by Titus Wong, TeenSportz Ministry in Singapore
Singapore Youth for Christ has been on an exciting and challenging, God-led journey of evolving sports ministry as young people’s preferences and perceptions of sports events change. To keep pace, they have worked at reducing the disparity between our young participants and where TeenSportz was at in terms of technology adoption. Today they are running the event with online registration, real-time game results and fixtures, and ensuring a social media presence.
Singapore YFC has streamlined the entire process, reduced the manpower needed to run it, and provided more forms of engagement with their participants. Additionally, organizers found that highlighting participants’ competitiveness while raising the level of competition was detrimental to gospel sharing. God has helped YFC introduce novel game formats to reduce the emphasis on ‘winning at all costs’. These include Skills Challenge (side challenges to help teams attain better standing in the competitions) and Character Award (for the team that displayed outstanding character as graded by their opponents).
Young people will continue to change. Pray with us that the TeenSportz ministry in Singapore will move forward as a strong platform that can engage young people effectively with the gospel of Christ through sports.
Titus (right) and Meng Kim during the Teensportz Basketball Sharing
Titus Wong was first involved in TeenSportz 2012 (known as TeenGames then) as the Logistic IC. Since then, he has served as sports IC, vice-chairman and then chairman.