Character Coach / Sports Chaplain Blog

Another year of FCA Sports Chaplains / Character Coach conference calls will begin on Sunday August 7 at 8:00 pm CDT . These calls are open to anyone who serves as a sports chaplain or character coach, whether FCA staff or volunteer. Each call includes prayer, info on upcoming events re: sports chaplaincy, and an interview with a person who has been serving faithfully as a sports chaplain or character coach. Callers are also invited to ask direct questions of those being interviewed. The whole point is to provide a venue for networking and mentoring sports chaplains and character coaches with others serving in similar ways. These people are most often serving in high schools, colleges, or club teams, but occasionally are serving professional teams. We are considering a second call per month for ministry staff people who would prefer a weekday call at a different time. These calls would include a wider network of our FCA colleagues from across the USA. Please reply with your sug...

For many of us, especially my friends and colleagues in the USA, a new season of sport is about to begin. The start of a new school year brings with it a new fall sports schedule and the preseason practices that precede it. I would like to recommend some simple matters that may help you be fully prepared as a new season approaches. ·         Memorize the team roster and pray for each one. Ask the coach or an office person for the team roster, take the time and effort to memorize the names and numbers. Match those with their faces and you’re on the way to building relationships. ·         Meet with the head coach to discuss his or her points of emphasis for your work together. Ask about specific ways you can serve the coaches and the players. Ask for some boundaries for when and where it is most appropriate for you to be present, and maybe when and where your presence is not appropriate. It’s better to discover ...

Below is a link to a YouTube video by FCA Ukraine that will give you a glimpse of the ministry that took place during the FCA Ukraine Sport Chaplain School in Kiev, in early June. Please take a moment to look it over and to lift a prayer of thanksgiving for our Ukrainian teammates, for this outstanding set of volunteer chaplains, and for the donor from Nebraska whose donation covered the expenses. Thank you. https://youtu.be/5UlztS9s-7I

This is an excerpt from my journal during a recent trip to Kiev, Ukraine and Tblisi, Georgia to train sports chaplains and to make new friends toward that end in Georgia. I hope it encourages you. This form of ministry is growing all around the globe. On 15 June, two of our FCA Midwest Region staff teammates, six coaches from the Metro-East area of St. Louis, and I returned from a tremendous trip to Ukraine. We served with our FCA Ukraine colleagues, their coaches, and Ukrainian athletes of several sports in multiple communities around Kiev and Rivne, Ukraine.  Saturday June 4, 2016 After hosting Friday evening and Saturday morning’s Saluki Football Coaching Clinic in Carbondale, I drove to the Williamson County Airport, checked in and boarded the plane to St. Louis. The Cape Air pilots somehow got our plane stuck in the mud before we even made it to the runway. The plane was grounded, and our flight was cancelled. After learning of Cape Air’s plan to arrange for a bus...

Again this week, I’d like to share an observation I have made re: small group dynamics. Many people lament that their large group lacks the depth of commitment they desire, while others are very happy with their group’s depth, but wish it were larger. I have found that this tension is quite proper and that it is not a problem to solve, rather it’s a tension to be managed. My thoughts about managing this tension are quite simple. If you want a more highly committed group, make it less convenient, and expect its numbers to be smaller. If you want a larger group, make it more convenient and expect its commitment level to be lesser. To expect a larger group to be greater in commitment is usually unrealistic. Larger numbers / Lower commitment / More convenience, or Smaller numbers / Higher commitment / Less convenience. You are free to choose. For around twenty years I led a small FCA group of high school student athletes that met at 6:30 am in a local restaurant. The owner al...