Staying Grounded in the Athletic Environment

You spend a lot of energy on other people’s spiritual lives.

Which is the job. That’s what you signed up for. But there’s a version of this role where the output consistently exceeds the input — where you’re giving more than you’re receiving — and eventually the well runs dry.

When was the last time you had something filled in you rather than drawn from you?

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

Jesus, in the middle of a demanding season of ministry, gets up before anyone else and goes to a solitary place. Not because the needs of the people had diminished. Because the well needed to be filled before the next day of drawing from it.

The athletic environment is uniquely demanding for a chaplain. The pace is fast. The needs are acute. The access to individual athletes is often limited and the moments to make a difference are brief. The emotional content of the role — the crises, the losses, the grief, the difficult conversations — accumulates in a way that the competitive environment doesn’t always give space to process.

The chaplain who isn’t personally grounded can’t hold the room in a hard moment. The groundedness that athletes need from a chaplain comes from somewhere. It doesn’t appear automatically in the role. It has to be cultivated — in the solitary place, in the personal practice, in the community of other chaplains and ministers who understand the specific weight of the role.

Take care of the well. What fills it for you? When was the last time you did that thing? Schedule it. The athletes need you to be filled, not just available.

Honest self-assessment of personal spiritual health. The chaplain’s own care is the subject.