Ministry With Coaches

Ministry with Coaches is a vital part of our ministry. There are some elements of FCA’s ministry with coaches which are easily seen as they are in public and are intended to be.

 

Among those are:

• Coaching Clinics, like the one we’ll do this weekend with Saluki Football for high school coaches all over Southern Illinois. In past years we have held such clinics with basketball and softball coaches also.

• Coaching Conventions, like the one we attended in San Antonio, Texas in January and the one in Champaign, just two weekends ago.

• The Coaches and Spouses Appreciation Dinner we hold each year in late January has become a vital part of our ministry with coaches as we seek to encourage them and their spouses.

• FCA Huddle Coach of the Year Awards are also a part of our ministry and tonight we will honor two area coaches for their faithfulness as FCA Huddle Coaches in their communities.

Each of these events and initiatives are a part of the public portion of FCA’s Coaches Ministry.

 

I’d like to pull back the curtain tonight and to give you a glimpse of our ministry efforts which are a little more “behind the scenes” and harder to see. We keep these parts of our ministry hidden because the relationships are valuable and it is not wise to expose people’s lives beyond what they desire to be public knowledge.

• Coaches Bob Murley and Scott Tickner, Pastor Bent and I meet with coaches, face to face, regarding their FCA huddles, their teams, their families.

• We make phone calls, send emails, text messages and write cards to help them solve problems, to give guidance and to resource them with tools for developing their student-athlete leaders.

• We send the Huddle Coaches weekly notes related to their campus ministry and a weekly devotional thought.

 

Still more private and thankfully infrequent is the ministry we do with coaches in moments of crisis. What follows is a brief list of some instances in which we’ve had to trust the Lord Jesus for grace to deal with some less than wonderful circumstances.

• We have sent hundreds of emails and text messages to coaches who are battling for their lives against cancer, leukemia and other brutal diseases.

• I remember standing on a practice field with a football coach as he wept due to the collapse of his marriage and the impending divorce.

• I remember being on the phone with a coach who had just received the news that he had prostate cancer and was asking for prayer and another coach who had just learned that his daughter had a very challenging condition.

• I remember sitting over coffee with a coach who was about to resign her position and trying to help her find God’s will in the situation.

• I recently stood at practice with a coach who was soon to be fired and then trading text messages with him before and after his firing.

• I remember sitting quietly with a coach whose dear friend had just committed suicide.

• I recall a car ride with a coach on the way to the courthouse and our conversation as we tried to decide the best way to handle a player’s foolish decisions and the proper way to be redemptive toward him and the team.

• I remember the pain and grief which surrounded the day we discussed a coach’s memorial service with his widow.

These sorts of moments require privacy and confidentiality and we are careful to protect coaches in such situations. Whether they are FCA Huddle Coaches or not; we will serve them as Jesus’ ambassadors. This is a vital, if less public, part of FCA’s Ministry with Coaches and we are privileged to be welcomed into the coaches’ offices, classrooms, homes, onto practice fields and gymnasium floors for such life-changing conversations, prayer and some tears.