"Tebowmania" and "Linsanity"

Throughout the fall ESPN and virtually all other sports media outlets went absolutely crazy with "Tebowmania." More recently they're losing their minds with "Linsanity." The media's fawning over Tim Tebow of the Denver Broncos and Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks is predictable and precarious. It's predictable because sports media is more interested in stories than in people. It's precarious because the more strongly they shine the spotlight and the higher they build a player's platform, the farther players fall when they're exposed as human and fallible. They will find as much joy in reporting a player's fall after a moral failing, a foolish relationship or a slip of the tongue as they will in building him up following a last minute victory or a prime time interview.

 

One aspect of these athletes' lives that the media find both mysterious and controversial is their faith in Christ Jesus. They focus multiple cameras on Tebow every moment of the game, hoping to catch him "Tebowing" and reading his lips as he utters a prayer. They discuss ad nauseum Jeremy Lin's Asian heritage, his faith and his Ivy League education as they marvel at his appearance from nowhere to energize the Knicks to several wins across a couple of weeks. For both players, their faith seems to be integral to their lives. This is a total anomaly for the media and for many fans who live tightly compartmentalized lives with faith totally segregated from other matters of life. They insist on having public lives and private lives. They want their private choices of lifestyle and religion to stay separate from their public image. They simply apply the wares of celebrity culture to the sports world and these players' expressions of faith. Instead of Lindsey Lohan or Kim Kardashian, they're inspecting the lives of Tebow and Lin under the microscope of national media.

 

Sadly, the integrity being modeled by both Tebow and Lin is also enigmatic to most Christian sports fans. They too seem to cheer these players as being emblematic of "Christian athletes" because they are winning football games and making last second shots to win basketball games, and then speaking openly about their faith in Jesus in post-game interviews. To the players it's not unusual because faith permeates all they do, including sport. The fans go nuts about their speech and are ready to have these two replace Billy Graham and the Pope as spokesmen for Christianity. The fans miss the simple principle employed by these two and countless others who compete in sport at every level. Colossians 3:23 challenges the Christian athlete or anyone in any occupation, to work for his or her employer as if working for the Lord Himself, rather than simply for a man, a team or a corporation. All of one’s life is under Jesus’ lordship and his work is thereby consecrated to Christ. The work of Christian athletes happens to be sport and for these two and it happens to be in the glaring spotlight of national and international media.

 

Let’s be clear about some matters of faith and sport. 1) The Lord Jesus does not care who wins a particular sporting contest. He does not favor Tim Tebow or Jeremy Lin and their respective teams over others and thereby influence the outcome of games. Shall we pretend there are not Christian athletes on the opposing teams? Do we really believe that the Lord simply counts how many Christian players are on team A vs. the number on team B and then favors team A in today’s game? Maybe team A’s Christian players are simply holier or spent more time in prayer this week and thereby gain God’s favor over team B. All such thoughts are ridiculous. 2) Being a Christian athlete can give one real advantages. In so far as the Christian athlete grows in Christ-honoring character traits such as those listed in Galatians 5:22-23, he or she has an advantage in competition. As the Christian athlete competes in a way which honors God; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control enhance one’s ability to perform highly and to be the best possible teammate. 3) We who know personally or watch Christian athletes can be wise or foolish toward them. We can do as most and either treat them as flawless heroes and icons or simply criticize them as fools who drag their religion into public. We can also choose to hold a more mature and healthy view of them as simple people, redeemed by a loving God, and subject to the same weaknesses of humanity as we are.

 

Tim Tebow and Jeremy Linn are not God and are not worthy of worship. Jesus is God, worship Him. Tim and Jeremy are men, respect them. Do not confuse these relationships.

For what should I pray?

For what should we pray regarding our lives in sport? For what can I pray in good conscience and expect that the Lord Jesus may answer? For what would we be totally foolish to pray? For what do coaches and competitors ask you to pray? I will make some suggestions about these matters and I’d love to hear from some thoughts you.

 

As I was thinking about this earlier today, I thought I’d list the prayer items in some categories as below.

 

Prayers of Thanksgiving:

• Thank God for coaches, athletes, team administration, support staff and other people related to the team.

• Thank God for the sport itself, its best attributes, and its virtues.

• Thank God for the privilege to compete in sport.

• Thank God for the opportunity we have to represent Him in the world of sport as both prophet and priest to this community.

 

Prayers of Consecration:

• Dedicate this day’s training, practice or competition to God’s purposes.

