TUG Conference

Recently I attended the TUG (The Ultimate Goal) Conference, which was hosted by the South Africa Sports Coalition (SASCOL). It was a gathering of church and ministry leaders to hear about the plans for reaching the world for Jesus while they are here in South Africa for the World Cup. The TUG committee presented the many ways that they plan to reach out to people during the World Cup.

The conference really got me inspired. Before, I wasn’t planning on us doing much with the World Cup. I felt like our plans here were really long term and that we weren’t here early enough to do much. But, I was really inspired with a few ideas that we can incorporate. Much of it is still storming around in my brain and will be determined by the things I learn about our community over the next couple of months.

A few of the early ideas are:

1. To use Oceanview Methodist (or Simon’s Town, our sister church) as a hosting location for an International Touring Team. Possibly that team would host a soccer camp or series of clinics for our players.
In the same vein there are other ministries in town with groups already scheduled to come. There is the possibility of one of those groups doing the same thing.

2. We have started asking the question, “What if Ubuntu created and organized a pre-World Cup community festival in Oceanview?” Oceanview, where we live, is a very splintered community, and no place worse than the Church. What if an outside group was able to get the community to work together to host a great festival for the community? It would be a great boon to our work here to have added so much value.

3. There was a presentation about futsal, which is small-sided Brazilian type soccer. This was both inspiring for something we can do now in our yard with the neighborhood kids (which IS in fact already happening), something that we can get our church passionate about doing to reach those kids, and something that could be incorporated into our festival.

4. There was a presentation about Ubabalo, which you heard about already.

You can find out more at: www.theultimategoal.co.za

All in all, a great experience. I’m really glad that I went. Also met and connected with some great people, even a few other Americans!

You can join us in prayer as we sort out how all of this will shake out. We need to see how God wants us to take these ideas and make them reality.