I like soccer. I love Jesus. It used to be the other way around. While in Vanuatu, it was fun to combine soccer (football) and Jesus. The Nivans are football crazy. So we ran a bunch of football games with the locals. Find a field. Start kicking a ball. People turn up. At each game, I gave a short talk. It was interesting to think through how and what to say in a short period of time to a group of people who aren’t all English-speakers.
After interacting with local kids in the schools and at the football games, the common message became “Jesus is nambawan!” (“Jesus is number one!”). Football? It’s number two, because Jesus is number one! I shared from the most famous verse in the Bible on what Jesus has done and how “faith” is having Jesus as number one: “God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die” (John 3:16). We also prayed together that God would help us to have Jesus as number one.
High-fives were replaced with high-ones and “Jesus is nambawan!” was often heard from the windows of our buses! I think it was an effective message. Vanuatu is a country where the majority of people are living with Jesus as number one. So most of the kids who played football are already Christian. Hopefully we were an encouragement to them to keep living with Jesus as their king. One day, they might look back fondly at those crazy white guys who were crazy about Jesus. Not crazy about Jesus? Check this out…
With all this talk of Jesus as number one, I’m reminded of the following video. It’s probably the pinnacle of my film-making career (below the jump):
