for the first time during outreach events over the past five weeks.
“Going to these outreach events with some of our churches, a green light that comes on with believers that have never gone out and shared the gospel, or you have people who have never actually led someone to Christ,” Jones said.
“We’ve seen believers jumping up and down and coming back saying, ‘I led them to Christ!’ Those are the moments that really do my heart joy.”
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Soccer becoming the ‘strongest instrument’ to share Christ
Churches across the state hosted Soccer & Spirit Camps, where children spent four days learning basic soccer skills while hearing the gospel through daily Bible lessons. During the camps, leaders used the E-Ball strategy, which features a multicolored evangelism soccer ball designed to explain the gospel in a simple, visual way.
First Baptist Church in Pharr and New Life at the Cross Church were among the churches that hosted Soccer & Spirit Camps and other related outreach events.
Joel Cavazos, a member of First Baptist Pharr, said by utilizing the Soccer & Spirit Camp resources, First Baptist Pharr hosted a soccer barbecue festival, including a few soccer games, cooking and eating together, a message from First Baptist Pharr Pastor Luis Martin on Ephesians 5, and a time of prayer.
Cavazos said he has been impacted by the unity of men in the church as a result of the soccer barbecue festival. He said men in the church have begun sharing the resources and what they learned from the event with their families.
“I’ve seen more of a union among the church men … and then, of course, the need for Jesus. [These men have] been wanting more of the resources [so] they can evangelize to their own family members,” Cavazos said.
A team from First Baptist Pharr traveled to Mexico City on July 18 to 19 to partner with local churches to attend and share the gospel at the FIFA Fan Festival. Cavazos shared that the team used evangelism resources they received from Texas Baptists.
Rolando Rodriguez, director of Texas Baptists en Español, said because soccer is a big deal in Hispanic culture, the World Cup gives churches an excellent opportunity to implement the Great Commission.
“On any given Sunday, families are at the park, and they’re playing soccer, kids, youth, adults Sunday morning [if] they’re not at church,” Rodriguez said.
“This is why soccer has become one of the strongest instruments to reach the lost … because we can use this beautiful game of soccer and share the gospel with them in their own world, how they can understand it.”
Watch parties form new connections
In addition to using these evangelism strategies to share Christ, churches hosted watch parties for their communities and around the world, including First Baptist Church in Nederland, which partnered with Texas Baptists to host watch parties in Haiti.
First Baptist Church in Arlington partnered with Visit Jordan and the City of Arlington to host several events for Jordanian visitors in Texas for the World Cup from June 25 to 27.
On Thursday, June 26, First Baptist Arlington hosted an event called “Jordan: Come and See,” which highlighted several historic Christian sights in Jordan, including where Jesus was baptized.
Dennis Wiles, lead pastor of First Baptist Arlington, shared a greeting during the event and talked about the new friendship with the Jordan delegation.
“We are honored to bless the new relationship with our Jordanian friends,” Wiles said. “We developed connections with officials from Jordan that will result in future partnerships as we plan to travel to Jordan and visit the numerous biblical sites.”
The church also helped host watch parties over the three days, culminating with the match between Jordan and Argentina on June 27. A maximum-capacity crowd cheered on the Jordanian team, including members of First Baptist Arlington and city residents.
“The Jordanian team could not have been more pleasant in our cooperation in this entire experience. We learned much about Jordanian culture. It was a memorable, sweet, amazing, and powerful time for all of us,” Wiles said.
“We felt called to practice the ministry of hospitality. We believe God has honored our obedience. We look forward to whatever may come from these connections in the future!”
The FIFA World Cup concluded on July 19, with Spain taking the win.
Jones and Rodriguez both said they expect to surpass the initiative’s goal of 1,000 salvations by the end of the year, because this initiative does not just end with the FIFA World Cup games.
“One of our objectives, I say, is to still go back and train more churches to help them develop a culture [of evangelism] because this can’t be a one-and-done initiative,” Jones said.
“We have churches to sign up for on-going training, in evangelism and outreach. … So now we have a [long list] of churches who signed up, 150 churches that we can tap right back into them and say, ‘Hey, what are we doing now? What do y’all need help with?’”
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