Vision creates resources. When God gives vision, he also provides the resources needed to accomplish that vision. We saw this truth in a remarkable way a few years ago when we began Upward Soccer in our church.
Two of us on staff at the church went to lunch with one of our lay leaders. When we arrived back at the church, I asked this man what he thought about our soccer fields. He asked, “What soccer fields?” At that point we had 18 acres of land and 11 of them were undeveloped. I explained how we could use that undeveloped land for soccer fields to expand our outreach to the community.
Five minutes after walking back into the office, the phone rang and that lay leader asked, “Can I be in charge?”
Within days of that conversation, the foreman of the crew building a large apartment complex next to our land came in and offered to give the church a $5,000 check if he could fence off a small part of our unused property to store his equipment during construction. I told him we would provide him with the necessary tax information if he would use his dirt-moving equipment to level our property for soccer fields. He smiled, shook my hand, and did the basic groundwork for our soccer fields for free.
I told these stories one morning in church as part of a vision-casting message. After church a man who had joined the church a week or two before came and spoke to me. “If you will pay the $800 it costs to move our equipment from the other side of Houston, I will finish building those soccer fields,” he said. I asked what he had in mind. “I build football, baseball, and soccer fields for colleges and universities all over Texas.” I told him he was hired.
In a few weeks we had four soccer fields of different sizes for particular age groups. We began Upward Soccer with 100 children the first year and 300 the next. Every week children and their parents heard the gospel at practice and on game days. The first person baptized in our new worship center was a girl from my soccer team. The next year I baptized a girl from my team and her mother. We led our association in baptisms largely due to Upward sports. It all happened because God gave the vision, leaders embraced it, resources came from unexpected sources, and lives were changed forever.
