Saturday, March 23, 2024

Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 12

For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeoplehttps://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training





Faith Development Exercises 
for Elite Sportspeople

To begin the development of one’s faith I simply show the prospective disciple the diagram, explain that one’s life in Christ is developed through a vertical relationship with God in prayer and study, as well as horizontal relationships with other believers (Christian community) and with people yet to believe (the sharing of one’s faith). The stronger one’s relationship with God grows, the shadow cast among the people surrounding him or her will be stronger and broader. Then I ask them, “Where would you like to start?” This question allows the disciple to indicate his or her greatest interest up front, leading to a greater likelihood of success and long-term development.



I believe hunger is the coin of the realm for the Kingdom of God. If a person is hungry to learn and grow, he or she will commit to your process. If the person is not genuinely hungry, it won’t matter much what you do. A sated man loathes honey, But to a famished man any bitter thing is sweet. Proverbs 27:7 (NASB) Listen for their expression of hunger and feed exactly that. If you listen closely, they’ll tell you where they itch. Scratch that.

Once the starting point is determined (almost always Prayer or Study), I flip the page over and begin to share processes and resources that facilitate our growth. Once we have delved into that first element, and learned its processes, we can choose another point in the diagram, and begin its development. I have found it best to ask the disciple each time, “Where should we go next?”



It’s also wise to determine the duration of your discipleship process together. You can determine to meet for a set number of sessions, weeks, or months. To not set a timeline often leads to a sense of dread and failure if the frequency of meetings declines or circumstances cause you to stop meeting. Set the duration, complete those sessions, then determine if you should keep meeting or if it’s time to move on.

Obviously, if there are resources you prefer or processes you like better, substitute them. These have been most helpful to me and to those I have trained.

Let’s make disciples. This is my process, as adapted from a mentor. If you don’t have a process, this one is better. Choose one and get after it. 

Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 11

For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeoplehttps://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training





Faith Development Exercises for Elite Sportspeople

Since 1980 I have been engaged in the process of making disciples and since 1985, I have been using the same approach to this process. I learned it from my mentor, Fred Bishop of No Greater Love Ministries. This approach is very simple but allows for tremendous depth and flexibility for both the faith development leader, and the disciple.

Having now served people in the sporting world since 1994, and continuing to make disciples along the way, this approach has proven to be quite effective. Please consider using this model or modifying it to suit your purposes. It can be used in one-to-one settings, with small groups, or even large groups.

If you are an elite level person of sport, I believe this process and its exercises will serve you well. Please look through the diagrams and descriptions of the processes to choose a point for beginning. As your faith develops, simply work your way around the four points of the cross to develop your faith completely. These exercises can help you continually grow across your lifetime, in sport and beyond it.

If you are someone serving the men and women of the elite sporting world, I believe this process and its exercises can be of great value to you. This model can provide a simple framework upon which you can add your own favorite exercises and resources for making disciples of Christ Jesus. Simply use this model as a starting point and systematically aid the sportspeople in the development of their faith.

The process I use is pictured here. It focuses on four areas of development of Christian life. Prayer – Study – Christian Community – Sharing One’s Faith. With sportspeople, I often call these exercises or drills that we practice developing our lives in Christ. I will explain, demonstrate, and assign a process or a resource for exercising, and in succeeding sessions we will review their discoveries, insights, and answer their questions. I always emphasize that Christian discipleship is a life-long process of growth and development.

Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 10

For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeoplehttps://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training





Teach, Mentor, or Coach Faith Development?

In my earliest years of helping sportspeople develop their faith, I used a teaching approach. Having gone to schools in the USA, and having been raised in a Baptist church, teaching was the primary and only available model for intellectual and spiritual development. I started with the swimmers who attended the Sunday School class I was teaching in the late 1980s and early 1990s.


Many years later, after having succeeded a little and failed a lot, people began to seek me out for wisdom and for mentoring. They seem to value my experience and expertise, though I largely discount it. We sit and chat over coffee, I listen, tell stories, and offer options for their growth.

Most recently, I have begun coaching people who are seeking to develop their faith and those pursuing their calling to ministry. In this mode, I ask questions to help this person discover how he or she can pursue a call from God, develop a ministry, or simply be a more effective follower of Christ.

