A Note to Coaches

What is Gratitude for an Athlete?

Entering my front door after an evening walk, I’m greeted by a familiar sound that I just can’t place. Music, yes, it’s music — but who is that sultry voice behind the bluesy tune playing in the kitchen? Ah, yes, it’s Bruce Hornsby. (If any of you recognize that name, I’ll have given away my age.)

My kids had pulled the old disc out of my high school music stash (yes, that was in the early days of compact discs, kiddos), and as the smooth ol’ crooner was belting out his “Defenders of the Flag” for no one else to hear (everyone had long since left the room, so I’d become an audience of one), I began to listen closely to the words of a song written in 1988. I expected to find myself amused at the silliness I’d enjoyed in my teenage years, and instead I found myself a rapt listener to a nearly 25-year old insight into the signs of our country’s moral collapse.

It’s coming any day now, said the captain / It’s coming any day now, cried the priest

The people in high places may defend you / But, son, you better hope they keep the peace

Can’t you hear them calling / Can’t you see them shine

The city halls are falling / The defenders drink their wine

And when the party’s over, their stomachs start to sag / Defenders, defenders of the flag

The congregation’s waiting at the altar / They can’t find the preacher anywhere

They found him with the new girl from the choir / Where they store the boxes of the book of prayer

If these guys are the good ones / I don’t want to see the bad

You wonder how it happened / They just picked it up from dad

Faded Old Glory, hanging like a rag / Defenders, defenders of the flag

OK, so get on with it...right? What does this nostalgia from my childhood have to do with gratitude and athletics? The answer is...everything. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the consequences of the decline of gratitude upon our world, and I believe Hornsby’s song gives a pretty good picture of the reality of an ungrateful culture (which, sadly, is a reality — not a prediction of the future). We ponder the current state of things, wondering when our leaders became corrupt, how our defenders developed a hunger for lust and money and power (rather than service). We decry the fracture of the family and the brazenness of big business (with its lack of empathy for anything but its own ambition); and then we turn in desperation to our churches, only to realize that the disease didn’t stop at the back of the sanctuary.

As you embark on this season’s study of gratitude with your team, please keep the brokenness of our culture in mind; and what I’d like you to consider is this: What difference would gratitude make? If a person knows his Creator and lives in relationship with Him, what does that produce in his life? As I’ve studied this topic in Scripture, I am convinced that a gratitude for God’s gift to us produces a life of obedience and the passion for a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, one that puts the treasures and desires of this world to shame, quite literally. The problem with Bruce’s refrain is that he’s lamenting the wrong thing; we have lost our way not because Old Glory is “hanging like a rag,” but because we’ve treated the wisdom of God’s word like garbage itself.

Lead your athletes, then, in a pursuit of gratitude, which truly is a pursuit of closeness with Christ — and see if they don’t find in it a hope that is strong enough to change the world (even if one life at a time).

How to Use the Wellspring of Life Program

This booklet is a season-long “coaching curriculum” for use in leading your team in pursuing the discipline of gratitude. Coaches should keep the following principles and suggestions in mind, as they use the material:

We have provided enough material and activities for an entire 15-week season. If your season is shorter than 15 weeks, you can preview the material and decide which weeks you will use to fit the length of your season. If your season happens to run longer than 15 weeks, you may be able to extend a single week’s material over a two-week span (when necessary), or you could challenge your team to extend its study of gratitude by identifying additional passages and discussing those together. For most teams, the length of this booklet should suffice to cover their seasons.

Coaches, we encourage you to make time for discipline training each day. We’ve organized the weekly sections with an intent for you to spend approximately 5-7 minutes on this daily — thus allowing you to make time for this important focus in your daily routines, without having to sacrifice extensive practice time in order to do so. If you’re going to be intentional about making your team’s athletic experience something that encourages spiritual growth, you need to build this into your daily routines. All coaches see practice time as a priority, and game days are busy for every team; don’t allow your habits to lead to neglect. If you define your sport as having value only in itself (if you fail to discipline your players for godliness), your players will define their value and success only through their athletic accomplishments.

Build in time for discipline training not only on practice days, but also on game days; you can set aside time before your games to do so, and it’s important that you don’t miss important parts of each week’s study (which will happen if you don’t make this a daily routine). Please be sure to be consistent in this; don’t allow other things to become such a priority that your athletes begin to see their submission to discipline as less important than their athletic pursuits.

Train and encourage your team to continually seek answers and truth in Scripture, as you explore the discipline of gratitude together. Each week’s challenge is based upon a passage of Scripture, and the discussion questions are designed to lead your athletes back to that passage, in order to search it for understanding and application. Don’t allow your athletes to base their answers on “their own perspective” or “common sense”, but instead always lead them back to Scripture. This is a habit that will serve them well throughout their lives, and will help them to grow in their relationship with God. “Like newborn babes, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.” (1 Peter 2:2)

It’s also important for you to understand the structure of each week’s activities, as well as the purpose for each day. The following explanation and suggestions should help you to develop a routine that will be effective for your team.

MONDAY: Read the Scripture passage with your team.

Each week you’ll read one or more Scripture passages that relate to the Biblical concept of gratitude. The truth of Scripture will help to “set the stage” for your times of discussion and application during the rest of the week.

You can accomplish this time of Scripture reading in a number of ways. Some coaches may just read to their teams; we have printed each entire passage in this booklet, so that you’ll have them available for this purpose. Other coaches may prefer to involve their players in the reading — having their players bring their Bibles to practice (to read together), or having a particular player read the passage to the team each week. However you decide to handle this, be sure that (after you have read the passage) you spend just a few minutes talking together with your team about how the passage relates to the discipline of gratitude — and why that should be important to them.

