VAY Sports Fest Reflection 2022
Sports Fest has been an annual ministry gathering of the Vietnamese Alliance Youth (VAY) in Southern California for almost five decades. Started as a Soccer Tournament by the Vietnamese Christian refugees after they arrived in the USA in 1975, it is now the annual competition of hundreds of youth between 13 to 35 from more than a dozen Vietnamese churches in the last two weekends of July. The specific sports are Men Basketball, Men and Women’s Volleyball, Bible Jeopardy, Ping Pong, Tennis, Tug-O-War, Track-N-Fields, and Scripture Memorization. Yes, it has two Bible events, as well as worship and teachings during the Opening, Closing Ceremonies, and Chapel Hours.
As a crossover between a Community Cup and Community Festival, it attracts thousands of spectators. Churches camp out for the two weekends to cheer for their youth with food and drinks for the church members. Pre-believing Christians were invited to participate in the event, often practicing with the Christians for many months before the competition. This resulted in quite a few decisions for Christ over the years.
An example of the spiritual impact could be found in the story of Richard, a pre-believer who was so impressed with his Christian basketball captain “Big Tim”. Tim was an ex-con with tattoos all over. But Jesus changes his life and thus Richard chose to follow Christ. More than a decade (and a Ph.D.) after, Dr. Richard Dinh is a principal of a High School. He hosted the 2022 Sports Fest at his school.
But growth in Sports Ministry has not been easy. The mentoring from others in the North America Sport Movement helps VAY significantly. In 1997, a fan brawl between two rival churches shut down the tournament. Up to that point, there was not much pastoral oversight for the event besides an informal arrangement between the church youth groups. Thanks to Mr. Quang X. Nguyen, the sports tournament was reborn as Sports Fest, with formal pastoral support from the churches, much-needed organization, and an evangelistic focus “Not just winning the games, but winning people for Jesus!”
Sports Fest was strengthened in the next decade. When Quang Nguyen sold his business to become a long-term missionary to Vietnam, he was able to pass the baton to his disciples to continue the ministry. At that point, Sports Fest was struggling because the evangelistic focus brought its own issue. Churches experienced a lot of internal strife since “my kids were there at every practice, yet you brought in non-Christian [and better] players and gave them more playing times [so the church can win]”. Some churches withdrew from the event in those years.
A leader from the Sports Movement in Southeast Asia introduced us to the 2016 Bridge Conference “Level 1” in Carlsbad. (It is now the Ready Set Go Conference). There we learned about the Sports Ministry Mapping Matrix and were able to take steps to adjust our ministry back to its recreational and communal basis. The 2017 “Level 2” Conference helped us to develop a better discipleship pathway in and through sport, and the 2018 Florida Conference really opened our eyes to the partnership with the global https://ReadySetGo.world community.
Looking back on the last few decades, we can recognize the hand of God in developing Sports Ministry in our community as well as other cities. We pray that we would get further, faster, and stronger in our endeavor to make disciples who make disciples in our community using sports, play, fitness, and perhaps esports too.