In developing the faith of sportspeople: Some people teach faith development. Other people mentor faith development. Still other people coach faith development. Which do you do? One, two, maybe all three? How are they different? What are the advantages of each? What are the liabilities of each?

Teaching faith development

When we teach faith development, we take an academic approach to training. It’s about the delivery and processing of information. We assign books to read, make presentations, deliver lectures, and otherwise aim to improve the trainee’s knowledge of the subject. The focus is usually on principles and practices. It may include research, writing papers, or making presentations to demonstrate the knowledge gained by the trainee. Teaching of Sports Chaplaincy happens at universities, in seminary classrooms, in sports ministries’ meeting rooms, and via virtual learning platforms.

If you teach faith development, teach it effectively. Go for depth of understanding. Train minds and hearts to serve wisely. We need you to help the sports chaplaincy community be a healthy, intelligent, and well-integrated form of ministry.

Mentoring faith development

We who mentor people in the development of their faith do so with an eye toward continuing personal and professional development with our mentee(s).  Most often, the mentorship takes place on an individual basis, rather than with a group. It can be delivered in person or via electronic media. Mentors in faith development provide a broad view, lending perspective across a career.

Mentors are less involved in the teaching or coaching of techniques, methods, or strategies than they are in sharing their insights, experiences, and expertise. This often leads to telling stories, asking challenging questions, and occasionally directly sharing wise counsel.

If you mentor sportspeople in the development of their faith, be sure to help your mentees gain perspective. Keep their overall wellbeing in mind. Help them develop their own vision, set goals, determine best practices, and lend wise counsel, as requested. Your mentees may gather great value by simply spending time in your altruistic presence.

Coaching faith development

 We who coach faith development focus on the development of skills, and use questions (Socratic method) to help the trainee discover the why and how that shape their expressions of it.

We who coach the development of faith in sportspeople strive for understanding and processes that deliver excellent ministry. As we discuss ideas, options, strategies, and methods with trainees, we aim to help them apply the ideas to their local context, the community, the club or institution, the team, the coaching staff, and the competitors.

If you coach faith development as your method of training, do it with patience and thoughtfulness. Coaching takes time and intentional leadership. Coaching the development of faith in sportspeople will lead to depth of service, excellent ministry, and long-lasting results.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 9

 For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeoplehttps://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training





Serve selflessly.

Whereas elite and professional sportspeople and coaches grow accustomed to people asking them to do things, we must be the ones to serve them with no thought of receiving anything in return. They find this both refreshing and endearing. This builds trust. This opens hearts.

To perform the most menial tasks with and for them is a profound relationship builder. Serve without fanfare. Don’t take selfies with them and post them online. Don’t ask for autographs, free tickets, or sideline privileges. Such presumption is the essence of selfishness, and they find it repulsive. Give yourself away in helping them and you will find a loyal friend and an inquisitive heart.

Ministry to sportspeople is selflessly serving them and God's purposes in them with no ulterior motive.

Below are some examples of such selfless service -

·          Assisting in the whole-life development of the sportsperson.

·          Offering help to competitors' and coaches' families when they are new to the community.

·          Assisting support staff when they need help with a task.

·          Visiting competitors who are injured, ill, or are grieving a family loss.

·          Helping a coach or competitor who wants to share his faith by training and encouraging him in it.

·          Offering hospitality and community to these people often displaced from family and friends.

·          Speaking privately with a competitor or coach about his or her relationship with Christ.

·          Maintaining confidentiality re: injuries, illness, family situations, contracts, etc.

·          Protecting private information about competitors and coaches, such as phone numbers, email addresses, etc.

·          Praying for a coach or competitor when a request is shared in confidence.

·          Sending encouraging notes, text messages, and phone calls.

Friday, February 23, 2024

Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 8

 For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeoplehttps://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training





Love extravagantly.

People of sport are often less than loveable. Much of the life of a coach, elite or professional athlete is less than lovely. Ministry with them often smells bad and sounds coarse. It requires extravagant love. It is not safe, is seldom convenient, and is certainly not normal. It is, however, extremely rewarding.

