I was privileged to be a guest on this podcast - The Athletes Edge; Coaches Edition.
Sports chaplaincy, primarily understood to be pastoral care for people engaged in the world of sport, has been a growing form of ministry for more than sixty years. In most places it is called just that, Sports Chaplaincy, however in other environments different language is used to describe what is essentially the same thing. Our ministry, Nations of Coaches, calls us “character coaches,” other ministries use language like, “life coaches,” “sports shepherds,” or even “sports buddies.” The language is less important than the quality of service provided.
I will not attempt to offer a history of sports chaplaincy, but to simply reflect upon its past, its present state, and the future for this dynamic ministry opportunity across the globe.
Past – It seems that sports chaplaincy first emerged as a grass roots attempt to offer Christian ministry to people in the professional sporting world. Many of these people were competing or traveling on Sundays, and were unavailable for worship with their local churches.
I am aware of pioneers in sports chaplaincy in the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA. As this form of ministry began to grow, it soon found a home in other levels of sport like collegiate sport in the USA, and at multiple levels of sport in the UK, spreading to other nations as well.
Most of these sports chaplaincy ministries grew from modest, individual opportunities, and grew into healthy, sustainable, and enduring ministries. Some others flashed up quickly, and diminished just as quickly due to a short-term opportunity or a lack of sustained connections. A couple of the longest serving and most enduring sports chaplaincy ministries are Baseball Chapel and Hockey Ministries International.
Present – Sports Chaplaincy has grown in breadth and depth. It has developed organically as a movement, and organizationally as more formal ministries. It has one set of practitioners who serve exclusively as sports chaplains, and it has another set who practice it among many other forms of ministry in sport.
The vast majority of people serving in sports ministry are volunteers. They are employed otherwise, but invest a great deal of time, energy, and heart into their service of sportspeople. A relative few people are employed as sports chaplains. Some are in professional sport, and another short set are in collegiate sport in the USA.
There are a few, well-organized, and wisely led ministries in several industrialized nations. They recruit, train, develop, and lead their people with excellence, vision, and integrity.
There are myriads of people serving as sports chaplains, some not even knowing what to call it, in more grass roots, entrepreneurial, improvisational, and messy situations. They simply see an opportunity to serve, hear God’s call, and step into the void. Often they do it very well, selflessly, and sacrificially. Occasionally they do it very poorly, encumbered by self-interest, arrogance, and even greed. Some of the novices start hunting for resources, connections, or networks with which to improve their service. When these people connect with established sports chaplaincy ministries, encouragement, equipping, empowerment, and professional development is usually the result.
Sports Chaplaincy is practiced in the communities of an immense number of sporting environments in both genders. A long but not exhaustive list of sports wherein I am aware sports chaplains are serving is below.
· Football (soccer)
· Baseball
· Softball
· American Football
· Australian Rules Football
· Rugby
· Ice Hockey
· Auto racing
· Motorcycle racing
· Horse racing
· Rodeo
· Netball
· Basketball
· Volleyball
· Cricket
· Golf
· Fitness Gyms
· Athletics (Track and Field)
· Others beyond my notice
From 2014 through 2024, several leaders of various Sports Chaplaincy ministries around the world collaborated on plans to foster the development of similar ministries in other nations. Countless hours and a tremendous amount of money was invested in this process with almost no results. I and the others participating were frustrated and even disillusioned by our lack of success. I’ll address this more in the next section.
Future – Having observed the growth and development of Sports Chaplaincy for over thirty years, I see some trends I expect to continue for several more years. As mentioned in the previous section, I don’t believe the growth will come via corporate style, organizational structures of ministry. Rather, I believe Sports Chaplaincy is well poised to grow as a movement, more like a virus than a building.
To grow as a movement, Sports Chaplaincy is likely to have all the accompanying messiness and seeming chaos of a movement. It is also likely to be empowered by the usual passion, energy, and vision that come with movements.
The key to growth in any nation will be the communication and relationships built with organizing bodies of sport leading to their embracing Sports Chaplaincy in their respective sports organizations. Whether it’s in professional sporting clubs, amateur sports organizations, youth sports leagues, or even national government entities responsible for sports, their opening of the door to sports chaplains to serve freely, within wise parameters, would be catalytic to growth.
The growth of Sports Chaplaincy as a movement will be facilitated most rapidly as the established organizations share their training, resources, and counsel freely via the internet. When we, the leaders in this ministry, hold our experience and expertise openhandedly and share it freely, the movement will spread. If we can relinquish our need to control the process and trust our Lord to lead, we’ll see massive growth on every continent. We who are in positions of strength, resource, and experience must pay whatever it costs to make excellent training and development opportunities available to an increasing number of languages and cultures. This would please our Lord greatly.
Summary – I believe Sports Chaplaincy stands at the threshold of an exciting season with amazing potential for growth and development. Technological advances have made the sharing of information, training, development, coaching, and mentoring more available to more people, across greater distances than ever before.
