Monday, 29 January 2007
Soccer is a game which lots of guys like to play and watch, and needless to say, i'm 1 of them. Be it playing soccer in school, watching matches on TV, or playing soccer games on the computer and PS2, it's all enjoyable. That said, i found it surprising that my church youth were asked to play a friendly soccer match against another church some time ago.
Just a brief history, a soccer ministry was started by Andrew Tang back in 1999. At the time, there were a lot of guys in the Agape Youth who were interested to play soccer, and Andrew saw the opportunity to use soccer to reach out to the lost around us. Hence SMFC (St. Matthew's Football Club) was formed, and during the 1st few months and years, it seemed to be reaping benefits. There were new faces apart from the usual youth who go to the fortnightly training sessions, the Chinese congregation youth joined us as well, and we had the opportunity to play some friendlies against other people, both churches as well as school teams. We did not win all of those matches, in fact we were thrashed quite a few times, but we did have fun, and there was team spirit.
Alas, all good things must come to an end. Andrew Tang left the youth and moved on to the young adults, and subsequently to another church. His departure spelled the demise of the soccer ministry, as it did not last long after that. Gradually, we met up less and less often for soccer, and nowadays we only meet up once in a while to play street soccer at Tanjong Pagar which was nearby our church. A few of us thought of restarting the ministry, but we needed a committed guy to do the coordination and planning. Then, the invitation came.
Alvin Chee had been attending our youth services until he decided to move to COGS (Church of Good Shepherd) to join his parents and to have more opportunities to serve God in a bigger capacity. So he was the 1 who arranged for COGS to play SMC, and he asked Jason Goh whether we would like to play a friendly with them. Jason, being on about soccer, gamely said yes, but in the end he had a hard time getting the people to play and looking for a venue. By God's grace, we got the field at St. Andrew's School (Junior), and the weather held out despite looking menacing and having some slight drizzles here and there.
So the match was played yesterday. The final score was not important, i would say that in the end all of us enjoyed ourselves, despite the weather and muddy field. More details of the match can be found at Jason's blog: http://koinoniaz.blogspot.com
Give thanks to God for all the wonderful things He has done and provided! The weather was fantastic, cooling but not raining. We were fretting about the venue until uncle Anthony helped us to book the field at SAS. God protected us during the match, as there were no serious injuries throughout. And also for the many many other things He did!!
Now Chaw Shing has agreed to be the coordinator for the soccer ministry, starting from where we left off the last time. Hopefully we can use this soccer ministry to glorify God and as a platform where we can reach out to the lost around us. Yay!!
giving thanks at 11:37 :)
david chow en yuan