When one invests deeply, loves powerfully, and pays the price to care for the competitors and coaches, they respond in faith with the same passion they bring to sport. It is dynamic and worth every moment.

One of the values held in highest regard in United States culture is “tolerance.” We are implored from every angle, in the media and in schools, that we must tolerate everything and everyone around us. This value is extolled as the highest form of human virtue and should be applied to not only ethnic and religious differences, but to every form of behavior and even to those engaged in foolish, abusive or self-abusing lifestyles. I beg to differ. Tolerance is simply too benign, too soft, too passive to be reflective of Christ Jesus’ Church. I believe He wants more from us than benign tolerance; He wants us to love people extravagantly. We who serve the men and women of sport are surrounded by many who are easy to love and others which we find at least distasteful and maybe even repulsive.

Here are some simple thoughts which contrast extravagant love and benign tolerance:

• Extravagant love takes risks for people. Benign tolerance is safe and secure as it keeps people at a distance.

• Extravagant love embraces people and their imperfections. Benign tolerance puts up with people we find distasteful or odd.

• Extravagant love is very costly as it pays the price to seek others’ best. Benign tolerance is cheap and requires little of the one tolerating the others.

• Extravagant love is active and seeks out those whom we love. Benign tolerance is passive and feels relieved when those tolerated are not around.

• Extravagant love expects the best from others and hopes persistently. Benign tolerance expects little from others and simply hopes to not be disappointed.

• Extravagant love invests deeply in others. Benign tolerance invests shallowly, sharing only what is required.

• Extravagant love honors Christ as it directly reflects His nature. Benign tolerance honors no one as it is purely self-centered and self-protecting, honoring neither the tolerant or the tolerated.

The obvious problem for all of us is that some people really annoy us. Some people’s habits, lifestyles, behavior, or cultural trappings may tear at the very fabric of our convictions and make our flesh scream for relief and distance from these people. Tolerance offers you a low-cost, risk-free solution to your dilemma. It is, however, not worthy of our Lord. Extravagant love is what our Lord modeled for us and has even empowered us to demonstrate. His grace is given to each of us in sufficient measure to love even the most repulsive people in our circles of relationships.

My challenge to you is to press through the easy, cheap, secure, low expectations of tolerance and take the risk, pay the cost, actively and deeply, even extravagantly love the people around you. Coaches, competitors, physios, equipment managers, club officials, athletic directors, support staff, the foolish, the perverse, the profane, the abusive, the rebellious, all of them. Jesus’ blood was shed for each of them and His grace, in you, is sufficient to enable you to love them beyond your wildest imaginations.

Friday, February 16, 2024

Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeople - Part 7

 For the next number of weeks, I will be sharing excerpts from my new book, Soul Training - 7 Keys to Coaching the Faith of Elite Sportspeoplehttps://www.crosstrainingpublishing.com/shop/soul-training





Invite them into your home.

Without question, some of the most deeply impactful moments of making disciples and building depth of relationship have occurred in my home. As we have welcomed coaches and competitors into our home for studies, for meals, for picnics, coffee, or discussions, they find our place to be peaceful and like home.

Your home does not feel like a dorm room, a noisy apartment, an office, or even the chaotic homes from where many have come. Be mindful that you may be their model for what a Christ-honoring marriage looks like. (77% of college basketball players in the USA come from one or zero parent homes.) Yours may be the only healthy home life they have ever seen. How you live in front of them can be transformational, all by itself.

Consider any or all these opportunities for hospitality with the elite sportspeople in your community:

·      Breakfast in your home with the coaching staff.

·      An off-season cookout with the team.

·      A regular discussion in your kitchen over coffee.

·      Host a Bible study and provide a simple snack.

·      Prepare a lunch or dinner and take it to the coaches’ offices during their most time-consuming days.

Friday, February 9, 2024

Holistic Team Development

Holistic Team Development

 

Some of the most important values I hold in my service of sports teams are those I learned while studying small group dynamics during the 1980s and 1990s. Having led small groups of various sorts in my local church and with short-term mission groups, I was able to test a number of ideas I had gathered from books, teaching tapes (yes, I am that old), and conversations with friends and colleagues. I employed these principles in my leadership of groups involving competitors from multiple teams (FCA huddles), groups of coaches (Coaches huddles), and sports teams (American football, Men’s and Women’s Basketball, Women’s soccer/football, and both college and professional baseball).