• Dedicate your passionate love for sport to the fulfillment of God’s purposes.

• Consecrate your body, mind and spirit to honoring Christ as you train, compete or practice.

• Dedicate the relationships with people to the pursuit of God’s purposes.

• Dedicate the timing for career changes, transitions and more to God’s care in times of uncertainty and insecurity.

 

Prayers of Confession:

• Confess your occasional lack of perspective related to the importance of your team’s success to the fulfillment of God’s will.

• Confess your inability to make significant changes in people’s lives independent of God’s grace and power.

• Confess the Lord’s super-ability to accomplish His purposes in the lives of sportspeople, possibly even through you.

• Confess sin when your overly competitive flesh overtakes your heart in speech, anger or gesture.

 

Prayers of Intercession:

• Pray for your team, each and all, to compete at their absolute best.

• Pray for the coaches to have wisdom and insight related to leadership, strategy and motivation.

• Pray for them all to have a sense of the Lord’s presence and pleasure with them as they train, practice or compete.

• Pray for the officials to arbiter the sport in a way that both protects the competitors and honors the sport.

• Pray for your opponents to compete honorably and safely.

• Pray for all those involved in the sport to experience the best that it has to offer.

 

You may have noticed, I never pray for wins. You can ask me about why if you like. Here’s the bottom line: Pray for and with the people of sport. When you do, you engage their hearts with the Lord of Heaven, the omnipotent Creator of the Universe and we are all enriched in the process.

Chapel – Team Unity

1 – Competitions like this one require tremendous team unity. Each one must bring his/her best to make the team all it can be.

 

2 – Think for a moment about how diverse your team is:

• Size

• Strength

• Background

• Ethnicity

• Skill sets

• Personalities

3 – Think about how the team is diminished if any one of you is at less than 100%.

 

4 – Think about how the team’s personality on the floor changes with each substitution. You are not interchangeable parts in a machine.

 

5 – Think about the factors which unify such a diverse set of people. These are most important.

 

6 – Ephesians 4:4-7 (read the text aloud)

• One body / one Spirit / one hope of calling

• One Lord / one faith / one baptism

• One God / one Father

• Over all, through all, in all…

• But each one was given grace as a gift.

• Each one is uniquely gifted. All united, but not all the same.

 

7 – Today, your team will be most successful when each one brings the best of his/her unique giftedness to a unified effort with the whole team.

• You will be very good today as you play as one.

• Unified in purpose

• Unified in values

• Unified in strategy

• Unified in heart

Listen

One of the most important, but easily overlooked qualities that enables us to be most effective is to listen well. In an evaluation meeting with our university men’s basketball head coach, among many other questions, I asked him what the players most valued from my time with them that season. He said, “You listened to them. You let them talk.” While that seems very simple it was also very important to me. As I thought about this later I gained greater understanding about the value of listening to sportspeople.

 

In the world of sport, the coaches do lots of talking and very little listening. In collegiate sport, the NCAA places a limit of twenty hours per week for the coaches to work with their players. The coaches work countless hours each in evaluating video, developing scouting reports on upcoming opponents, brainstorming game plans, meeting together to strategize and when they finally get with the players they want to communicate and to download all this information to them. They’re trying to squeezed hundreds of hours of information into twenty hours of video review, training and practice. Lots of talking, very little listening by the coaches.

 

It daily becomes increasingly clearer how important the skill of listening well is to my role as a sport chaplain or character coach. The players simply need to process some of what they’ve been learning, their frustrations, their concerns and more. I can be the listener for them. Simply repeating their questions, restating their thoughts, asking follow up questions, sharing a related life story or simply looking them in the eye enables them to communicate their hearts and to perceive that they’ve been heard, their opinions valued and their ideas respected.

 

Yesterday’s Team Building session was emblematic of how such listening helps the development of the players’ relationships with each other and with me. We were discussing the fifth of six sessions on Coach John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. In particular we were discussing the traits of: ambition, adaptability, resourcefulness, fight and faith. I asked one discussion question about each one and welcomed their thoughts in dialogue. Right out of the blocks while discussing ambition, the players whose pre-season ambitions were playing in the NBA or in Europe were suddenly said to be graduation, finishing the season well and playing their best basketball in the post-season tournament. The team’s record of seven wins and sixteen losses certainly has changed their ambitions. Another player commented during our discussion of adaptability, that he had to adapt from being a starter playing twenty-two minutes per game and getting lots of shots, to being a reserve, averaging six minutes and very few shots.