If we who have leadership roles in the movement will faithfully and freely serve the emerging hunger for this form of ministry, we will see joyful and rewarding fruits of our labors.
It’s amazing, I keep getting older, but the young men I serve are always eighteen to twenty-three-years-old. When I began, I was thirty-eight-years old, just a little older than the players, and no one had a cell phone. In my forties, I was suddenly old enough to be their father and it required a different style of communication, this was prior to text messaging. In my fifties, things changed again as more people communicated digitally, and talking face to face became more of a challenge. Now almost through my sixties, I am like everyone’s grandfather. This has demanded I find new ways to communicate with another generation of young men.
I am constantly challenged to listen well, to perceive wisely, and to communicate effectively. It is challenging, but certainly possible. I believe I can continue to adjust, to learn, and grow for many years. Some keys to such communication are listed below.
Listen to understand. It’s most common for people in conversation to wait for an opportunity to respond instead of listening closely to understand. Doing so both communicates a lack of respect for the person speaking and it robs the disinterested listener of what he could learn. Instead of waiting to interject your thoughts, stop, empathically listen, pay attention, and seek to understand. You will be better for it. If the other person wants to hear your thoughts, he or she will ask for them.
Ask good questions. Again, this is part of listening well. Ask follow up questions to the other person’s expression. Ask more questions about processes and fewer about results. Simple replies like, “Tell me more,” will improve communication. Asking, “How does that work?” is most helpful. “Why is this important?” can help get to the person’s values, a deeper level of communication. Questions that can be answered, “Yes,” or “No,” are not as good as open-ended questions. WARNING – asking good questions requires more thought and preparation that does making statements or sharing opinions.
Start from your hearer’s perspective. This is very similar to one of the human relations principles taught by the Dale Carnegie Course. To communicate effectively it is very helpful to grasp the background of the other person, to consider his or her perspective, communications style and the environment for your interaction. When you notice a person being uncomfortable due to the environment (noise, crowd, etc.), offer to move to a better place to continue. Ask questions about matters that have shaped the person’s perspective (experiences, home town, education, etc.) to better understand his or her views. We cannot assume everyone starts from the same place we do. You may have a lifetime of experience with an issue that is entirely new to me.
Speak in terms with which the hearers connect, intellectually and emotionally. Both are important; appealing to the mind and to the heart. Most of us will naturally gravitate toward one or the other. Few of us can connect with both effectively. The more stoic among us would rather appeal to the intellect, finding emotions a little messy. Others naturally appeal to the emotions through broad gestures, engaging stories, and strong vocal inflections. I would challenge you to study those who communicate both ways. You may become a tremendous communicator.
Acknowledge questions and challenges. This is very important. To acknowledge, even to welcome questions and challenges will greatly enhance your communication and will earn you respect. Many of the people we encounter are not great communicators and they are often a little clumsy in their attempts to understand. They may ask awkward questions you could interpret as disrespectful, but a simple reframing of the question may get to the heart of the matter as you answer. I much prefer a respectful challenge to my thought than being ignored or tolerated. Treat the challenge as a respectful question and you’ll find more favor with your thoughtful answer.
Aspire to mutual understanding, not absolute agreement. Not everyone will agree with you, of course. That’s not really the goal. To understand the other person and to be understood is what we’re after. The greater distance there is between those in communication, the more difficult this may be. Make understanding each other your goal, not persuading the other person to adopt your point of view.
Old dudes like me want to communicate well, but the environment, methods, and rules for engagement keep changing. We must adapt or we’ll soon be irrelevant. Diligently pursue understanding and practice the aforementioned tips, and I am sure you will be an effective communicator for years to come.
Partners in Ministry,
My 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.
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.
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.”
· They think “We must be really good.”
· They marvel at themselves, “We win even when our best players are not at 100%!”
· Momentum is a real and wonderful for these teams.
Winning teams are vulnerable to debilitating hubris.
· They find themselves full of entitlement to privilege and position.
· They take on elitist attitudes toward others, obviously lesser than they.
· Their sudden elevation to celebrity serves them poorly.
· Their locker room can easily become stratified, separating the stars from the role players.
· They are perfectly positioned for a humiliating defeat. (The Football Salukis, nursing our wounds from the end of our winning streak, played the University of Delaware in the first round of the playoffs. We were crushed 48-7. Ouch.)
We, the Character Coaches, maintain perspective.
· We love extravagantly. Our loyalty is valued, even when wildly successful. We seek out those not in the spotlight, the walk on player, the support staff, and others.
· We serve selflessly. Our consistency in service is noticed when the prevailing culture becomes entitlement and privilege.
· We encourage. In winning streaks, encouragement by asking good questions makes a difference. Ask about matters away from sport – family, class, relationships, teammates, and faith.
This season of success will not last forever, though we wish it would. Maintain perspective. Help them see over, through, and beyond the present swell of awesomeness. Success is secondary to who they are as men and women.
