rogerlipe.com is active!

 Friends and colleagues,

A new ministry initiative is being launched today, https://rogerlipe.com/ is now live and I am ready to serve. In the months since my retirement and my wife’s passing, I have been contemplating how I could best fulfill my calling from God through this next season of life. The paragraphs below communicate my game plan.

Sporting organizations and Sports ministries, worldwide, are suffering from a tremendous “brain drain.” The Baby Boom generation is rapidly retiring and leaving the organizations with a deficit of senior leadership. As they depart, much of their organizational history, values, and wisdom for making decisions leaves with them. Further, these senior leaders become unavailable to the new generation of leaders due to relocation or disconnection.

I am making myself available to serve sports organizations and sports ministries as a trainer, a mentor, or a coach, in the USA and anywhere else in the world.

• In Training, I serve by leading curriculum driven presentations of information and development experiences.
• In Mentoring, I serve by lending my expertise and experience to those being served.
• In Coaching, I serve by leading growth through asking skillful questions of the one being served.

Please log onto https://rogerlipe.com/ for more information.

Background:

• Widower, father, and grandfather
• Over thirty years of ministry in sport experience:

o   4 years as Character Coach Director with Nations of Coaches

o   27 years with Fellowship of Christian Athletes

o   8 seasons serving professional baseball with Baseball Chapel

o   31 years as Sports Chaplain or Character Coach to coaches and teams at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale

• Author of sixteen books for ministry in sport
• Trainer, mentor, and conference speaker on six continents of the world
• Presenter at each of the four Global Congresses on Sport and Christianity
• Blogger and YouTube content developer

Areas of Service:

• Sports Chaplaincy Training & Development (individuals & organizations) 
• Sports Ministry Leader Mentoring and Coaching
• Ministry with Coaches (strategies & resources)
• Team Culture Development (strategies & resources)
• Team Leadership Development (strategies & resources)

 

Please contact me if I can be of service to you. My contact information is below.

 

Sport and Ministry

Training / Mentoring / Coaching

Roger D. Lipe

https://rogerlipe.com/

roger@rogerlipe.com    Mobile – 618.559.2735      X - @RogerDLipe

Becoming Undone Podcast

I was recently a guest on the Becoming Undone podcast with my friend and colleague, Dr. Toby Brooks of Baylor University.

Here's a link to our candid discussion of the changes I've experienced across the last fourteen months.

https://undonepodcast.com/ep152/?fbclid=IwY2xjawQsBt5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFqVm9saFQ2MFNJdmVTbFozc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHpiX8xPVx4nCYTxb0gCNK8Akj4TPxDfapZqH-bou55jCZqqwjxigQwFkf5ae_aem_DUtxiA-_aXB9zmyB61nAQQ

By the way, this is an excellent podcast to which one can subscribe.

"Coach Said..."

I was recently privileged to be a guest on this show with the Coaches Ministry Director in Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

We both strongly believe in the influence of coaches with those they coach, with whom they coach, and with all those surrounding teams.

https://dailynewsnetwork.com/2026/shows/making-difference/making-a-difference-with-roger-lipe/?sessionId=37c6fed4-a05b-431d-8391-1dbd5788a01c&trigger_link=kMc2cIMbIdr1LkKPKFUs&fbclid=IwY2xjawQsCQ1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEed8J8NtP_EAqkIAfToAjm5msSGWZHMgQ6zN7yvEEDH0sTw5AJc8WZjtWGAy4_aem_l1IM3dzVWenx5y9q8-kg8w

Reflections from the Front Lines of a Cancer Battle

 My wife’s cancer battle consumed the first six months of 2025. It ultimately ended her life on earth, much too soon, and much too painfully. Throughout those months, I was alternately locked in the battle and trying to maintain an equilibrium to our lifestyle. As the weeks, appointments with doctors, treatments, emergency room visits, surgeries, and sleepless nights mounted, I became reflective and tried to make sense of what I was experiencing.

Writing reflections in the notes app of my mobile phone became a helpful way of processing all my heart and mind were experiencing. Below are those reflections. They are often raw, vulnerable, and gut-level honest. Later in the process, after the urgency of things had subsided, I began sitting with my laptop to write the narrative of our experience. I certainly have a long way to go in my grieving and mourning process.

Below, please find the link to a pdf of these reflections. I hope they are of some value to you, or to others who are experiencing disease, loss, grief, or mourning.  