Remember that one of the primary purposes of the Wellspring of Life Initiative is to encourage your athletes to develop a daily habit of spending time in Scripture. For this reason, we highly encourage you to obtain booklets for each team member, or to photocopy each week’s material for your players; this will allow and encourage them to spend time on their own reading and considering the implications of Scripture. (In the future, we also will be developing a set of daily Scripture readings to accompany each discipline, to give your athletes a plan for spending individual time in God’s Word.) For your athletes to truly grow in their relationship to Jesus Christ, they must develop the habit of daily spending time in His Word. “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12) Do not overlook the value of encouraging your athletes to spend time reading Scripture; this will be a habit that will produce spiritual growth throughout their lifetimes.

TUESDAY / WEDNESDAY / THURSDAY: Discuss the Scripture passage with your team.

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — His good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2) - This three-day section of the weekly program contains discussion questions and challenges for your athletes. Your team will spend these days considering what God’s Word has to say about gratitude.

Coaches, you will present a question (or set of questions) to your team each day. (After your warm-up, while your athletes are stretching, is a great time for this...or you may want to open or close practice each day with this time.) Because you have access to the week’s Scripture passage(s) in your booklet, you will be able to review or refer to the portions of each Scripture passage that relate to the discussion questions for that day (we’ve tried to make reference to those in the questions). Be sure to do so, in order that your athletes can engage in a meaningful, Biblical discussion about these issues. Remember that their own opinions often may not reflect the truths of Scripture, so bringing them back to the Biblical text is very important.

We encourage you, coaches, to take the time to challenge your players beyond a superficial discussion of gratitude. When the questions ask them to make

personal application, encourage them to share their thoughts. Set an example by being willing to share your own thoughts and experiences, and to make application to your own life. If your athletes see your willingness to examine Scripture seriously and to open your life up to them, they will do the same with one another — and that will promote an environment in which they can spur one another on in growth in Christ.

Coaches, consider that completing a day’s full set of discussion questions might take longer than the amount of time you can spend together as a team. For that reason we suggest requesting extra booklets for each team member, or you have our permission to photocopy each week’s study for your players — so they can work through the discussion questions on their own time, as well. Many schools have communicated great success and team growth that have come from making the full study available to all team members. You might even consider scheduling your season-long study of gratitude in such a way that you encourage your players to work through each day’s discussion questions at home — and then discuss together at each day’s practice or game.

FRIDAY: Discuss sport applications of gratitude, and pray together.

This section of the weekly program is a time when you and your athletes will discuss together ways in which gratitude can and should be exemplified in the arena of athletics. It’s a time to ask your athletes, “What do the things we’ve learned this week about gratitude have to do with athletics? How does a grateful athlete behave?” The goal is to help your athletes create a “picture” of what gratitude means in the life of an athlete — which will identify habits and challenges that can be incorporated into each athlete’s daily routine.

Based upon each week’s discussion of gratitude, you will lead your team in creating a description of a grateful athlete. This should be a list of “active phrases”, and you should add to that list each week (by asking the recurring question that we provide in the Friday section each week). We encourage you to keep this list in front of the players (on a big sign on the wall of your practice gym, on your team web site, or somewhere else very visible) — so that the challenge of Biblical gratitude will be presented to your athletes in a tangible and ongoing way throughout your season.

This list should not by generated solely by the coach; it should primarily be based on the ideas of the athletes. Each week they should be challenged to think back over that week’s Scripture and discussions (the coach should help them to do this), and to answer the question, “Based on this understanding of gratitude in Scripture, what does a grateful athlete do?” Do not settle for vague answers from your athletes; challenge them to go beyond general qualities of a grateful athlete and to determine what those qualities look like in action. What does a grateful athlete do?

Friday is also a day for your team to pray together. (You may need to allow a bit more time on Friday (maybe 10 minutes), in order to have time for the “grateful athlete” discussion AND for prayer, but please do not sacrifice this time.) This is a time for your team to reflect on the truths they’ve learned about gratitude this week, to verbalize the commitments they’ve made, and to yearn and strive together in the presence of God.

The simplest way to accomplish this prayer time is to pray as one large group, and to encourage each athlete to pray as he feels led. However, you can vary how you do this, if you’d like (small groups, prayer partners, asking seniors to take turns leading, etc). Remember that your athletes will mature in their prayer life at differing times and various levels, because the accomplishment of the internal spiritual growth in each athlete’s life will be unique, according to God’s plan and timing. Thus, don’t pressure an athlete to pray aloud. As the leader of the team, a coach should set an example in genuine, fervent prayer; invite your athletes to join as they feel led. One good way to do this is to begin by having one person open in prayer, follow that with a time of silence (during which others may pray), and then have the coach close in prayer.

An additional team activity (which relates to the goal of seeing your athletes apply the discipline of gratitude within the realm of sport) is described in Appendix B of this booklet. These materials are designed to challenge your athletes to set some gratitude-related goals for the season, and to help athletes of different ages and levels of maturity to best identify expectations that are appropriate for them.

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As you use the resources provided in the Wellspring of Life Initiative program, give careful consideration to what will best motivate your athletes to fully submit themselves to Christ in discipline, and challenge them firmly and lovingly to that end. Help them to see their struggles as profitable; pray with them, encourage them, and always keep them grounded in and accountable to Scripture.

Thanks for your desire to see your athletes grow in their relationship with Christ — for your concern for their hearts, not just their athletic pursuits and outward behaviors. Our staff prays for you regularly, and we’re excited to watch God use your efforts to accomplish His purpose in your athletes’ lives.

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