Throughout the history of mankind, people have always participated in sports and games of different kinds in different settings for the purpose of recreation, entertainment, building relationships, or fostering resilience. The contemporary view of sports, which is also the Christian approach, is that sporting activities are a universal language whose function is to bridge cultural differences in any society (Jacobs, Lawson, Ivy et al., 2017). Sport has the ability to bring together communities, shape characters of individuals, build strong and positive relationships, skills, and foster resilience. From a Christian point of view, sport presents a powerful tool with the ability to share the life-giving message of Jesus across different socioeconomic, ethnic, and cultural barriers. Sports camps and other outreach efforts have been used by various Christian ministries as a tool for engaging the poor and underprivileged people, especially children and young adults, as well as those under juvenile detention centers. The idea is to help shape their characters, give them skills, build resilience, improve relationship building abilities, and avert risks of juvenile delinquency (Jacobs et al., 2017). However, these outreach efforts and missions might also have some negative impacts. It is always possible to cause harm while trying to help. Therefore, the question is whether global sport outreach efforts can unintentionally cause harm. In addition, the specific approaches needed to ensure that ministry efforts do not do harm need be examined.
The book ‘When Helping Hurts’ argues that giving material aid is not bad but it cannot solve some aspects of poverty. Rather, poverty alleviation should involve taking care of the whole person, including mental, emotional, social, spiritual, and physical aspects. When using sport outreach programs, it is possible to cause harm unintentionally while trying to help the underprivileged (Jacobs et al., 2017). For example, some ministries can establish sport outreach programs that require the children of the poor people to participate as a means of improving their skills, building relationships, and other positive purposes. In the process, the children and young adults can meet new friends, integrate and relate with each other, and forms new relationships. However, not all these new relationships are positive (Jacobs et al., 2017). As an example, some young people can introduce others to such behaviors as alcohol and substance use, smoking, pornography, sexual affairs, and other forms of delinquency.
Worth noting, these behaviors occur when the ministry is trying to bring the young people together through sports participation but controlling the relationships after the meeting in the fields is difficult. In the long run, parents and other members of the society will blame the ministries’ sport outreach programs for increased young delinquency rates (Jacobs et al., 2017). In this case, the ministries unknowingly and unintentionally cause harm while trying to help primarily because the definition of poverty or state of the underprivileged does not apply to the specific group. Rather, the church ought to understand the specific needs of the group such as providing counselling before, during, and after the sports activities and controlling the participants interactions.
Moreover, efforts should be considered for ensuring that the sport outreach programs are in line with the existing codes of conduct in the specific society. For example, some societies are restrictive of their children in terms of gender association and age differences. In some communities, girls are not allowed to participate in sports together with boys to prevent such behaviors as early sex, pregnancy, and marriages (Jacobs et al., 2017). Church sport outreach programs should also consider these as special needs in the society and ensure that the traditions are followed to avoid unintentional harm.
Reference
Jacobs, J. M., Lawson, M., Ivy, V. N., & Richards, K. A. R. (2017). Enhancing the transfer of life skills from sport-based youth development programs to school, family, and community settings. Journal of Amateur Sport, 3(3), 20-43.