Beyond the game: discipling a continent through soccer
“Ambassadors’ Football is an international soccer ministry that works on every continent—except Antarctica. It would be a bit difficult to play soccer there,” quips Ben Marais, who oversees the ministry in South Africa.
“Our focus is connecting people to Jesus through football. But we don’t just coach soccer—we coach holistic living and life skills,” he explains.
In Africa, Ambassadors’ Football partners with local churches in seven countries, mentoring community coaches who play on surfaces like the sand fields in Mozambique, red earth in Kenya, and rocky patches beside South Africa’s N2 highway.
One of the biggest challenges in Africa is the absence of father, or sometimes mother figures—a positive influence—in children’s lives. “This lack of role models is heartbreaking,” says Ben. “We can’t replace parents, but we can play a fathering role through soccer.”
“We hold coaching programs to help the coaches play better, but we aim to coach their hearts too. That’s the thing that changes it from soccer coaching to life coaching.
We travel as a team and spend a week with a group of coaches. I just returned from Liberia where we trained 65 coaches from four denominations and commissioned them to spot the gap in their communities and step into it as a father-figure coach. We explain to coaches, ‘You may teach what you know, but you will reproduce who you are.’ What they know is soccer, but this leads to the question: Who am I? (What is going to be replicated?)”
Ben’s own journey reflects this focus on heart transformation. “It challenges me too—I must search my heart. Jeremiah 17:9–10 says: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?
This takes a lot of work around emotional healing, emotional maturity, emotional intelligence, and spiritual disciplines that help me be reformed—made more like Jesus. To help me be a safe space. Then I walk that journey with coaches, who walk it with the players. It’s a multiplication discipleship model.”
In some countries, the reach is immense. “In Rwanda, we work with churches that place more than 7,000 children weekly, in 50 places, in front of someone who can influence them for the better.”
How did this work change you as a person, and how did a ‘boer seun’ from the Free State get involved in soccer ministry?
“I am unrecognisably different to who I was,” says Ben. “Sports ministry was part of that.”
Ben grew up in Bloemfontein, studied theology, and pastored in Bethlehem for 8½ years. “But I was always a sports person, which didn’t always go hand in hand with being an NG Kerk dominee—especially in those days. Some of the older ladies didn’t love that I was always in a tracksuit.”
Then a schoolteacher and fellow cricketer asked Ben to coach an under-11B cricket team. “I agreed, thinking it might help me connect with kids—and maybe even their parents. The first step that changed my life was that step I took onto Truida Kestell Primary School’s sports field in Bethlehem. I realised that dominee was not the title that was leading me—rather, it was coach, both spiritual coach and life coach.”
Later, he joined the International Sport Leadership School in Stellenbosch, living with people from 24 countries for three months. “Though I was the only one with formal theological training, the two Ethiopian guys I stayed with had a relationship with the Lord that I had not experienced. I wondered how this could be, and this led me on a deep life journey of being humbled and transformed.”
A New Voice Through Soccer
Then in 2009, with the FIFA World Cup on the horizon, Ben was appointed by the NG Church to help congregants embrace the opportunity and use it for ministry. He recalls sitting in a church in Swartruggens, where the local dominee said, “This is the first time black, white, and coloured leaders have sat around one table—and it’s because of soccer.”
Back in Stellenbosch, Ben felt God break his heart for South Africa. “As a white Afrikaans dominee, I felt irrelevant. I asked God, ‘How can I make a difference in this country I love?’ And I felt God whisper, ‘Ben, you have to change. Stop expecting people to come to you—or to rugby and cricket.’” I asked God how I must be involved, and I felt God say, “Soccer.”
‘But Lord, I don’t even play soccer,’ I thought. I’d only watched it occasionally—mainly the 2010 World Cup. But God didn’t ask for my skill. I realised I needed to be obedient.
In 2013, I was appointed to lead Ambassadors Football in South Africa—despite knowing little about the game. And that was the beginning of this journey…I had to coach and support the coaches—and all glory to God who changed my heart.
Amazed at what God has done
Most of the training I do is in Cape Town, Jeffrey’s Bay, Rwanda and Kenya and we’ve seen incredible impact. We’ve seen people come to Christ on the field. In the begining we were training coaches who didn’t necessarily belong to a church and we’ve seen many of them, as well as others, come to Christ. We’ve also seen the growth each year as we come back, they get involved with training and the tutoring. This year in Kenya, I had the privilege of working with two women whose lives were touched in 2018. It’s amazing to see the deep dicipleship work that God has done through this programme. Now they are presenting the training and I am able to watch this transformaion, which is beautiful.
Recently, at the end of training in Kenya, the people Ben had worked with for nine years called him to sit at the front of the meeting. “One of the ladies told me that in Kenyan culture there is a tradition of honouring a father for his voice by giving him a staff—and then one of the mentoring coaches handed a staff to me. She also told me they have another tradition where the daughters honour their father by giving an item of clothing. A woman, who had just told me she sees me as a father and called me ‘daddy,’ stepped forward and gave me an item of clothing. I just wept.”
“How, Lord?” I thought. “How can You use someone like me—a white Afrikaner from the NG Kerk—to be a father for people who don’t have fathers?”
“God used soccer to give me a voice in Africa—and I am amazed. All Glory to Him. All I had was my obedience and a love for sport—which I thought would play out in rugby and cricket. But He turned it to soccer and made me relevant.”
“That’s what He did for Moses and others in the Bible. We bring what little we have. And obey.”
For more information about this ministry, contact:
Ben Marais, Director of Ambassadors’ Football, South Africa
Email: bmarais@ambassadorsfootball.org
