Character Coach / Sports Chaplain Blog

Across my twenty-four seasons of serving our college football (American football) team, I have done 200+ chapel talks. Over the years I have changed styles and forms many times, sometimes just to keep them from being too predictable or so ritualistic that the players and coaches would treat them like a good luck charm. In the best seasons I had a strong tie in with the head coach and the ideas he was building into his team’s culture. With our most recent head coach, I have done two seasons on the program’s theme of, “Be a Man.” As probably 80% of our young men have grown up with no father in their homes, being a man is an idea with which they are not necessarily familiar. I have taken it as part of my role to define terms and to provide models of what it looks like to be a man. During an FCA 3Dimensional Coaching presentation, I imagined a new and innovative way to introduce each week’s point of emphasis. I would borrow the 3D Coaching concept of a “spotlight drill.” As I stan...

One of the most pernicious and destructive notions in sports chaplaincy is the confusion of level, success, and significance. Many assume, but would not likely state aloud, that ministry at the lower levels of sport (junior high, high school, community college, minor league baseball, lower division football) has less significance and is of lesser value than the ministry taking place at the highest levels of sport (Premier League Football, NCAA Division I, NFL, NBA, MLB). Somehow, we buy into the fan mentality and judge “higher” levels of sport to be more significant. We value the players’ “platform” over their experiences and relationships in their sporting communities. I believe this to be a grave error. I would assert that there is no level of scale in our service of sportspeople. There is no greater value to the ministry taking place among a NCAA Division I SEC Football program that can be found on television every Saturday, than there is with the junior high school, nine man foo...

Across my twenty-three years of serving sports teams I have had many occasions to visit emergency rooms, hospital rooms, and surgery centers with players, coaches, and administrators of the sporting community. While these are never pleasant occasions, they are regularly moments of the most profound and impactful ministry. I’d like to offer some observations from those visits and some tips for how to approach them, as they will certainly come to you as well. One never feels competent when walking into an emergency room, hospital, or surgery center. Every time I approach the front door of one of these facilities I feel inadequate. I wonder what I have to offer. I wonder about what I am about to encounter. I wonder if I’ll be able to handle the gravity of the moment and the potential emotional flood that awaits me. Every time, I stop, pray, and keep walking. This is not about me, nor my training, nor my ability to empathize, nor my ability to console, it’s about being Christ Jesus’ ...

In recent years I have written in this space about study retreats and their value to my ministry. There has been a good deal of development to this process over the few years in which I have employed it. I would like to share with you some of the important factors to study retreats that I have discovered and that I would recommend as you consider scheduling such an event. Choose a good site for solitude – As I am a terminal extrovert, I know I need this sort of solitude, but I find it terribly difficult. Having a place to study, pray, and to create that is free from distractions is of paramount importance. My son’s in-laws own a lake house in rural Missouri. It is relatively simple, but has enough creature comforts to make it very well suited for retreats. It has no Internet connection, which is helpful to eliminate distractions. The homes that surround it on the lake cove are usually vacant when I am there as they are mostly weekend or vacation homes. This leaves me mostly all a...

One of the methods I have used to capture memories, to gather details, and to learn is to journal. For several seasons, in years past, I would journal all my interactions with a team, and at the end of the season I’d print the journal and give it to the head coach for his review. People will occasionally ask me, “What is a typical weekend like for you?” For the purposes of this week’s note, I decided to journal this past week’s experience with Saluki Football as we traveled to play the University of Memphis in Tennessee. The journal of those days follows. I hope it is some value to you. I attended practices on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, speaking with coaches and players while observing the drills. Friday – The usual Friday walk through was at 8:45 this morning and it was followed by breakfast at 10:00. The three buses of players, coaches, and athletic trainers departed at 11:00. A couple of hours down the road, we stopped at a truck stop in the Missouri boot heel ...

Reading is an essential part of learning in any role, and it is certainly so for those of us serving as sports chaplains, character coaches, or sports mentors. One of the hardest tasks for me is to choose books to read. I find the recommendations of friends and colleagues to be the best way to choose. In keeping with that thought, I would like to recommend a few books to you. They are from a variety authors, but most all are non-fiction. I hope they enhance your development: personal, professional, and spiritual. Soul Keeping by John Ortberg is an excellent book about the author’s relationship with his mentor and friend, Dallas Willard. Deep Work by Cal Newport is a deeply challenging book about how we think and all the matters that distract us from thinking deeply. After reading this book in April, I was challenged so deeply that I removed Facebook from every device that I own, except for one. I found that it consumed too much time for too little benefit. The Captain Cl...

In January of 2016 key leaders from the sports chaplaincy ministries from across the world met together to discuss how to develop chaplaincy globally.  One of the outcomes of the meeting was to create a  secure worldwide registry of sports chaplains . This will launch at the end of September.    Cedesports.org is developing this global registry. The benefits of the registry is as follows; 1. It will allow chaplains to connect across the world 2. It will allow chaplains to connect across their sport discipline 3. It will provide chaplains with resources from all over the world to support their ministry. Special attention in the construction of this registry has been given to its security.  It will be accessible only by chaplains, and additional features are also in place to protect individual privacy.  No data will be shared with third parties. We hope you will benefit from the resources available and connecting with sports chaplains ...