Skip to main content

Relationships / Attitude / Presence

From my experience as a Sport Mentor, a competitor and a sport official, there are just a few key principles that make for good ministry with sport teams and individuals. Those principles are simply stated in three words: Relationships, Attitude and Presence. In the following pages we’ll address each one with more detail and a few illustrative stories.

It is often helpful to have a succinct, direct statement of purpose to help define a role of ministry. The following statement is my attempt at simply and briefly stating the purpose of a Sport Chaplain or Sport Mentor.
The Sport Chaplain or Sport Mentor serves the people of sport in the process of fully becoming the people whom God created them to be.
The Sport Chaplain or Mentor does this through:
· Redemptive Relationships
· Proper Attitudes
· Strategic Presence
· Effective Whole Life Training

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sport Chaplains at the Olympic Games

Today marks the official beginning of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London with the Opening Ceremony this evening. Among the thousands of people in the Olympic Village throughout the event is a collection of our colleagues from around the globe. There are sports chaplains, carefully selected from a wide variety of ethnic, national and sport backgrounds, speaking many different languages and from both genders, who are officially recognized by the London Organizing Committee and provided uniforms and credentials. They work through the Olympic Village’s Religious Services Center and have already been in London for over a week. They will also stay beyond the Olympic Games to serve in the Paralympic Games.   Please pray for these, our colleagues and fellow-servants, as they serve our Lord and the people in sport in these days of exhilarating triumph, painful defeat and even crippling despair. Some of these people were themselves Olympic competitors in past years and are thereby...

Retirement announcement

On 30 May, I will officially retire from my service as Character Coach Director for Nations of Coaches ( https://nationsofcoaches.com/ ), a ministry to college basketball in the USA. The health challenges my wife, Sharon, is experiencing have led to this somewhat abrupt change. At this point in our soon to be 50-years of marriage, she needs me more than I need to work. The spring and summer months will reveal how strongly she will recover and that will determine if and when I can resume some level of ministry. She is my highest priority. I am contemplating making myself available to sports ministry leaders for mentorship, coaching, and consulting. I will provide more details as they become available. In the short term, I am available for chats via telephone or Zoom, if I can be of service to you. Sharon and I are moving from our home in Carbondale, Illinois to an apartment near our son’s family in Southeast Missouri. I plan to continue to produce content via blog posts, Bible studies, ...

More Reflections from the Front Lines of a Cancer Battle - Week Four as a Widower.

Week Four as a Widower. Formerly, I had to work hard, schedule well, and plan wisely to achieve some solitude. Now, retired and widowed, solitude surrounds me, all day and all night. I, the incurable and unapologetic extrovert, find myself alone…. a lot. In crowds, alone. At church, alone. Waking up in my bed, absolutely alone. I am not as emotional about my loss as I was a few weeks ago. I am more emotionally numb than anything at this point. I have enough tasks to keep me busy presently, but I know after the sale of the house is closed, the banking is completed, and I return from the Congress in Texas, a lot of open space and unoccupied time awaits me. That is worrisome. I have a number of people with whom I correspond daily. I send one set of folks battling disease scripture and prayer. Another few receive a daily prompt for devotional reading. Dozens of sports chaplains across Latin America receive a link to each day’s post of my devotional book in Spanish, which they in turn share...