From Football to Ministry: One Alumni's Missionary Journey

Jordan Congdon grew up in Southern California, raised by missionary parents who built homes for needy families in Mexico.

Congdon deeply admired his parents’ work but harbored a passion for another staple of California life: football. He kicked two seasons for the University of Nebraska before transferring to the University of Southern California, where he was starting kicker for the 2009 Trojans under renowned coach Pete Carroll.

“My dream was to become an NFL kicker,” Congdon said. “And I went full on with that.”

Over time, including three years of study and reflection at Princeton Theological Seminary, Congdon MDiv’13, found a calling that melded both worlds: sports and Christian service.

Today, he and his wife, April, and their four children, live in the Yucatan Peninsula town of Puerto Morelos, where under the auspices of the nonprofit founded by his parents, Amor Ministries, they have started a local sports program that has drawn nearly 100 kids. They also opened a daycare center, and recently started an elementary school for 10 kindergarten and first-grade pupils.

“One of the things I was working through in Seminary was asking God: ‘If I had gotten to such a high level in sports, doesn’t it make sense that it would become part of what I do?’” Congdon said. “And now here we are—coaching, mentoring, teaching, and doing the long-term hard work of community development.

“It’s awesome.”

Congdon started the Tortugas Sports Ministry with flag football in 2017, then expanded to include tackle football, soccer, baseball, track, and basketball. With a paid staff of seven coaches, the program offers elite sports training that has already enabled a handful of local kids to win college scholarships.

In 2021, the couple started a daycare. And this past fall they opened the En Su Imagen (In His Image) Intentional Learning Center school. They recently began fundraising efforts with big plans in mind. They hope to expand the school’s student population and get much-needed facilities for the sports program.

Congdon says their overall goal is helping young people develop character, faith, and resilience while growing up in a hardworking, but economically stressed community. Puerto Morelos, a fishing village, is located between the resort towns of Cancun and Playa del Carmen. Many parents work long hours in the tourism industry yet still struggle to make ends meet, Congdon says.

We believe young people in Puerto Moreles should have every possibility open to them,” Congdon says. “They deserve the best education, and we see what we’re offering as very much a part of their education.

He is particularly proud of the way his work carries on the spirit of his parents’ ministry while channeling it in new directions.

Scott and Gayla Congdon started Amor in 1980, after witnessing a swelling of populations in Mexican orphanages. The couple’s ministry has built more than 20,000 homes and enlisted church groups and individuals from around the world to join in the experience through short-term mission trips.

Jordan Congdon was born six years after Amor was founded and grew up in a home where the commitment to serving the poor was 24/7. His parents settled in San Diego for better access to Mexico and raised him in the multi-ethnic neighborhood of City Heights, where they also helped start a church.

Trips across the border were routine. 

“It was year-round,” Jordan says.

Nevertheless, when Congdon began getting passionate about football, his parents were all in. 

“My mom cut back because I needed more time getting to school and getting to practices,” he said. “She sacrificed ministry to help me pursue my dream.”

He won the job of kicker during his senior year at USC, where he found a key mentor and role model in coach Carroll.

Football wasn’t his only focus at USC. His undergraduate major in American studies helped shape his worldview, and he began making a personal commitment to social justice. When he wasn’t on the field or in class, Congdon was teaching and mentoring homeless children in after-school programs on Skid Row.

After college graduation, he felt he needed the reflective atmosphere of seminary before deciding his next move.

“I went to Seminary to sort things out with God,” Congdon said. “I went to get some clarity about what it means to be Christian and what it doesn’t mean. At the end of the day, nothing develops your relationship with God like being in a setting of theological study.”

Especially helpful was studying theologians like Karl Barth, who wrote of how the Church must concentrate most on the lowest levels of human society.

“Seminary gave me a solid theological foundation for what my parents do,” Congdon said.

The thing that impacted me the most was studying the mission of God, the idea that we are invited into what God is doing in the world.

Congdon and his wife moved to Puerto Morales in 2016, initially planning to continue Amor’s work of building homes and also constructing a pastors’ training facility. But once the couple settled in, they felt moved in a different direction.

“We have come into a community the way I think missionaries should: We listened,” Congdon said. “At the end of the day, we heard peoples’ request about what they want for their own community, and we are finding ways to do that.”