The churches and the Olympics

The thirtieth Olympiad is a mega-event. Some 17,000 athletes from 205 countries will be competing in 26 sports; 63,000 people will be engaged in staging the Games; and an estimated 20,000 journalists from across the world will be covering them. Half a million spectators are expected, and it is thought that ticket sales will exceed 9 million. It will be impossible to be in Britain between July and September 2012 and not be touched in some way by the Games and the Paralympics, even if only through the inevitable saturation of the media. The last London Games was held in 1948, so this is a once-in-a generation opportunity.

The churches have been planning how they can engage with the event ever since the announcement of the success of the London bid in July 2005. An initial consultation was held at Highway Church in Stratford on 30 September 2005, bringing together local church leaders, ecumenical agencies, national para-church organizations like Christians in Sport and YWAM and local mission-focused organizations like Transform Newham.

A small working group took the work forwards, calling a national consultation in March 2006. The consultation involved the Archbishop’s Council, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Churches Together in England, the Free Churches Group, the Afro-Caribbean Evangelical Alliance, the Evangelical Alliance, the London Church Leaders’ Group, Transform Newham and Christians in Sport. Between them they prompted the formation of More Than Gold. Lord Brian Mawhinney accepted the position of chair. It was launched at Westminster Central Hall in January 2007 in the presence of Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, and Tessa Jowell MP. It was incorporated in September 2007, and was awarded charitable status in the December. Dave Willson was appointed as the CEO in 2008.

More Than Gold is a distinctive brand. Christian churches and communities have a long history of relating to significant sporting events, but during the 1980s and 1990s some sports mission agencies helped the churches co-ordinate their responses which allowed them access to officially sanctioned activities including giving water to the crowds, hosting athletes’ families, providing chaplains in the athletes’ villages, staging creative arts events and contributing translators and literature resources.

In the run-up to the 1996 Atlanta Games, the umbrella Christian body, Quest Atlanta, saw the need for a brand which would provide a ‘kite mark’ for outreach and activities which would not exceed denominational or doctrinal boundaries, and also help act as an interface between the organising committees and the churches and Christian agencies. Since then More Than Gold has been used as a brand in a number of sporting events, including the Commonwealth Games, the Pan-American Games, the All-African Games and the Indian Ocean Games, as well as successive Olympics and Paralympics.

A review of a decade of the involvement of the churches with the Games conducted after the Salt Lake City Winter Games of 2002 notes that the churches became a major partner of the official organizing committees in the delivery of programmes and resources. The Norwegian Lutheran Church, which is of course integral to the culture of Norwegian society, set the standard at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games by implementing four programmes. They provided multi-faith chaplaincy to the Olympic Village as is required by the International Olympic Committee charter. They also offered the use of various church sites, and helped in the co-ordination of canteen supplies, counselling and entertainment to the construction workers building the site for about eighteen months before the Games. They also provided Christian literature, including Bibles, for the Olympic Village.

That provided a benchmark for the 1996 Atlanta Games. A conservative estimate is that the churches mobilized more than 20,000 volunteers. They began to organize 5 years out from the Games, and eventually provided more than 40 chaplains for the Village, 1,000 volunteers to help with security, over 75 per cent of the homes used in the Athletes’ Families Homestay Programme, and 3 million cups of water via mobile kitchen units. In addition to these ‘official’ programmes, the churches of Atlanta ran a coffee house ministry from a store on the main pedestrian corridor to the Games which was also a base for performing arts events.

Two thousand disadvantaged young people benefited from more than 45 sports clinics staffed by experienced coaches. Over 300,000 hospitality bags containing lip balm, sunscreen, tissues and sweets were distributed to visitors. Three hundred creative arts performances were staged throughout the city, and a prayer network covering the whole city sustained the entire ministry.

The same pattern was followed at Sydney in 2000 and at Salt Lake City in 2002, although the number of sports clinics rose to 110 in Sydney, and the Australian churches also ran 120 festivals which showed the Opening Ceremony on big screens, serving over 225,000 people. ¹ The engagement in Britain for the London Games is expected to be on a larger scale than any of these.

In order to meet this challenge, More Than Gold has enabled one of the broadest possible Christian coalitions for the 2012 Games. It brings together more than sixty denominations and agencies. Those who are acting as either global or games sponsors (and thus contributing finance or staffing, or both) are (in alphabetical order) – Alpha, Ambassadors in Sport, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Bible Society, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Care, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Christians in Sport, the Church of England, Christian Publishing and Outreach (CPO), Churches Together in England, Compassion, the Deo Gloria Trust, the Jerusalem Trust, the London City Mission, the Methodist Church, New Wine, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, the Salvation Army, the Seventh Day Adventists, Stewardship, Traidcraft, Transform Newham, United Business Machines, United Christian Broadcasters, the United Reformed Church and Youth With a Mission.

