The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) was founded in 1954 by Don McClanen, a basketball coach at Eastern Oklahoma A&M. As a student, he had the idea that athletes could use their platform to share the Christian faith.
The ministry's mission is to lead coaches and athletes into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ and the church. Their vision is to see the world transformed by Jesus Christ through the influence of coaches and athletes.
COO Josh Gilreath recently told American Family Radio that the Lord has really been working on that over the last 10 years.
"He showed us that our vision statement was to see the world but that we had been U.S. bordered; we had never really gone out of the country and never really asked the Lord what His place for us was internationally," he shared.
In 2023, FCA welcomed 110,676 coaches and athletes to 1,042 camps across the country and around the world.
A total of 68,846 coaches, student athletes, parents, and community members worshiped together at 317 Fields of Faith events.
Coaches and athletes were reached through 20,297 Huddles, and FCA distributed 230,247 Bibles.
Today, FCA has international staff working with several partnering organizations wanting to do sports ministry around the globe.
"We have a sports ministry presence in over 100 countries now," said Gilreath, a former football walk-on for Mississippi State University.
Meanwhile, FCA is no longer limited to schools that have sports programs. The ministry also serves recreational, travel, and club teams in today's changing sports landscape.
"In the last few years, we formulated FCA Sports, which allows you not only to attend FCA Huddles, but you can play for FCA," Gilreath relayed. "You can play for FCA in the form a recreational league, or also in the form of a travel team or a club team."
He estimates about 30,000 participants are in that so far and says the growth has been "really neat to see."
"You get such a consistent cadence with those athletes," said Gilreath. "Through that cadence, you're having usually twice-a-week touch points where you're studying God's Word together as a part of those teams."