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2jzmx9t7d4xea03cshcrl/Reflections-from-the-Front-Lines-of-a-Cancer-Battle.pdf?rlkey=hf1a6if0k725d9qh0pzrjxyor&dl=0

Reflections, Issue Discussions, and Bible Studies for People of Sport.

For the last thirty years or so, I have been writing Bible studies, reflections, and topical discussions for people in sport. All along the way, I have made them available at no cost to people on social media. I have been very pleased to provide them for my friends and colleagues. 

Recently, I gathered all that material, 221 pages of it, into one pdf file. It is available and you are free to use it as you will in your ministry. Simply email me at lipe6956@gmail.com to request a copy.

It is titled, Reflections, Issue Discussions, and Bible Studies for People of Sport.

Reflections, Issue Discussions, and Bible Studies 

for People of Sport

Reflections with Questions for Contemplation and Discussion

Page 3 - How Would Jesus Coach? Reflections on Coaching from the Gospel of John

Page 28 - Christian Ministry in Sport - Reflections from the Psalms

Page 44 - Christian Reflections on U2 Songs & Scripture

Topical Discussions with Questions for Contemplation and Discussion

Page 65 - Christian Faith Development Devotional Series - 8 Weeks of Reading, Contemplation, and Exercises

Page 74 - Transformed Lives Sports Discussions

Page 84 - Winners - 12 discussions on characteristics of winners

Page 90 - Pursuing Our Life’s Purpose as Sportspeople

Page 95 - Coaching Wisdom from Solomon - The Proverbs Applied to Coaching

Page 112 - Eight Ways to Worship On the Field of Competition

Page 121 - Powerful Strides in Christian Living - 14 discussions and daily exercises for knowing your position.

Bible Studies with Questions for Contemplation and Discussion

Page 135 - Redemptive Relationships - An inductive study of Jesus’ relationships with individuals and groups from the Gospel of Mark.

Page 150 - A Mentor’s Advice for Team Leaders - 25 Bible Studies for Team Leaders from First and Second Timothy

Page 165 - Wisdom for a Young Head Coach - 25 Bible Studies for Coaches from First and Second Timothy

Page 180 - The Battle for Freedom – 13 Discussions for People of Sport from the book of Galatians

Page 186 - Extraordinary Living - Sport Discussions from James

Page 195 - Coaching Points - 11 Sports discussions from the book of Titus

Page 201 – God’s Team at Ephesus – An inductive study of Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians through the lens of sport teams.

Page 211 – Transformed Attitudes – Sport Discussions from Philippians

Appendix:

Page 219 - Leadership of Small Group Discussions with People of Sport​​​

Zoominar - Ministry in the NCAA Transfer Portal Era

The first in a series of Zoominars for sports chaplains and character coaches is now posted on YouTube (link below). 

My guest was Scott Brewer - Nations of Coaches Character Coach for Men's Basketball at Baylor University in Waco, Texas (USA).

The discussion contains vital insight for effective ministry in the NCAA Transfer Portal Era.

https://youtu.be/RE_P1dhAP7M?si=tfoPEUaZmQ8hFYKD

A Reflection on College Football

For twenty-seven years, I lived in the sport for eight months at a time. Sharon and I shared that life for nineteen of our fifty years of marriage. It was a constantly spinning carousel of coaches, players, and support staff. 

Each year we would build relationships, commit deeply, and serve faithfully. Each year we would lose some, graduate more, and send others on to new teams. The steady rhythm of coaches and players moving into and out of the program was both joyful and grievous. 

Hours were invested on practice sidelines, recruiting dinners each winter, long bus rides each fall, exciting victories, and soul crushing defeats on alternating Saturdays. We were in it with the team, all day, every day. Now, thirty-one years after beginning, I am an occasional visitor, more a memory than a real presence. I am well connected with a few coaches, but barely know a handful of players by name. 

The pregame meal and chapel have an air of familiarity, but I am clearly a guest. My presence on the sideline was once deeply engaging and valuable, but now I am more like a relic, mostly invisible when I am not just in the way. I find myself chatting up players from the past, also visitors now, and telling stories from ten years ago. It’s like I’m in a parallel dimension, here in reality but mostly an observer. 

I am forever grateful for my years of service in college football. The relationships built and the lessons learned have been invaluable. My relationships with countless individuals continue, but my relationship with the sport has dramatically changed. The momentary pain of the latter is easily overcome by the enduring joy of the former.