A Soccer SportQuest
Andrii Petrenko dreamed of being a professional football (soccer) player. Growing up, his parents made huge sacrifices to help him attend a boarding school/sports academy that nurtured his dream. Everything came together for Andrii when he received a contract to play professionally. A knee injury changed everything. It would never recover enough to play at the level Andrii had trained for. But that was not the end of the story. In fact, it was just the beginning. Enroute to his dream career, Andrii met Jesus Christ. He came to realize the deep truths of Romans 8:28.
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son…
God’s plan for Andrii was far greater than the one he had for himself. Rather than being a mere player, God wanted Andrii to become a coach, a disciple-making coach!
Based in Shostka, Ukraine, Andrii is a key leader of a sports ministry coalition throughout all Eurasia (Eastern Europe / Central Asia). In this area where the Soviet Union once ruled, poor economic conditions affect the mind, body, and spirit of the people. Play can be a major diversion from the harsh realities of life. Using his football skills and a reproduceable disciple-making strategy, Andrii organizes football teams. He leverages his position and time with his teams for both physical and spiritual impact.
We met Andrii a number of years ago. He has attended our training in Ukraine and Israel, learning how to use the storyline of the Bible as a vehicle for discipling unbelievers to first faith and then showing them how to begin making disciple-making disciples. This is 2 Timothy 2:2 in action. What is happening through Andrii’s ministry is truly remarkable. He is initiating disciple making movements (DMM) where he lives, works, and plays. Using our Stories of God training as the basis for Bible studies in the homes of his players, Andrii reports that entire families are coming to first faith.
Share this entry
Signup now to receive discipleship training articles, videos, and notices about Disciple Daily events and trips… here, near, and far away.
Disciple Making Movement
A rapidly self-reproducing movement of Jesus followers through the fourth spiritual generation.
Andrii Petrenko is focused on making disciples of Jesus Christ. He is identifying faithful men and women who will commit to making disciple-making disciples. Andriy is multiplying his labor of love by training trainers. Now, watch the short clip above. Let Andrii introduce you to the disciple-making team God is building in Shostka, in all Ukraine, and throughout Eurasia.
Andrii’s program in Shostka works with three age groups. They are kids 15 years and under (U-16), 10 and younger (U-11), 7 and under (U-8). Andrii explains, “We use Disciple Daily’s twelve Stories of God with our older teams. They hear the same story many times during the week, dividing the storytelling into three cycles.”
- At the first practice of the week, the players listen to their coach tell the story and answer questions about what attracts their attention.
- During the second practice, they hear the story again and tell the others what they learned about God and mankind.
- At the last practice of the week, the players hear the story one final time from their coach. They are challenged to retell the story for the team and receive a small prize as a reward. Practical questions are asked, like “how are you going to obey what God wants from you according to this story?” Each player is asked to share the story with their parents and friends.
Andrii explains to them, “I tell the Bible stories from Genesis to Acts to our players, in front of their parents. This is very important because parents can participate in the spiritual process. Every time, I give some practical tasks from the story so that parents can identify truth from the story. This provides a platform to encourage their kids in obedience to the things they learned in the story. These are very basic things, like how kids can show respect and love to parents, help their parents and relatives, speaking kind words of encouragement, and other things.”
Andrii continues, “It is a pre-condition that all of our players participate in spiritual education if they want to join our teams. This gives me an opportunity to speak about spiritual things with parents if they bring their children to practice and games. The most open parents are invited to a Bible study.” Andrii reports, “We have worked with 4 families, covering the twelve stories and then going deeper with Discovery Bible Studies. Amazingly, the families started sharing the stories with their parents and other relatives. That gave us even broader influence. I want to train two of our current families how to do storytelling and how to conduct Bible studies. This will allow us to start two more Bible study groups through them, while I start new study groups with the other families of my players.”
Looking beyond his own community, Andrii explains, “I am starting an initiative that helps Christian coaches to reach a higher level in their own sport and maximize the spiritual impact of their practices. We have about seventy soccer coaches in Ukraine that we have shared this strategy with, showing them how to use our tools in their sports ministry. My intention is to pass this on to the broader community of Christian coaches of different sports throughout Eurasia very soon. I see the Stories of God, given to us free of charge by the Disciple Daily Network as a very important instrument in helping people who are searching for God to start understanding the Bible and bring them to the point that they can say “yes” to Jesus.”
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!