Devotionals - A Struggle for Coaches

“I did two of the eight devotionals I was supposed to during this past season,” said the coach as we discussed his most recent coaching experience. “I just don’t have the time when I try to teach the sport to these players.”

This tension between the “spiritual” and the “athletic” aspects of sports ministry that leads to a setting aside of “devotionals” seems to be a common experience among coaches I meet. What is especially surprising about these particular comments are they came from the PASTOR of the church of this sports ministry.

Sports ministries have tried many different ideas to overcome this struggle such as:

– Legislating the doing of devotionals – this takes many different forms.

– Taking the devotional aspect out of the coaches’ hands by gathering several teams together for a united “devotional” that is done by someone else.

I would like to present another option which actually goes to the core of the issue here – integration vs. injection.

The problem is not that coaches don’t want to be “spiritual” or that they aren’t necessarily gifted in sharing truth. The problem lies in the paradigm we have developed that drives this struggle – a paradigm that says there is an “athletic” time and a “spiritual” time during practice. The athletic time was when the coach and players focused on sports drills and skills, while the spiritual time was when the coach shared some biblical truth, usually at the middle or end of practice, where the coach typically felt like he was forcing or injecting that biblical truth into the practice time (sometimes out of the guilt that said “This is a Christian ministry. We must share truth.”)

that said “This is a Christian ministry. We must share truth.)

The coaches and players didn’t see much connection between these two times and the result of this injection was the building of a compartmentalized worldview or mindset that says “Sports and truth are really not connected.” This paradigm is rampant in our culture and especially in our sports (For some research on the prevalence of this reality, click here). It stifles the redemption of sports and robs God of the glory he deserves from the realm of sports.

To combat this tendency of injection and bring a integrated paradigm to coaches and athletes, we developed a different way of doing devotionals. We call them 3Ds. (Honestly, we would rather not even call them “devotionals” because of the immediate connection they have to “injection”. They are built on the ideas of integrating SPORTS, LIFE and TRUTH.

Here are a couple of comments from Sports Ministers who use 3Ds:

“3D devotionals have helped our ministry to shift from the mindset of injecting ministry into the sports and moving towards integrating how sports, life, and the gospel intersect. Our coaches and players are learning that sports can be not only fun, but impactful both on and off the field.” Jenny Young, Director of SOAR Sports, Christ Covenant Church

“3D Devotionals are great. They explain a point from a sport, life, and Biblical perspective. All coaches need to do is read it before practice and instill it into the practice. Very simple!” Brent Williams, ROAR Director, Westminster Presbyterian Church

“3D devotionals open the door in a realistic manner for us to be able to invest in the lives of those around us. They bring the scripture to life in a way that a non-believer or believer could understand and allows them to see the benefit of applying the Word to our everyday lives.” Ashley Buchanan, Recreation and Missions Coordinator, Flint Groves Baptist Church

“Implementing the 3D Devotional model has greatly enhanced the way we approach the ministry aspect of our program. Coaches are beginning to help players realize the importance of including God during game play rather than just during designated ‘timeouts’ or team huddles (before/after a game, break half way through practice).” Scott Tyson, Director of Legacy Sports

Here is a short video that explains the philosophy behind and gives a couple of examples of 3Ds.