Lecture

It’s my great privilege to welcome you to the session on Building Meaningful Relationships with Athletes. My name is Lori Krueger, and I have the privilege of serving as a chaplain for the KC Current, which is our local professional soccer team, as well as lead a team of chaplains who serve across the National Women’s Soccer League. There are now seventeen of us who serve faithfully the athletes who have been entrusted to our care. This ministry began ten years ago with a simple introduction and while the Lord had some good things in store, isn’t it fun to see what He will do and who He will use when you just show up and say, Lord, I’m available, use me. And so, it’s been just an honor to lead this ministry for the last ten years.

Cultivating healthy relationships with the athletes who have been entrusted to your care is an essential part of any sports ministry. This became abundantly clear during my first role as a chaplain. At the time, I was serving a team in Connecticut, and I was serving in the WNBA and this is what the ministry looked like. I would get in my car, travel an hour to the arena. I would go down into the tunnel, find my space, offer a ten to fifteen-minute pregame chapel. Then I would pray for the athletes, I would watch the game, get in my car and drive home. I did this for a couple of seasons and then our family relocated from Connecticut to Kansas. And I literally said to the Lord, Lord, I don’t think that went very well. And if you see fit for me to try again, I’m your girl.

As I’ve had time to reflect on that very first ministry experience, I have learned a lot. When stepping into a new ministry, is offering a powerful and inspiring game day experience important? Absolutely. I mean, we don’t ever want to underestimate what God can do in five to ten to fifteen minutes of opening up His Word and being present and praying for athletes. I remember my sports mentor. She would say to me Lori, this might be the only church some of these women are getting. And so, is a vibrant game day experience impactful? Absolutely.

One other lesson I learned, is it important to have access to the athletes? Does geographical proximity matter? Yes, it absolutely does. It’s time consuming to get in a car and have a two-hour drive before you even say hello to an athlete. So I put that lesson in my back pocket as well. But I believe the very gap, the thing that I said when I said to the Lord, I don’t think that that went well, I think there’s something that’s missing. The gap that existed for me in that experience is actually our main focus for these next several minutes. And it’s the building of healthy relationships with the athletes, being so intentional to build these relationships.

I’m so grateful that after living in Kansas for seven years, the Lord opened the door for me to serve another professional team. And you can be certain, in addition to starting consistent inspiring game day chapels, which is so fun to look back, on April 13th, 2013, was the very first game of the NWSL, and the Lord had positioned me there to serve as a chaplain and offer a pre-game chapel. But now taking what I learned from my first experience, my main focus was, and still is, to develop meaningful relationships with the athletes. And to be honest after ten years of doing this, this has been a game changer.

But I want to encourage you, before you even think about cultivating meaningful relationships with athletes, what they need most from you is for you to be in a dynamic, a vibrant, and a life-giving relationship with Jesus. To love the Lord your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. I believe it’s this vertical pouring in where Jesus pours in His love and His grace and His mercy. It’s that vertical pouring in that we get to bless the people, those horizontal relationships, that they are an overflow of what the Lord has poured into you.

And so, in these next few minutes, we’re going to get super practical and I’m going to offer some specific considerations for you to think about as you are pouring in and building relationship with the athletes who’ve been entrusted to you, but I want to start with a bit of a disclaimer. My personal official experiences have been primarily centered around serving professional athletes, which does bring a few unique considerations. But I do believe that the same fundamental building blocks can be applied to any age group that you are serving. Whether God’s positioned you to serve a pro athlete, the collegiate athlete or youth athlete, because they are all people who are worthy to be loved and to be cared for and to be believed in and to be supported powerfully by you.

So I was a science major in college and I do appreciate a good formula, although building relationships probably is more of an art than a science, but if I were to write a formula, it would be this: Relationships equal trust over time. Generally speaking, relationships take time to build, and trust takes time to be earned. So be patient with the athletes who the Lord has entrusted to you. It will take time for your athletes to experience your heart and for them to really get that you don’t want anything from them, you are simply showing up for them.

So as we consider how to create meaningful relationships, I’m a bit of a church girl and our church loves alliteration so here we go. The five C’s of building meaningful relationships. Number one is common ground. As you consider how to build connection with your athletes, what are those areas of common ground that you can connect with them? For example, do they have a dog? Do you have a dog? Are you from Canada, are they from Canada? Do you like coffee, do they like coffee? Be curious about who they are outside of the game and what they enjoy to discover, what you might have in common ground with one another.

And I would love to throw this out for a consideration. Don’t just assume that the sport that they play will be a common ground for you. For example, I have served two world class goalkeepers for ten years. The first one is self-described as a soccer junkie and she would love to talk soccer with you all day, every day. In fact, she lived with us for different times in her career and most of the time that I would go down to the basement, she would have soccer on. And so that’s a common ground for us. The second goalkeeper, who is one of the best goalkeepers on the planet, she does not want me to ask her about soccer at all. She prefers to connect on a personal level outside of the sport. What are ways that she can serve her community? What are ways that she can use her platform to impact the world? How can she lead and spiritually encourage her teammates? That’s our common ground between her and myself.

And so, my encouragement to you is to discover the connection. Be a student of the athletes who’ve been entrusted to your care. And so, as we work through each one of these sections, we’re going to have the C and then we’re also going to have a question that I invite you to consider. And so, the question for this section, common ground, is: What is the common ground for us? I’d like to invite you that it would be good to know what’s your common ground for each of the athletes entrusted to you.