 

One of the best books I read during those days was, Good Things Come in Small Groups (Intervarsity Press 1985 ISBN 0-87784-917-X). It is full of excellent information, best practices, and tools for small group leadership.

 

Among the most useful ideas taught in the book is the section on Four Key Ingredients, Part 2 of the book. It describes the relationship and essential qualities of these four elements of a complete small group: Nurture (Bible study and discussion), Worship (prayer and singing), Community (development of relationships), and Mission (purposeful activity in serving others). It’s important for small groups to include all four elements to be healthy and productive.

 

Leadership of sports teams and small groups in the sporting community are wise to include all four elements. For our discussion related to the service of people in sport, I will use the same language with one modification. I will substitute Study for Nurture. The ratio of how each element is incorporated in the life of the team or group will likely vary widely, depending upon the focus of the group’s purpose.

 

Groups with an equal proportion of their time and resources allotted to each element are often called, Koinonia groups. Koinonia is the ancient Greek word for Christian community. These sorts of groups are ideal for the most complete, holistic development of the people in the group as it blends equal parts of Study, Worship, Mission, and Community. Graphically, it looks like this, with each element having 25% of the whole:




 

Most common among small groups within a church are Study Groups. These are often Bible studies, occasionally discussions of a book, Sunday school classes, etc. Many sports ministry groups have Study as the predominant feature of meetings. Even though it may occupy as much as one-half of their time and resources, to be at their best these groups should also include Worship, Community, and Mission. Graphically, it looks like this with Study occupying 50% and the other elements having 16.67% each:

 



 

Another common type of group in churches is a Missions Group. The focus of such a group is a purposeful activity in service of others. These can be as simple as the teams who park cars, greet visitors, or clean the auditorium on Sundays. They can be short-term missions groups, traveling together to serve, teach, or preach in other nations. In either case, their mission is the central element of their team and gives it purpose. To be at their best, these groups would do well to also find ways to build Worship, Study, and Community into how they accomplish their mission. Graphically, such a group looks like this with Mission consuming 50% of its time and resources, and the other elements having 16.6% each:

 



 

Sports Teams are more difficult for the development of a holistic group in that the Mission of the team, its sport, is remarkably consuming of its time and resources. The sport training, strategy, practice, and individual development of players can easily consume 100% of its life. It will require intentionality, effort, collaboration with the coaching staff, and buy in of the competitors to develop a team with all four elements included. Graphically, one could aim for proportions like these with the team’s Mission occupying 75%, and the other elements getting 8.33% each.

 



 

To quantify this in hourly terms, let’s suppose a sports team has 40 hours per week of activities (practices, individual workouts, video review, team meetings, staff meetings, travel, etc.). The Sports Training portion of that week would be 30 hours. If one was able to schedule time for Study, Worship, and Community in to the life of the team, that would allow 10 hours.

 

In my service of a Division I Men’s Basketball Team, I would estimate my weekly involvement at just about 10 hours (2 games per week). This service includes activities like:

·      Practice attendance (primarily Community – building relationships – 3 hours)

·      Game Day shootaround attendance (Community and Worship – prayer – 1 hour)

·      Game Day Team Meeting (Mission and Study – 30 minutes)

·      Game Day Character Moment and Pregame Meal (Study, Prayer, and Community – 30 minutes)

·      Pregame Prayer in locker room (Worship - 2 minutes)

·      Postgame in locker room (Community – 13 minutes)

·      Character Moment discussion with Team (Study and Community – 20 minutes)

·      Character Moment discussion with Coaching Staff (Study and Community – 20 minutes)

 

Serving a sports team is seldom simple, often chaotic, and regularly fluid in nature. It’s not likely to allow you to neatly arrange time in tidy proportions, but you can make a concerted effort to build Study, Worship, and Community into the lives of those you serve. Such service is most effective in the complete development of the coaches and competitors, each and all. Give it your best shot, they’re worth it.