Athletes

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Athletes in Action

Port Vila residents flocked to see American basketball professionals perform, only to find the athletes were on a mission from God

By Patrick Decloitre

What was

announced as a “US basketball” event, the first of its kind in Port Vila, also turned out to be an evan gelistic publicity exercise.

Two weeks before the scheduled date, posters everywhere in the Vanuatu capital were announcing the US basketball match. Television Blong Vanuatu, the television net work in Port Vila and Luganville, announced the event by presenting spectacular advertisements showing the American professionals, NBA, in full splendour. But as it later turned out, the Vanuatu visitors were not professional basketball players at all and only three of them were Americans.

Even the Vanuatu Basketball Federation understood it differently: before the only friendly match on a Saturday evening, it said this was a great opportunity for the national selection to compete against “real professionals”. Basketball officials later said it was only after the team arrived in Port Vila airport the morn ing before the match that they were told there was going to be something else added to the sport.

True enough, the team called themselves “Athletes in Action”.

The Vanuatu Basketball Federation had arranged for their stay and organised the match in the newly built Korman Stadium with seating capacity of at least 3000. The Vanuatu federation also paid the return air tickets from Brisbane to Vanuatu and Vanuatu to Solomons, a team official said.

About 1500 people turned up on

the night of the match, including top Vanuatu government officials, minis ters and Olympic committee presi dent.

But as they sdon realised, these players were not only sportsmen -

Only after the team

arrived in Vila were they told about the changes

they had come with another pur pose, to spread the word of God.

At half-time, quite unexpectedly, several players took the microphone to talk to the public and explain their faith in Jesus Christ.

Meanwhile, leaflets were being dis

Athletes in Action with the Vanuatu team at Korman Stad

tributed to the audience, outlining “God’s game-plan for winning” with phrases such as you can experience real life by trusting the Lord Jesus” thrown in. At the end of the match, the players/preachers talked to

The best way to spread the word of God with youths is with sports

members of the public who approached them individually.

Team manager David Baker explained Vanuatu was part of a Pacific tour including the Solomon Islands, where they had played in front of the Governor General.

All guys come from different churches, this is non-denominational”, he said. f a P tain /cc>ach Andy Stewart later explained, I “Crusade for Christ is j the parent body of Athletes in Action.

Campus Crusade for Christ has been going sin ce the 19605, mainly working on college campuses in the US.

But now they’re very much becoming an international organisation.”

Stewart said each of the Australians on the team had raised his own money to come on the trip, taken his own time off work or study commitments. “All the American guys have been financed by the Australian end of Athletes in Action,” he added.

This was the first time Vanuatu and the Solomons were included in such a tour but many other parts of the world, including Australia, New Zealand, USA, France, and the Philippines, have already been cov ered by Athletes in Action.

“Most of the guys would only do one or two trips a year but Athletes in Action now probably do seven or eight tours a year, using different personnel all the time. So there maybe as many as eight different teams going out during the year, all with completely different players,”

he explains.

Each time, he says, the players not only play basketball, they also go to high schools and run coaching din ics. “Then we’ll talk to the kids, basi cally about whatever the school will

um in Port Vila

allow us to talk about. We coach them and we develop them for about one hour and half. Then we’ll take five or 10 minutes of their time, depend ing on what the school will allow us to speak on, we’ll talk about positive life values, stay ing away from drugs and alco hol. If they allow, we’ll also talk about our faith in Jesus Christ.

“One of the great things on this tour is, we have the highest credential college players in the US playing with us. John Pierce holds the all-time college scor ing record at 4290 points and it’s been super to have a guy of that profile come and play with our team. This has a huge impact with the kids when we go into the schools,” Stewart says.

“Nowadays, athletes are the young one’s heroes. So the best way to spread the word of God with youth is sports,” he said.

He explains that most of the AIA players came into religion through their involvement in sports. “Most of us were playing sport at some level and then we had an opportunity through a group similar to this that came and spoke to us and shared with us, and then we were con verted. I think in almost every case, that’s the story.”

Sportsmen or preachers, which comes first? AIA captain and coach definitely sees him self more of a preacher; sports is only a way to reach the audi ence. “We know that unless we are a credible sporting outfit, we have no message. I think both complement each other but our major objective is min istry. Without a doubt, it’s spreading the word. But we realise that unless we’re accept able athletes in the public’s eye, then why would they come?”

The only trouble is, they came and paid to watch what had been advertised as sports, not religion. The level of sport was disappointing and religion came as a surprise. In fact, some spectators walked out when they realised what was going on.

Several comments after the performance even referred to the whole thing as a “con”.

Mixing sports and religion: made a big impact on some