Soul Brothers tells the true-life story of God’s amazing work through two ordinary men (my dear Ethiopian friend, Berhanu, and me) whom God brought together to help launch Sports Friends, a SIM ministry now impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people around the world.
I met Berhanu on a short-term mission trip to Ethiopia in 2001. While Berhanu and I were the same age (both born in 1961) and were each married with three children, the similarities seemed to stop there. In fact, on the surface, you could hardly imagine two people with more different backgrounds.
Berhanu lived in Ethiopia, a country scarred in recent decades by ethnic conflicts, repression, regional wars, famines, poverty, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Berhanu endured much hardship and suffering as a result of such crises.
I, on the other hand, was born and raised in America. I was a Harvard MBA and former investment banking executive. My prior world of corporate boardrooms, luxury homes, and children’s private schools seemed another planet away from his world.
When I first met Berhanu, I was at an inflexion point in my life. I had spent years chasing the American dream—getting a good education, securing a good job, making money, making a name for myself, being successful, etc. I had been living a life overly focused on my selfish ambitions. While I was a Christian, God was just getting the leftovers in my life. God had recently taken me through a season of great transformation, convicting me of my selfish pursuits and giving me the desire to give Him the first fruits of my life. I had recently resigned from my job as a senior executive at a large U.S. financial services company and was waiting on the Lord to show me what was next, feeling strongly that He was leading me into some type of full-time vocational ministry. I envisioned this short-term trip to Ethiopia to be an enriching experience but not much more than that. Moving my family of five to Ethiopia to serve as missionaries was nowhere on my radar screen.
As I had an opportunity to talk with Berhanu on that first short-term trip to Ethiopia, he shared with me parts of his story: Jesus appearing in his bedroom at age 12 and calling him out of an animistic home; fleeing from a father who then tried to kill him; living on the streets, finding refuge in the church; being tortured in prison for his Christian faith; God working through him and his Christian friends in miraculous ways to bring many to faith in Jesus; and traveling to Los Angeles where he met Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant in the LA Lakers locker room. Story after amazing story!
I could scarcely process all that he shared. His stories seemed otherworldly! As he shared about his journey of walking with God, he exuded a great sense of joy and peace. His personality was contagious, leaving me with a desire to spend more time with him, and a desire to hear more about his experiences with God.
So began a 20+ year friendship and season of serving God together to reach many young people and their families with the gospel of Jesus through SIM’s Sports Friends ministry.
Sports Friends’ vision was to train and equip local Ethiopian churches and church planters to reach out into their communities to make disciples of Jesus Christ among youth and their families through relationships first built on the sports field. Coaches (sports ministers) were trained to be much more than a sports coach—they were trained to be a life coach, introducing young people to Jesus and helping them grow as His disciples.
God has moved powerfully through the ministry of Sports Friends-trained coaches. Hundreds of new churches have been established in communities where there was no Christian witness, and many thousands of young people have come to faith in Jesus in Ethiopia and other countries where Sports Friends eventually expanded [SIM South Africa missionary Jonathan Thomas heads Sports Friends in Thailand].
I wrote Soul Brothers quite simply to testify of God’s amazing work of redemption, to introduce readers to my dear friend Berhanu (whose walk with God will hopefully inspire you as much as it has me), and to share the power of church-centred sports ministry as a tool God uses to transform lives and communities. I desire that readers will see a bigger picture of God and His work in the world today that will lead them to renewed worship and service.
One of the great joys in writing this book was the process of systematically reviewing my life’s history and seeing God’s hand of faithfulness and goodness over many years and decades. At the time of writing, I told my wife, Alison, that even if nobody else ever read this book, just the process and practice of remembering God’s work in my life (and the life of my family) would be so worth it.
Writing a book was a challenging exercise at times. Finding time during the busy years of leading the global expansion of Sports Friends and trying to integrate Berhanu’s and my stories seamlessly were the biggest challenges.
God, however, was faithful to lead and sustain throughout the process. He gave me a great gift a few years ago that kept me going and motivated. An Ethiopian pastor who had a gift of prophecy spoke to me in Ethiopia when I was visiting Berhanu and working on the book draft (he had no prior knowledge of my book project). At the time, I was also asking God to give me wisdom on the title of the book.
Fikadu, the Ethiopian pastor, said to me, “You are working on a big project, a book project. The Lord will guide you in this project. He will provide and lead you in this project.”
He then recounted the story of Ezekiel 37, when the Lord gathered up all the dry bones strewn across the valley. He said, “There are many pieces to your project, and they may look like they are scattered across the valley like these dry bones with no hope for bringing them together and to life. It was only God who could gather the scattered dry bones in Ezekiel’s time. And God will gather the scattered bones of this book project and bring them to life. He will guide you. He will do it. Follow Him.”
Then Fikadu spoke to Berhanu and me together and said these words were from the Lord.
“You are brothers. You love and trust each other like no other. You are family. This is a very special relationship. This is because it is the Lord who has brought you together for His purposes and given you this relationship. Continue as brothers. You are soul brothers.”
Soul Brothers: Two Men. Two Worlds. One Purpose. is available from Amazon.com
in paperback and Kindle editions; short link https://a.co/d/8EDNflB
This article is reprinted from SIMnow issue 157, available for download at https://sim.org.za/simnow/.
Text and photos by Tripp Johnston, Sports Friends Co-Founder and Ambassador