Coaches & Leadership
You are in a faith-based program, or you have athletes who are people of faith, or you have been asked to say something at the banquet that sounds like a prayer — and you are not entirely sure what you believe.
That is a more common situation than the athletic ministry world usually acknowledges. And it deserves an honest response rather than a script.
Read this passage slowly.
“I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
Mark 9:24 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief. The man in Mark 9 is honest about the simultaneous presence of belief and doubt in his own experience — not performing the faith he does not fully have, and not dismissing the faith that is present because it is not pure. Both things are true at once, and he brings them both to Jesus rather than resolving them before coming.
The coach who is not settled in their faith and is leading athletes who are — or who are being asked to participate in faith-based activities without genuine conviction — has a harder assignment than the coach whose faith is settled. And they also have an authenticity available to them that the settled-faith coach sometimes lacks: the honesty of someone who is genuinely working through the questions rather than presenting a completed answer.
Athletes can tell when the person leading the devotional is performing faith rather than expressing it. They can also tell, in most cases, when the person leading is genuinely honest about where they are. The unsettled coach who says: I am still working through some of these questions myself, and what I know is that I want this team to compete with the kind of character these devotionals are pointing toward — that coach is more credible in the athletic context than the one performing certainty they don’t have.
Bring what you actually have. The honesty about the doubt is more useful than the performance of the faith.
The unsettled coach who is honest about where they are is more credible than the one performing certainty they don’t have. Bring what you actually have. The honesty is more useful.
What specifically do you believe — not what you are supposed to believe, what you actually hold? And what are you genuinely uncertain about? Both answers are worth knowing.
This question requires significant safety. It should only be asked in a coaches-only context where genuine honesty is protected.
Bring what you actually have. I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief. That is enough to start.
This devotional requires the safety of a coaches-only context. Do not deliver it in a mixed coaches-athletes setting.
This devotional does not attempt to resolve the coach’s faith questions. It creates space for honesty and meets the coach where they are.