 

As we discussed faith, I asked, “When does basketball require faith of you?” Several said, “Right now.” In the midst of a disappointing season, some find it hard to go to practice. Others find the travel, training, practice and more to be a terrible grind. One of the seniors, the unquestioned leader and most enthusiastic player on the team, confessed that for the first time in his life his passion for the game was drying up. He was losing the joy of playing basketball and was almost looking forward to the end. This shocked his teammates and me. We followed up with a question about how faith can help restore the joy of sport and concluded our discussion with a challenge to continue to prepare well, to play these last games as part of the process of improvement and to be in position to play the team’s best games during the post-season tournament.

 

We left the locker room after our twenty minute discussion with open hearts and enthused voices. I am sure that was primarily the result of listening to them and encouraging them to be their best. It surely helped to have Coach Wooden’s Pyramid to frame our discussion. Please take the time to listen to your players and coaches. Work to improve your listening skills. Don’t simply wait for a pause so that you can start talking. You’ll open hearts and enlighten minds more effectively if you just listen.

Highly Committed, but Irreligious

While preparing for a pre-game meal and chapel talk one day, an assistant women’s basketball coach commented to me, “You’re not like most of the religious people I’ve known.” I smiled and replied, “Good. I don’t intend to be religious. I would prefer to be highly committed to Christ, but rather irreligious.” She said, “That’s interesting.” My reflexive comment to my friend was true and heart-felt and I’m still happy with it.

 

I’d like to explore the difference between being “religious” and being “highly committed to Christ.” Religious people carry the external trappings of Christianity as their defining marks. Highly committed Christians carry their commitment to Jesus internally as their defining characteristic and allow that commitment to find external expression in numerous, often less religious ways. Some examples of each may help us see the difference.

 

Religious people speak with each other in clichés and the King James language they learn at church. Highly committed believers in Jesus are free to speak in the language of the subculture in which they are serving Him; in our case, that is the language of sport. Religious people would rather sit in judgment over people whose lifestyles don’t fit their standards. Highly committed Christian men and women demonstrate love and commitment to those they serve without respect to their lifestyles, wise or foolish. Their grasp of their own wickedness of heart and the weakness of their own flesh keeps judgmental attitudes at bay.

 

I don’t shun the sinful or cluck my tongue at foolish speech. I don’t Tebow because it’s trendy nor do I repeat or retweet every syllable uttered by John Piper (insert the name of any other celebrity preacher) as if it were holy writ. I don’t pretend that attending my local church is the answer to everyone’s social ills and that if they simply walk through the door all their problems will be solved. I don’t counsel new believers in Jesus to shun their former circle of friends and teammates in order to adopt a more suitable set of friends who won’t pollute their lives with wickedness. I don’t wear WWJD bracelets and I haven’t burned my secular music recordings (Gasp!). I don’t go to trendy “Christian films” which are simply gospel tracts on celluloid. I’m bored with the passionless music poured out by contemporary Christian music stations and I’m repulsed by Southern Gospel music. I prefer reading Seth Godin and Malcom Gladwell to Max Lucado and Joel Osteen.

 

This distaste for “religious” things and preference for “heartfelt commitment” often leads to my being misunderstood by others in the Church. I’m fine with that. I rather enjoy the questions asked of me about such things; the question asked by the assistant basketball coach being emblematic of such questions and the conversations which normally follow. Please take the risk of being misunderstood and questioned about your lack of religiousness in favor of a genuine, passionate expression of your love for the Lord Jesus. It’s worth it and we’re much less boring people with whom to interact.

What can we learn from a tattoo?

What can we learn from a tattoo? What is to be learned from the ink below a person’s skin? Tattoos are seldom either profound works of literature or wondrous works of art. They do however give us a glimpse at the heart which is expressing itself through his or her skin.

 

The world of sport is rife with tattooed men and women. From the high profile sportspeople like David Beckham to the most obscure high school student-athlete with a hunger to honor a fallen teammate, tattoos are very prevalent in this culture. Many who follow Christ are quick to make judgments about tattoos and their propriety for other followers of Jesus. It is not my intention to make judgments either way, but to consider what a person is telling us from his or her choice of tattoo and the possibility that well worded questions about them can open a pathway to heart-felt discussions about the real matters of life.