The needs created by the Olympics and the opportunities provided by the brand have created a form of practical ecumenism which crosses seemingly insuperable boundaries of style, ethos and theological stance, especially when it is realized that Churches Together in England brings to the table its thirty-eight member denominations, ranging from the Orthodox to the independent families of churches.

More Than Gold’s mission statement is simple, ‘To enable the UK churches to engage with the Olympic Games’. That will be done by helping them catch a vision for the impact that they can make, by making connections between the agencies and churches which will produce action, and co-ordinate the production of resources and any needed action.

‘Engagement’ is a deliberately inclusive term which offers many emphases. Canon Duncan Green, the Church of England’s Olympics Co-ordinator (who is seconded to the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), in itself a clear recognition of the added value the churches bring to the Games) notes that the Games present the churches with opportunities to serve and adds, ‘If the church isn’t there it will seem even more irrelevant than it does to some people.’ ²

Churches are being encouraged to partner with local authorities and other community groups to provide hospitality, food and water for the crowds who will greet the Olympic Torch as it winds its way across the country in the seventy days prior to the Games. The approach is holistic – either engaging with and resourcing whatever is planned within the wider community or, if there is a vacuum, creating community festivals with a range of suggested events from sports challenges for children to a Fairtrade chocolate and wine tasting or a community meal. The resource kit, a partnership between More Than Gold and Traidcraft, includes possibilities for faith sharing, yet that is seen in the context of the total missio dei which encompasses social justice and the elimination of poverty. The sermon outline explores the theme of letting the light shine (Matt. 5.14–16).

If service is the foundation stone of the churches’ response, outreach in a post-Christian society is for some of fundamental importance. The Olympics, in this sense, confront the churches with a symptom of the cultural shifts of the past half-century.

In 1948 after the London Games, British sport was still run by what Mason and Holt dub the ‘blazerati’, the amateur elite who returned from active service to take over the sports establishment. The predominantly ‘amateur’ ethos began to die in the 1950s, and its death knell was sounded in the 1960s. Footballers threatened legal action if they were not allowed the rights of free negotiation like other workers, and the distinction between ‘gentleman’ and ‘players’ was abolished in cricket in 1963. The media’s growing interest in sport was part of the development of the culture of celebrity which, by the 1990s, would see the press pruriently obsessed by the private lives of sporting heroes.

At the same time increasing social mobility and the switch from an industrial to a service and knowledge-based economy boosted leisure opportunities, and in some of the new industries a ‘clear correlation’ was discerned between career success and sporting achievement. Exercise was promoted as part of a healthy lifestyle, and the growth of female participation in sport in particular was exponential in the 1980s and 90s. One of the effects of globalization was internationalizing of sport, most notably in the elite sports like football. Once the free movement of labour in Europe was enforced by the European Commission, quotas on non-nationals were impossible to maintain, and some Premiership clubs fielded teams devoid of English players. ³

Sport is now a major industry, a fixed component of the culture of celebrity, a pervasive televisual presence and a significant part of the lives of most of the population whether as participants or spectators. The Church’s reaction to it therefore needs to be substantially different from that which prevailed fifty years ago. It is that cultural shift which lies behind the development of specialist sports ministries and the approach to mega-events like the Commonwealth Games, the World Cup and the Olympics. ⁴

More Than Gold therefore seeks to resource the churches particularly well in relating to the sports culture around them. Few churches, they acknowledge, have enough sports players and enthusiasts to run a programme, so this kind of activity is best delivered ecumenically through community sports teams which bring together the like-minded and skilled from all the churches in an area. Much of this work is aimed towards young people, and suggested activities include sports clinics and camps which provide specialist coaching, sports quizzes, holiday camps, sports academies and schools work. The design of these opportunities and resources draws on the skills of agencies like Christians in Sport, Youth for Christ, Kick London and the Scripture Union. All seek to introduce churches to forms of encounter with sports culture with which they may not be familiar. All-age resources which combine sports material, Christian testimony and Scripture have been carefully produced by the Bible Society and Sports Ministry agencies.

Millions of visitors will be attracted to the Olympics sites during the Games, and the churches could play a critical part in welcoming them and helping them enjoy the Games. Hospitality is at the heart of the planned response of the churches. More Than Gold will be running the Athlete’s Family Homestay programme which extends the welcome of a family home to the families of the 17,000 athletes. The depth of administrative complexity which underlies this programme should not be underestimated, but nor should the value of the international links made between families which result from it. This kind of hospitality of the heart is an expression of the core of the gospel.

At a more mundane, but equally valuable, level churches near Olympic sites are being encouraged to use their own buildings, or rented premises, to provide hospitality centres where free tea, coffee and water and internet access will be available alongside information about the Games and the local area. All the staffing will be by volunteers.

