On your knees | December 2017
“Our Father as Missio Dei is enabling me in his Spirit to partake in Christ’s sufferings and glory. God is using diverse people and passions to provide roots and wings to my formation. Marriage and family is forging me in unrest as life-giving; serving at church and local communities is molding me to be a vessel for God’s use in treasured fellowship; basketball is forging me to rely on others’ strengths; serving as a sport-performance coach is disciplining my character to listen to and empower others; reading Scripture and other and studying is nurturing my spirit, enlightening my thinking, and my writing and communication competencies. My calling is to engage and co-journey with others to thrive together as Christ-followers.”
Rubén Fernández Morales, June 2017
Dear partner and friend,
The summer of 2015, our family (wife Lidia and four children ages 10-2) moved to Pasadena from Málaga, Spain. After near twenty years of full-time dedication to missions with Agape and AIA I was approved by my leadership to devote focused time and energy to studies in Theology and Ministry with Fuller Seminary. Doctors Robert Johnston and Catherine Barsotti have been angels (like you) and crucial as advisers and mentors to me in this journey. The twenty-two missionary families we lived with at Providence Mission Homes (from Lake Av Church), our church family at Pasadena Cove nant Church, the public school and the after-school program called “Can do Kids” where our children engage with other, non-yet, following Jesus kids on tutoring for reading, homework, and play, and the family at Fuller have been fundamental for effective, safe, healthy, trustworthy learning, hospitality, shalom and, we believe, way more.
The above statement I wrote up to final stages of this season of formal training, for now :-), serves the crucial purpose of the vivid memory I need to recall ritually and liturgically as life keeps hammering. All the learning environments I have the privilege of being part of: marriage, fathering, neighborhood, congregation, sport, the fully and the partly abled spirit-bodied man and women I serve, the local and global communities, hand reach and the far in time and space I partake with in Jesus sufferings and for His glory; all of them need to be inspired by the Spirit, and stay truthful and faithful and surrendered to the grace and justice to our Missio Dei, aiming to the non yet, but the hopeful vision of Revelation 7:9-10.
The graduation ceremony at Lake Avenue Church, Pasadena with over six hundred postgrad mates from thirty-five nations was a blast. A thorough academic study, research, and writing have truly stretched me as I could not even imagine. I am now enthusiastic to discover how to better serve God and others. Further formal studies are not for now, but I certainly do not give up on the possibility. Thanks so much for believing and joining arms for this season to be completed. God has used you and your generosity to move our family and mission in this wonderful season of development. Please, pray for us to find venues and be diligent to cross doors and gates to include Biblical, theological and academic resourcing to His kingdom.
You have heard me mention how sports communities and sports chaplaincy are growing to be affirmed as the two main mission priorities of Athletes in Action globally. You know well that serving the people of sports has been in our heart and praxis for decades, and this most of the time in places where Reformation and Protestant culture is not present and faith and sport are not understood either hardly practiced with a redeemed and holistic worldview (that of Genesis 1, and play and sport as an integral part of what God has created very good and given us to honor Him). Sports chaplaincy, not merely as religious services at sport events, nor as just pre-game prayer, Bible studies or passive pastoral attention to those of Christian faith in sport, but as integral care for sportspeople at their clubs, training and competition centers is the main focus for our mission.
In September Athletes in Action Global attempted the first pilot for training and mentoring a handful of new sports chaplains from African and Latin American countries. Next February Ruben is helping Ross Georgiou coordinate with some other European agencies and in the context of the European Christian Sports Union a Sports Chaplaincy training and roundtable consultation. Ross and Roula are back in Germany and we look to steer friendship and mission partnership with them. Steve, their younger son, has signed with Freiburg football academy and they will be b ased midterm in Kandern to support him. Please pray for the right European shakers and movers to join in Feb, and for wisdom and the lead of the Spirit to launch Sport Chaplaincy models in new European cities and countries.
Since we returned to Malaga, God has granted some old and new connections with basketball world friends. It is been a joy to see how athletes, coaches, trainers, sport business leaders whom we have been in disciple-making with long to co-journey with us or even seek intentionally for our advice, time together as family, professional coaching and mentoring. Please pray with us as we are scouting how to better connect mission locally (Parque Victoria Church and its sport mission opportunities, clubs, fitness centers…) with resourcing and serving with a virtual European Basketball Academy (coaches, clinics, training, sports performance coaching, innovation, mentoring, chaplaincy…). John Block, Al Norquist and Terry Layton are planning to come to Malaga next May (they helped pioneer Parque Victoria Church with basketball tours from California 30 years ago!). Pray for discernment, faith and God’s grace to move all this well.
Re-engaging with energy and excitement with the call to serve Jesus and you for sportspeople following Christ in every sport, team, club, community, city, and nation. Please, let us know any way we can pray or be of blessing to you. Thankful and on our knees with you,
Rubén, Lidia, Samuel, Josué, Lucía and David Azarías
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