Alan Ratliff
July 28. 2012
Greetings International Sports Chaplains Prayer Teams,
I grew up on the outskirts of St. Louis, Missouri, before heading off to college in the early 1980’s. One family with whom my family was close friends were the Clifford’s. They lived one block away and I was friends with their oldest daughter who was about my age. I knew her younger sister as well and recall her as little Becky. I learned about 10 years later that Becky had participated in a college study abroad program in London, met a young man named Paul and fell in love with him. Becky eventually married Paul. As it turned out, Paul is the Vicar of a large Anglican church in northeast London…
Flash forward almost 20 years to 2010 and more than 20 years since I had seen Becky, though I would occasionally hear stories about her when talked with her parents Don and Karen. I was working with other leaders of International Sports Chaplains (ISC) about some possible local London congregations we might partner with as we began to plan our London 2012 ministry. I recalled that Becky was married to a pastor though I didn’t recall more. I emailed her dad, Don, to find out how to contact them and also asked Don whether he thought they would have any interest in partnering with an evangelical ministry. Don thought they might and connected us up. As a result, Jerry Haas and I made our way to London in May 2010 to search for housing and to drop by some local churches. Local churches are important to our ministry, not only as a place to worship during our Sundays at the Games, but also to serve as contact points to which we can refer local decisions, prayer support, and potentially as partners in our daily ministry.
Paul arranged for Jerry and I to meet the whole staff. Much to our excitement, we found that the church was on the subway (London Underground, or “Tube”) line as the Olympic games and less than an hour by Tube from the station nearest our housing to the station nearest their church. We also learned that they were very interested in doing evangelism leading up to and during the games, were already talking with other local churches about co-hosting Games ceremony and event watching parties as well as potentially working with other ministries that serve at the Olympics. The staff expressed an interest in being trained to share the Gospel using the ISC Jesus pin and participating in our evangelism efforts. They also invited us to worship with them and to participate in their hosted activities. Afterwards we stopped by the parsonage to say hi to Becky and enjoyed a brief visit; she’s not little Becky anymore, she’s a lovely grown woman, the Vicar’s wife and great mom, among other roles and duties.
Flash forward 2 years. The Olympic games are here. The after the leadership team arrived and the day before our first half team was set to arrive, several of us went out to the church to train some of their congregants on Olympic evangelism. Congregants ranged in age for 17 to 70 and several have committed to join us beginning on Tuesday. On the Saturday after opening ceremony we went back to the church to attend an Olympic festival hosted by 6 different churches from different denominations. They had bouncy houses and slides, Olympic games for kids, live music, arts and crafts and local food vendors. Nearly 1,000 were attendance. We enjoyed a good time of food and fellowship and had the opportunity to witness to dozens from the community, young and old, of different faiths or no faith, and including others with ministries that prospering and struggling and who needed counsel on how to be more effective.
On Sunday several of us will attend worship at All Saints and then conduct another training afterwards. Several congregants have already made plans to be with us Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. In addition, Paul and his staff have agreed to prayer for us each morning at 9 am. We look forward to what God has planned for this Olympics and are thankful and already blessed by our partnership with All Saints’ Anglican Church in Woodford, England. And to think that all those years ago in St. Louis, Missouri, the foundation for this relationship was set by God, none of us even knowing we’d ever be in England in July of 2012, much less one of us living there and the other serving there during an Olympics. God is sovereign over all.
Keep up with more of our experiences at this Olympics at http://ischaplains.org/.
All the best, always blessed,
Alan