The second C is care. How can I care for you powerfully this season? That’s the question I invite you to ask yourself. How can I care for you powerfully this season? Remember, we need to care for who they are, remembering that athletics is just a part of their lives. It’s what they do for enjoyment or for a living, but it is not their identity. In the sports ministry space, we get the privilege to care for all aspects of their lives. Most of the athletes I know have coaches and athletic trainers and staffs; they are already concerned about the physical health of the athlete, but who is it in their life who advocates for their mental health, their emotional health, their spiritual health? We do! We get to see athletes as whole beings far beyond their performance. We get to care for who they care about and what they care about. How can we love and serve their family powerfully? How can we serve the people that they care about and what they care about?

So really practical. As we consider how we care for our athletes, do we show up with resources that encourage them? Do we take them for coffee? Do we invite them to go for a walk and listen to them? Do we remember it’s their birthday? Do we pick up a favorite treat for them? Because you’ve studied your athletes, you know how to care for each one in a meaningful way. Also, I invite you to care about what impact they want to create. If you are serving a pro athlete, I would also like to invite you to maybe not be impressed with them. I know that sounds weird, but they have tons of people who are already impressed with them. What if you cared enough to invite them into an expansive life?

So the third C is consistency. And the question I’d like to invite you to ask is, can they count on you? Do you show up consistently in their life? I’d be surprised if somewhere during this sports ministry certification program that you probably already have heard this concept of the ministry of presence. Simply by showing up and being present will open opportunities for you to care for your athletes. So it’s literally just being there. I recently was onboarding a new chaplain in our soccer ministry. I was explaining this concept to her, and she said, Well, what do you mean, like, the ministry of presence? Like, what does that look like? And I said it literally looks like you showing up and you being present for the assignments that the Lord has already preordained for you.

Last season, I was running out to a training session and my daughter had made a few beaded bracelets with words on them for some of the women that we serve. And one of the young women, she was getting ready to head off to the Olympics, so I wanted to make sure she had this word of encouragement to go with her. And as I was walking toward one of the women that I had a bracelet for, I saw the athletic trainer. She was walking with her, and I could see that some tears were welling up in her eyes and as I approached her, she said to me, Lori, I can’t talk. Which, hey, no problem, no problem. I just wanted to bring you something. And so, she reached out her wrist and I slipped on that bracelet. And the word on the bracelet was the word “peace.” And the athletic trainer looked at her wrist. And then she looked up at me and she said, Well, that couldn’t have come at a more perfect timing. If I hadn’t shown up, if I hadn’t been present, I would’ve missed this opportunity to encourage and support this athlete.

So whatever your rhythm of presence is, as determined by the gatekeepers, be consistent. If you are doing pre-game chapels, make sure you’re there for every pre-game chapel or have it covered. If you are invited into training, show up. These athletes live in a world that’s very uncertain. Are they in the starting rotation? Are they making the team next year? Are they on the travel roster? Are they being traded? Are they being waived? In a space that feels so inconsistent and uncertain, wouldn’t it be great if they did have someone who was consistent? And that person is you.

The fourth C is communication and that involves your ability to listen well. If you can be a listener, it will be one of your greatest skills to serve these athletes powerfully. So be curious, ask open-ended questions, listen carefully. What are the words that they are saying, what are the words they’re not saying? What are their eyes saying? What’s their body saying?

So engage, show up and be authentic, and really practically speaking, know how they want you to communicate with them. I currently serve an athlete who prefers voice texting. She’s literally the only person I voice text, but that’s how she wants to communicate and so whatever works for her works for me. I have another athlete. She Snapchats me almost every day and that’s our preferred method of communication. So whether it’s FaceTime or direct message on Instagram or texting or calling, just know how it is because you’ve studied your athletes, you know how they want to communicate with you. And so, the question that I would invite you to ask in this section is: Am I asking them questions no one else is asking them?

The fifth C is community. How can you create a community for them outside of the sport where they can be empowered and encouraged and known? We have several families in our church family who have welcomed athletes that I’ve brought into church so beautifully. And in this community, there’s no expectation, there’s no pressure. It’s just a place where they can be fed and encouraged and loved. I believe this is especially important if you are serving in a collegiate space or a professional world capacity. Many of these athletes are away from their families and they are longing for a community of connection, and you get to invite them into yours.

I remember several years ago, I had invited a young athlete—she was married—into our faith family. They ended up joining a young married group in our church and were served so powerfully by that invitation. Another one of the athletes, I had invited her to our Women’s Bible Study that we had at our church. She was so loved on by those women; they adored her. So when we have gatherings for faith conversations, either within the team, there’s lots of ways to create community for the athletes. So introduce them to your community and see how the Lord uses your family and your friends to pour in and love them. So the question we’re asking in this section is: Am I connecting the athlete to a life-giving community outside of their sport?

Over the past ten years, as I think through the names and the faces of the women and their families who I’ve had the absolute privilege to serve, I am so grateful. I’m so grateful the Lord gave me another swing at this sports ministry world. Their lives and their relationships and their stories have been some of the greatest blessings to our family and what a privilege it is to serve them in this way to impact the lives of the athletes who have been entrusted to our care.

So for you, what’s your common ground? How are you caring for the athletes? What questions are you communicating? Can they count on you to show up for them? And are you inviting them into a community? May you step boldly into this calling and serve them in ways that no one else is serving them. To the world, it might look like a soccer pitch, or a baseball diamond, or a court, or a track, but to us, as sports ministers, it is holy ground. It is sacred. So I pray that God’s favor would go before you and just bless you in the ministry for which you have been called. God bless you.