Official chaplaincy to the Olympics is a specialist, multi-faith ministry, organized by LOCOG and headed up by Canon Duncan Green. In addition, More Than Gold is seeking to appoint upwards of 600 unofficial chaplains, or Games Pastors. They had originally intended to train 60 but, after consultation with transport authorities, the request came for at least 600 to be available at the transport hubs at St Pancras station and Heathrow Airport. St Pancras expects to handle 100,000 extra travellers each day of the Games, and Heathrow expects its busiest days to be at the end of the Olympics and the end of the Paralympics respectively. There will be an extra 800,000 people in London each day of the Games. Games Pastors will be there to provide a welcome, ensure safety, have an eye for the vulnerable and offer practical help where needed.

The Olympics is not simply a celebration of the remarkable skills and capabilities of human beings, an evocation of the wonder of being made in the image of God. It has a shadow side. Any movement of people on this scale will exacerbate social problems and difficulties. Homelessness and rough sleeping will inevitably increase, and there is a heightened danger of human trafficking, both for cheap labour and prostitution. Among their preparation for the Games, More Than Gold have a social justice committee who are working with agencies to provide practical training for Games Pastors in homelessness, and are preparing material to heighten church awareness of trafficking. They are also seeking to support the aim of the organizers to produce the first environmentally sustainable Olympics and Paralympics by partnering with environmental charities like Operation Noah and Arocha. This concern for social justice will echo much that the churches are already doing in these areas.

The Catholic dioceses of Southwark, Brentwood and Westminster, in alliance with Pax Christi and More Than Gold, are supporting the Olympic Truce, one hundred days of peace on each side of the Games, from 8 June to 24 October. The ancient Olympics allowed the warring Greek city states to put aside conflict and come together in peace for the duration of the Games. The Games literally enabled peace. The ideal was revived by the International Olympic Committee in 2000. The truce is supported by UN resolution A/RES/48/11, and the Conservative peer Lord Michael Bates began walking 3,000 miles from Olympia to London in the autumn to publicize it. By itself sport can never achieve peace but it could inspire it. The churches can at least pray that the 193 nations who signed up to the UN resolution in October 2011 might implement it.

The Olympics will roll across Britain with unstoppable force this summer. Unique opportunities for the churches are being created. The inspiration and organization have been provided. Local churches and groups of churches are now translating that into action. Let a few examples suffice – the churches of Barking and Dagenham are holding an open-crowd festival and big-screen event for the Opening Ceremony, and St John’s Church in Newcastle-upon-Tyne is doing the same with a BBQ. Goldhill Baptist Church in Buckinghamshire, along with five partner churches, is running themed holiday clubs, a sports café and sports quizzes, hosting mission teams from America and working on human trafficking with Stop the Traffick, and on the island of Jersey an All-day Olympic Festival is being organized by the local churches. Twenty churches in Loughborough are putting on an inter-school sports quiz aimed at the Primary Schools in the town, organizing a multi-cultural street party, and acting as stewards for the Torch Relay council-run events. The list is rapidly becoming endless.

The unprecedented coalitions that are emerging through More Than Gold are indicative of a new kind of ecumenism that rejoices in permeable missional membranes rather than puzzling over insuperable doctrinal barriers. That in itself is noteworthy, and bears theological reflection.

It is in part an expression of different ways of being the church and responding to a kaleidoscopically shifting culture. Sport is a part of that culture shift, and for many it is an integral component of the ways in which they seek and give expression to identity and meaning. Theologians need to take sport more seriously. There is, as Stewart Weir of Verité Sports Ministry points out, as yet no systematic theology of sport. ⁵

The Olympics, like any of the great institutions of the world, is composed of high idealism, political leverage, power and money. On the one hand there are the Games themselves, which at their best celebrate the wonder of being human. On the other, there is the question of heritage, the legacy of buildings, infra-structure and institution.

On the 18 June 2009 John Gladwin, then the Bishop of Chelmsford, spoke in the House of Lords with characteristic verve as the bishop of the ‘Olympic diocese of Chelmsford’ (most of the Olympic sites are within the diocese of Chelmsford). He brought the two aspects together in a series of penetrating and pertinent questions about the legacy of the Games. Would the children and young people of Newham, many of whom fall below the poverty line, be engaged in the Games? Would the Games have ‘a ring of steel’ around them, or would there be real opportunities of engagement through volunteering and employment ‘to draw a whole generation into the excitement of this experience’? Would there be a serious multi-faith conversation with the communities of East London about the legacy of the Games? Would part of the legacy of the Games be affordable housing, or would it be ‘the gentrification of Tower Hamlets and Newham whereby the poor of those communities disappear into Barking, Dagenham and Thurrock’. ⁶

The churches, for their part, are stretching nerves, sinews and finances to ensure the greatest possible participation in the Games as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It remains to be seen how Gladwin’s questions about the legacy will be answered.