It was Friday morning in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and we were scheduled to go to another part of the city, Costa Barros, to work with a local pastor planning a church start. We were to hold basketball clinics in the local favela (slum) and work with the children to draw attention to the church starters. We climbed a quarter-mile hill with our bags of basketballs to discover a small concrete court enclosed by a fence, sitting in the blazing-hot sun. It was surrounded by small homes (shacks), stacked on top of one another, but there was no one in sight. We looked around and wondered what we were going to do.

“Get the basketballs out and start playing. Bounce he Balls and they will come,” I said.

Tall American athletes dribbling basketballs through the streets are all it takes to draw a crowd. I had seen this scenario many times on other missions trips. One by one, two by two, they came. The pastor and I took two of our players and two balls, and for 30 minutes we walked the streets of that slum, dribbling the balls and inviting the children and adults to come. When we finally climbed the hill once again, there were several hundred children, barefoot or in flip-flops, running and playing with our team. Adults, young and old, stood outside the fence to watch.

For years now this has been my platform as I go with athletes from Belmont and share Christ internationally, “Bounce the balls and they will come.” Whether we are drumming up attendance or on a scheduled visit to a local school, the routine is always the same. It doesn’t matter if we have 30 minutes or two hours. We have the children sit around the court and give a brief demonstration of full-court basketball. When they see the skill level of the college athletes and know that they are legitimate players, we have the audience’s attention and trust.

Betty Wiseman, Bounce the Balls & They Will Come: A Coach’s Passion for the Great Commission (Birmingham, AL: New Hope Publishers, 2011).

I have just completed a 5-week Bible Study is a challenge to take your discipleship as seriously as you take your sports. The bible often uses the arena of sports as a metaphor to help us understand Christian discipleship. Five sessions include:

Surrounded. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses... let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Hebrews 12.1 - 3.

Pursuing Holiness. Anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing according to the rules. 2 Timothy 2:4–6

One thing. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on. Philippians 3:12–14

Run to Win. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 1 Corinthians 9:24–26

Trained. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things. 1 Timothy 4:8

It is available on Amazon, as well as part of my Good Questions Have Groups Talking subscription service.

This service is like Netflix for Bible Lessons. You pay a low monthly, quarterly or annual fee and get access to all the lessons. New lessons that correspond with three of Lifeway's outlines are automatically included, as well as a backlog of thousands of lessons. Each lesson consists of 20 or so ready-to-use questions that get groups talking, as well as answers from well-known authors such as Charles Swindoll and Max Lucado. For more information, or to sign up, click here.