Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 2

For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople. https://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training

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Sports ministry leaders are often a little puzzled as they encounter elite and professional sportspeople. They expect them to be just like other people, but their lives in sport often present obstacles to their involvement in church services and ministry events that are a great fit for the general population.

I have been serving coaches and student-athletes at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, for nearly thirty years, as well as eight years with a professional baseball club, and in that time I have learned several factors that are key to effectively engaging, serving, building relationships with, and making disciples among the coaches and players in our community. I hope these simple thoughts serve you and your ministry well.

The following is a quick overview of those factors:

• Respect their time constraints.

• Embrace their sport’s culture.

• Communicate directly.

• Demonstrate genuine interest in them.

• Invite them into your home.

• Love extravagantly.

• Serve selflessly.

In addition to the expansion of each of these factors will be illustrative narratives for each, a final section with faith development exercises that have proven effective across many decades, as well as occasional notes of emphasis for service in professional sport from a forerunner for many of us, the late Walt Enoch of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in St. Louis, Missouri.

Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 1

 After a lengthy hiatus from this post, I will begin again to write with greater regularity. Just over 2 1/2 years into my service with Nations of Coaches as Character Coach Director, I am finding a sustainable rhythm to my work. 

For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople. https://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training

This project is directed toward the Christian faith development of elite level competitors, their coaches, sports professionals, and high-profile people of sport. It is designed to be used by those coaches and competitors themselves, or by the leaders of

sports ministries and local churches who serve them.

There are scores if not hundreds of books, discipleship guides, websites, and phone apps designed for the general public, but the people of sport we greatly respect and strongly love, are not like normal people.

Elite level sportspeople, their coaches, professional, and high-profile sportspeople are a miniscule fraction of the much larger set of millions of people who participate in sport for recreation, exercise, health benefits or social reasons. An exponentially greater number of people are those who consume sport as spectators. 

These elite sportspeople, in the USA mostly competing in collegiate sport, are fewer than four percent of those who

compete in high school sports. Professional sportspeople are an even smaller percentage of those collegiate competitors, fewer than two percent of the elite men and women of sport. Similar ratios between sports fans (greatest numbers), recreational sportspeople (fewer people), and elite sports people (very few people) are no doubt apparent in every nation of the world.

To be clear, anyone competing in college sport at any level in the USA is an elite level competitor. Anyone drawing a paycheck, of any size, for playing sport is a professional sportsperson. Anyone who coaches people at the elite or professional level is a sports professional. Any person of sport, regardless of age, who is widely recognizable beyond his family, teammates, and daily acquaintances, by a photo or one name only, is a high-profile sportsperson.