What We Do
We’re a global organization that partners with churches to connect people to Jesus through football.
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Our Focus
Modeling
We seek to model football ministry including community and church football programs, football clubs, camps and academies in order to practice what we preach. We actively engage in the footballing culture, promote sustainable programs and provide meaningful ministry experience to emerging leaders. In all of these programs we value excellence and root ourselves in the word of God to bring glory to God’s name and good to those around us.
Mobilizing
We envision and empower others to be disciple making coaches in their communities. We do this by running training programs for coaches and churches alike and establishing networks of likeminded people. In all of our training and mentoring we want to see a movement of churches and coaches across the world using football to connect people to Jesus.
Multiplying
We work with others to leverage our unique call to the church to see a greater impact for His kingdom. We partner across denominations, foundations, corporations, NGOs, churches, communities, individuals, and others that share a common desire to see lives transformed through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
How We Do It
Our History
Rich Hay an AIA wrestler, Tim Conrad who had been the Biola University soccer coach and Dave Irby who had been the coach at Azusa Pacific established Sports Life an international soccer ministry based in Tacoma, WA. The soccer ministry focused on camps in the USA and international tours as short-term mission trips.
Jonathan Ortlip the leader of a tour to Austria was challenged by the leader of OM, Johan van Dam to establish a long-term work in Austria because 3000 towns and villages had no church. Johan saw that through football the Gospel was being shared with Austrian men after a match.
This vision of soccer as a means to share the gospel was cemented in Jon’s heart and in 1987 he followed Tim Conrad and Dave Irby to an organization called Missionary Athletes International (MAI).
God brought together John Squires from New Zealand and Garrick Pang from Seattle to join Jon and recruit 10 additional staff. Over the course of time and events God clearly refocused the direction of the ministry towards England and in 1989 the team sent a proposal named the “European Project” to Christians in Sport (CIS) in Oxford, where they stated the desire to establish the work in England but only with the blessing of CIS. God made it clear to CIS that they should invite the team.
The vision led to the establishing of a soccer ministry called “Ambassadors in Sport” in Bolton England in 1990. The vision was for it to become British and be able to reach the communities of England through the mobilization of the Church. In Bolton, Jonathan Ortlip and two others who grew up in Haiti, one from New Zealand, one from Spain, one Chinese-born American, and three Americans were soon joined by a number of British staff.
There was no manual on how to do cross-cultural football ministry. For the small group who started “Ambassadors in Sport” in Bolton (England) in 1990, the Word of God and prayer built the foundation of everything they did. It remains the center for the worldwide team of “Ambassadors Football” to this day. They started a local football team and ran annual camps (which continue to this day). Tours went out to Asia and the Middle East and within a few years a second work was started in Czech Republic.
From 2000 to 2010 God blessed the work and it expanded rapidly around the world, as more and more leaders were identified from within their own country. Initially, the starting of new works had required the recruiting and sending of a team of foreigners.
The name was changed from Ambassadors in Sport to Ambassadors Football in 2014 to clarify that it is the simple yet powerful, universal language of football that God has called Ambassadors to use. Our name comes from our founding verse, 2 Corinthians 5:20: “We are therefore Christ’s Ambassador...”
In 2014 the President of Ambassadors Football met a Canadian pastor/missionary in Brussels, Belgium due to a cancelled flight. Their conversation led to an invitation to visit Rwanda. Subsequently the partnership between Ambassadors Football and ADEPR, one of the largest denominations, became official in 2017.
In 2017 the partnership between Ambassadors Football and ADEPR began with the training of more than 70 coaches, sent by the Church, who would return to their communities from more than 20 locations to focus on giving children in primary schools a biblical worldview.
Over the ensuing years more than 200 children have gone back to school, more than 500 have been baptized by the Church and in some community’s teen pregnancies have all but disappeared.
And almost 10,000 children are now being discipled through the Church in weekly football programs in Rwanda alone. Since April 2024, several thousand more are also being discipled now in Kenya.
More and more church and denominational leaders grasp the vision of changing their nations when discipling the young generation through football ministry with the Word of God at the center. Learn more about Ambassadors' DT6 program here >
It is our privilege to be part of what God is doing around the world. Today over 150 staff are committed to God’s work with Ambassadors Football. By His grace and faithfulness, the team is now active in over 35 countries and strives for greater kingdom impact in unity, serving and mobilizing the Church together.
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