During the summer of 2025, more than 500 people gathered in Seville and A Coruña, Spain, to play football (soccer) and hear the good news of Jesus. Local churches were invited to form teams made up of both believers and those who don’t yet know Christ.
Rebeca, a member of OM in Spain, helped lead the effort after seeing how effective sports ministry has been in other countries.
In A Coruña, she partnered with a volunteer from OM’s SportsLink ministry to propose the idea to the local pastors’ association. Their hope was simple: bring churches together and create an opportunity to share the gospel with their community.
“I said that OM in Spain wanted to encourage evangelism—something to reach out to the community in A Coruña to spread the gospel,” she said. “I know that evangelical churches in Spain struggle with money because we are very tiny, so I said that I will give a prize of money for them to invest in evangelism—€500 for first place, €250 for second and €125 for third.”
In Seville, the tournament followed a similar format, but without prize money, because churches there already have strong evangelistic resources. Every player received a gift bag with a Gospel of John and a bottle of water, and a simple gospel message was presented during the day.
In total, 20 teams from 16 churches participated across both cities. Each team intentionally included several non‑believers, and volunteers emphasized fair play and clean language as part of the witness.
At both locations, the staff who managed the soccer fields noticed something different. They were impressed by how polite the players and fans were and how clean they left the facilities. “There was no swearing, only good fair play, because they were not like hot or fighting. One man was so impressed, and he said, ‘I’m not used to this, you know. You are welcome to do this more often.”
Two days before the A Coruña tournament, one of the referees dropped out. The team planned to continue with only three until the morning of the event, when a man approached Rebeca and said he was a certified referee and wanted to help.
As they talked, he shared that he had once been a believer but was walking through a very difficult season. He was homeless and living on the streets.
“We were able to give him €50 so he could rent a room for the night,” Rebeca said. “He was in tears. I told him, ‘I think God is calling you back to Him.’ We’re staying in touch and praying he reconnects with a church and gets the support he needs.”
“That was maybe the highlight, you know, that God has a purpose in this. Also, small testimonies of people who never go to church, but will go to a football tournament. And of course, it is an open door for them to hear the gospel.”
The event also marked significant progress for OM’s ministry in Spain. It was the very first OM outreach in A Coruña and only the second in Seville.
“Outreach takes time here,” Rebeca said. “I have been living here for 10 years, and this is the first event I’ve done. You need a lot of time until people trust you, so this is like my open door, and hopefully, we are talking to do it next year as well. We are having ideas about how we can do it, maybe as a whole day, more like a festival, but still with the football tournament included.”
The outreach won’t end with the tournament. In A Coruña, the pastor of the winning team’s church plans to use their prize money to support weekly Tuesday soccer gatherings where most of the attendees are not believers. Funds will help purchase equipment and host a gathering for players and their families.
There are also plans to hold another tournament in Porto do Son, a small, hard‑to‑reach village in northern Galicia, during an upcoming church retreat. The hope is to invite local residents to play and stay for a gospel presentation.
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