Character Coach / Sports Chaplain Blog

  Partners in Ministry, In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; 11 for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is   Christ the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.” 15 When the angels had gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying to one another, “Let us go straight to Bethlehem then, and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made k...

M y wife, Sharon, and I have been married for nearly fifty years. Across those years, we have certainly grown, individually and as a couple. I am very thankful for her patience and loyalty toward me when I was young, naive, foolish, and irresponsible. It would have been much easier for her to leave at multiple points along the way.  After some reflection, I have identified some ways one's spouse makes an immense difference in how one serves as a sports chaplain or character coach. Five of those ways are listed below for your consideration. I hope you find you have found such a spouse and have been favored by the Lord.  He who finds a wife finds a good thing  a nd obtains favor from the Lord.   Proverbs 18:22 Support, not tolerance.  I was once the king of involvement, the prince of commitment, the duke of activism. If there was something to be done, I was ready to do it; especially if it was a "religious activity." I was adept at rationalizing my overc...

There are a myriad of factors making for effectiveness in sports chaplaincy or character coaching. Among them are one's background, training, personality traits, spiritual giftedness, relationships, emotional intelligence, and more. I believe a short set of character traits are even more essential to effective service than any of the aforementioned qualities. This list is not exhaustive, but I believe these six are most essential: Humility, Patience, Self-awareness, Perspective, Curiosity, and Persistence. Humility  is a quality quite uncommon among sportspeople. They are normally straddling the line between brazen arrogance and strong confidence. In such an environment one can join in the folly of seeking to be seen as first, or one can put himself in rank (the literal meaning of humility) and intentionally take the lower position. Though the supremely confident thumpers of their chests loudly project power and strength, they also respect the humble one who qui...

The eleventh season of my service of a college football team was one I will never forget. It was the fourth season with that particular coaching staff, having been 1 and 10, 2 and 10, and 4 and 8 in the previous seasons. Suddenly in mid-November we were 10 and 0, nationally ranked, and surely headed to the NCAA Division I-AA playoffs for the first time in twenty-one years.   After an exciting, last second, loss on the road, I was in my seat on the bus waiting to go to the airport for the flight home. I sat there stunned, not knowing how to process all this. The head coach looked across the aisle at me and said, “Hey, are you okay?” I said, “Coach, I had forgotten what it feels like to lose.” Ten weeks of winning had erased my memory of years of painful loss. Success has the power to do that.   Winning teams feel like they’re invincible. ·       They tell themselves, “We win even when we don’t play well.” ·       The...

While recently reflecting upon my life’s path across sixty-eight years, I realized most of my growth and development, personal and professional, came as a result of failure and frustration. A few examples follow.   After being laid off from my job as a laborer in a lumber yard at age twenty-four, I found a job in a home center and after four more years, a job with a wholesale building materials distributor, then another retailer, followed by two more sales jobs. Being laid off from a job with a hard ceiling led to new employment with room to grow.   After one year of absolute, total failure in selling garages, I was in position to take a paid role as an administrative assistant to my mentor in ministry (Fred Bishop of No Greater Love Ministries). It took all of that year of horrible failure and financial stress to have my wife and me ready to take a very modest salary. My ambitious nature was energized by the commission sales job, but it’s a stressful existence for t...

Across my thirty years of serving collegiate sports teams, I have endured two 1 win & 10 loss seasons, one 2 win & 10 loss seasons, many sub .500 seasons, and some painfully long losing streaks. In addition, seven of the coaches I served were fired at season’s end. As Jesus was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”, I am certainly acquainted with the pain of losing seasons.   For anyone in the sporting environment, enduring a losing streak of a few games is painful. Imagine an entire season of more than thirty games with the gnawing, gut-wrenching ache of consistently coming up short on the scoreboard. It’s awful.   The local or national media pile on, question and criticize. Worse, social media is even more sudden and brutal in its assassination of everyone and everything related to the team. They have no clue as to how the trend can be reversed, but they offer their ridiculous solutions anyway. Usually it sounds like, “Fire the coach!”   We ca...

Recent changes in collegiate sport enhance the value of character coaches and sports chaplains to their coaches and athletes. With the advent of the transfer portal and the introduction of Name, Image, and Likeness payments to players, much of the sporting landscape has dramatically shifted in the past few years.   Below are some of the factors leading to this season of chaos. ·       College athletes are now virtually free to transfer between institutions at will, as many times as they like, without restriction. This has led to some players being on four or more teams in a span of five seasons. ·       Coaches could always move between institutions at will, so everyone advocating for the athletes is happier with this change. ·       Name, Image, and Likeness money being paid to players has made collegiate sport, formerly embracing an amateur ethic, is now at the highest levels in fact professional...

College Basketball has a distinct rhythm to its annual march through the calendar. Like a symphony has varying movements with particular moods, sounds, levels of intensity, and volume, so does the rhythm of college basketball ebb and flow like the tide.   The following paragraphs describe the nature of each portion of the year for the coaches and players. You will certainly perceive how our opportunities for faithful and effective service as character coaches follow and sometimes even lead the team through these changes.   Summer – June through early August. ·       The focus is, “Get to know you.” ·       The primary activities are recruiting and summer workouts. ·       New coaches arrive on campus. ·       New players arrive as well (sometimes many). ·       They have approximately eight hours of formal workouts, plus individual wor...

Many of us serving as character coaches with college basketball teams have, or certainly want to have, opportunities to pray with the team prior to the start of games. It is a profound privilege when one is enabled to do this, so we must be sure to do it wisely and well. The following questions and proposed answers are my attempt to help us all consider how to best shape this opportunity to engage the coaches and players with our Lord, and to shape their understanding of Christ-honoring sport.   For what should we pray? ·       First and foremost, let’s pray this competition honors God by how we play basketball. ·       Should I pray that we win the game? I would say, “No.” Rather, pray for the following factors leading to competing well: o    Pray for an excellent performance by each and all. o    Pray for safety for all participants. o    Pray that players and coaches exercise self-contr...

 Please see the information below on the  4th Global Congress on Sport and Christianity  coming up in late July of 2025. This is a very unique opportunity for those of us who are not in academia to rub shoulders with the smart kids, and it's an opportunity for them to learn from us, the ones doing ministry in sport at the ground level. Details are available here  -  https://truettseminary. baylor.edu/programs-centers/ faith-sports-institute/global- congress-sport-and- christianity Below are links to forms for information about conference themes and for submission of a presentation, paper, or to participate in a panel discussion. Please look it over and prayerfully consider contributing to this outstanding conference. I have attended and presented at each of the first three. I find them to be richly rewarding and an important part of my professional development. Thanks. Please mark your calendars and make plans to join the Faith and Spots Institute on July 3...