FGGAM recived this news release:
Fellowship of Christian Athletes Nears 1 Million Completions of YouVersion Bible Reading Plans
FCA Focuses on Helping Coaches and Athletes Strengthen Their Relationship with Christ Through Multiple Online Reading Plans
KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Coaches and athletes have many demands—family, friends, practice, games, workouts and much more. Where does God fit in? One of the hardest parts of staying committed to Bible reading and prayer is setting aside dedicated time each day for God.
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA, www.fca.org) is dedicated to helping coaches and athletes build in time each day for the most important aspect of their lives—their walk with Christ, where they can do this by completing FCA YouVersion reading plans.
“What a wonderful gift to have the Word of God at our fingertips—anywhere and at any point in the day,” said FCA President and CEO Shane Williamson. “The Fellowship of Christian Athletes is honored to help coaches and athletes live out a commitment to be devoted to Christ, even in the busiest times of our lives as we seek to balance our families, job, church service and sports. As Christ-followers, our devotion to honoring God with our lives must be our top priority.
“For this reason, we are excited to share that FCA, as a global sports ministry, is nearing 1 million completed YouVersion Bible reading plans,” Williamson added. “A commitment to prayer, reading Scripture, being active in a church family and serving those in need in our community are all core elements of devotion to God and living out His calling. And FCA is thrilled we can be a part of that.”
The YouVersion Bible app allows faithful readers to receive God’s Word anywhere and from almost any device. FCA now offers 75 reading plans, including those in Chinese, French, German, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian languages. A relationship between YouVersion and FCA began in 2013, and since then, more than 933,000 people have completed an FCA Bible reading plan. Currently over 1.6 million have subscribed to FCA YouVersion reading plans.
For FCA International, the YouVersion Bible reading plans have enabled FCA staff worldwide to engage both with FCA and delve deeper into God’s Word in their own language. Additionally, the international benefits for a strong partnership with YouVersion are especially rich. For instance, while the mobile app doesn’t see itself as a replacement for printed Bibles, it doesn’t cost to be printed, shipped, stored or distributed, and is accessible to anyone with a mobile device. And the possibilities for the future are endless.
“We want to engage our international leaders to start developing and writing some of their own plans instead of just taking what we’ve done and translating it,” said Dan Britton, FCA’s Chief Field Officer. “We want the plans to be more contextualized and written from their perspective. Our vision would be that we have reading plans for coaches and athletes in every single language and in every single country that we’re working in and that we could provide them, free of charge, a way to engage in God’s Word. That would be the ultimate win.
“The key part of FCA’s YouVersion partnership is to get people into God’s Word,” Britton added. “True transformation happens when our coaches and athletes are engaged in God’s Word.”
Those interested in the FCA YouVersion reading plans can download the YouVersion Bible app, as 414 million others worldwide have already done so. Once the app is downloaded, users can search for “FCA” to find and begin a plan. Multiple reading plans are also available on FCA’s resources webpage.
FCA has announced its 2020 ministry theme—100%—which will guide the entire year of events, studies, resources, gatherings, Camps and more. Learn more at www.fcacamps.org, where visitors can also watch the 100% theme video as well as the 2020 Camps video.
Read more about the Fellowship of Christian Athletes here, visit FCA’s website at www.fca.org, its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/fcafans or its Twitter feed @fcanews.