 

In this season’s Team Building sessions with USA university men’s basketball and American football teams, I have used these sentences for discussion among the players in small groups and then with the team at large. “If you have a tattoo, tell us about it. (What does it represent? When did you get it?) Do you have any regrets about having it now?” The responses to these thoughts were varied and remarkable. One player said, “I do not have any tattoos. It would displease my parents and I will not do anything to disrespect my parents.” I was stunned. Another player, with over 20 tattoos, said, “My left arm is dedicated to my mother. My right arm is dedicated to my grade school classmate who died when we were eleven years old. My chest and back speak of things which are important to me.” More than I expected said that they had no tattoos and not a single one would say he regretted having it, a strong contrast to many men of my generation who wish the US Marine Corps bulldog on their shoulders or the US Navy anchors on their forearms were no longer there. This lack of regret may simply be a function of age.

 

Just among athletes I have seen tattoos on feet, ankles, shins, calves, thighs, lower backs, upper backs, torsos, upper chests, shoulders, biceps, forearms, whole sleeves of tattoos, on fingers, on necks and even under one’s hair. My daughter-in-law, a track athlete, has the word, “Strength” on the top of her foot. A friend who was a USA high jumper in the 1996 Olympics has the Olympic rings above his ankle. Without exception, there is a reason for what is written or drawn. The bearer of the tattoo is expressing his heart through the ink. Their hearts are sometimes foolish, sometimes they were received in the fog of an alcohol or drug induced mind, but in all cases the tattoo means something.

 

Getting to the something, discerning the meaning and the athlete’s heart is what I am asking you to consider. Starting the discussion is often as simple as asking a question like the one listed earlier. I have asked that question in formal settings like Team Building sessions, while standing beside a basketball court while players drank water, while standing on the sideline at football practice and while sitting together over coffee. In every case, I hear layers of answers. There is usually the surface level “public answer” which satisfies most people, but I am looking for something more. There has to be something deeper here to justify the pain, time and cash invested in the ink below one’s skin. Asking follow up questions which enable one to share a story about the acquisition of the tattoo, the circumstances surrounding it and the significance of the word or the symbol can help us hear their hearts and can open a path to speak to their hearts most directly. Be careful, you may not want to hear some of what you’re told.

 

Just yesterday a college softball player posted this on her facebook page, “kinda interested in getting a tattoo!?” Despite the spelling, capitalization, grammar and punctuation errors in her message, which I ignored, I replied, “Seldom does such fleeting interest result in a decision one is happy with 10 years later.” Other comments on her post included, “I will go with you!” “All the cool kids are doing it.” “what happens when youre old and saggy? bye bye tattoooooo :(“ “That's why you get one down your side that says ‘faith’ so when youre old and saggy it folds over perfectly and says ‘fat’.” “sleep on it... for like .... a year. LOL” Such is the advice given by teammates, godmothers, friends and sport chaplains; some funny, some insightful and some emblematic of the short-term thinking which results in the proliferation of tattoo shops around the world.

 

For our purposes as men and women who serve the people of sport, let’s forgo making judgments and concentrate on using these graphic expressions of hearts to engage those same hearts in conversations characterized by love, redemption and the grace of the Lord Jesus.

Toughest Girl on the Planet

Have you had to endure some pain to compete in your sport? How much and how often did it hurt? How would you handle daily, intense pain and would you endure it for four solid years? I watched the toughest girl on the planet do just that as she played her heart out.

 

Wendy Goodman (Bauersachs) was a basketball player at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale from 2001 through 2005 and she played through pain every day, all day. She has a hereditary condition which makes her bones brittle and subject to stress fractures. It also is quite painful. Running up and down a basketball floor only adds to the stress and pounds the joints with every stride.

 

Early in her days at SIU the training staff tried everything they could think of to treat the condition and minimize the pain. They tried special shoes, socks, treatments and more. Finally the doctor told her the choice was to play with pain or don’t play at all. She decided to play and became a leader for her team throughout her career.

 

In her condition, the pain was a constant presence. It didn’t simply visit her when on the floor, it was there as she walked to class as she sat on the team bus traveling home with ice bags strapped to her shins and every night as she would try to sleep.

 

Wendy, along with her roommate and best friend, Danette Jones (Wolfe), were inspirational leaders for the Basketball Salukis. Her sacrificial love for the game of basketball, for her teammates and for her Lord won the hearts of many. Not long after graduation, that loving heart attracted Tim Bauersachs and they are now blissfully married with a daughter and another baby on the way. The toughest girl on the planet is now a mommy and a pastor’s wife.

 

Wendy’s example of love, sacrifice and toughness is a constant challenge to me and to all who witnessed her playing career. She helps us each to play our hearts out.