During the second edition of the interdenominational Maranatha Crusade, churches mobilized youth volunteers through football matches to reach the local population, resulting in hundreds of new converts during a four-day Christian outreach campaign in the southwestern Burundian town of Rumonge.
According to team leader Don Divin Niyonkuru, a team of 55 young volunteers, drawn from Eglise Vivante de Jabe and other churches in the area, fanned out across seven locations in Rumonge over four days, combining door-to-door evangelism, sporting events and public gatherings.
Niyonkuru said 506 people had professed conversion to Christianity during the outreach, which followed a two-day training session in late July on how to share religious teachings and offer follow-up support to converts.
“We trained the young people on how to proclaim the Gospel, how to help someone receive Jesus as Lord and Savior, and how to provide spiritual follow-up afterward,” Niyonkuru said.
Among those reached, he said, were people who had previously consulted traditional healers and practitioners of occult rituals. He described conversations with two such individuals who told him they had sought help from traditional practitioners in hopes of reversing perceived curses, before deciding to adopt the Christian faith instead.
“I explained to them that Jesus Christ is the only one who can give true life. They understood that all these practices had not brought them the solution they were looking for, but rather more suffering. They then accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior,” he said.
When a football pitch turned into a pulpit
Organizers also used a football match to draw crowds. Eric says their approach is inspired in particular by Matthew 28:19–20, where Jesus calls his disciples to go to the nations and proclaim the Gospel.
A local team affiliated with Eglise Vivante de Jabe, Hosana FC, played a squad representing a coalition of area churches at a field belonging to a Rumonge secondary school.
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Team leader Akimana Eric said volunteers addressed spectators before kickoff and at halftime, while others held one-on-one conversations with supporters.
“The young evangelists speak for 10 to 15 minutes before the matches and during halftime. Another group engages directly with supporters through one-on-one conversations”, Akimana explains.
For Eric Akimana, football is not merely a recreational activity. It can also become a platform for sharing faith.
“Many people love football. We want to show that it is possible to play football while being a Christian and to use this talent to lead other people to Christ,” he said.
He added:
“We do not judge people. We show them that Jesus can transform their lives,” Akimana said, adding that the initiative was meant to demonstrate that sport and religious practice were not incompatible.
He said 58 people converted during the event.
Christian youth called to leave the benches and take action
Young Christians in Rumonge were also told to stop sitting back and start taking a bigger role in their churches during a youth meeting held as part of the Maranatha Crusade.
The meeting took place on August 8 in downtown Rumonge. Young people from several local churches came together to discuss one main question: how can a young Christian find their own gift and use it to help others?
The main speaker, Salvator Nibasumba, based his message on a passage from 2 Timothy 2:1-7. He told the group that personal growth and commitment to their faith come, in part, from a steady connection to Scripture.
But Nibasumba’s message went further than personal growth. He urged young people to take an active role in church life.
“Do not be a young person who comes to church, sits down, leaves, and waits for the older generation to be the only ones proclaiming the Gospel,” he said.
He told the group that every young person has something to offer.
“There is something in you that the Church needs and that the country needs. Every young person must be an example in faith and understand that he or she is a soldier of Christ,” Nibasumba said.
He said young people are often able to reach people and places that older generations find harder to reach.
“Young people can reach places where adults cannot. When a young person learns and understands something, they can also put it into practice quickly,” he said.
Nibasumba said this is why young people need to be more involved in church activities.
“When young people are not at the forefront of activities, it feels as though the Church is asleep,” he said.
He added that it is important to help each young person figure out what God wants them to do in the church, in society, and in the country.
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One participant, Khaya Champion Xola, said the meeting changed how he sees his daily life.
“I must be an ambassador of heaven here on earth, through what I do, what I say, and even through my thoughts,” he said.
He said the Bible is what will guide him going forward.
“Life on earth is like a game that God has given us, with rules to follow. Those rules are found in the Bible. This is what I will use to proclaim the Gospel so that I can be a good ambassador of heaven, representing it here on earth,” he said.
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