Christianity Comes of Age in the NFL

A growing number of professional football players are finding the pinnacles of athletic success unfulfilling.

For a few hours on Sunday, January 22, millions of Americans will postpone their concern about the world’s problems. The eyes of the nation will be focused on Tampa Bay, Florida, site of Super Bowl XVIII. On the gridiron at Tampa Stadium, two teams of 49 men will compete for the right to be called world champions.

“I’ve spent a great deal of time and effort in my profession to become the best and to continue to be the best,” says Mike Webster, the sturdy anchor of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offensive line. “But each time I was the best, and we were the best as a team, I was left with a very empty feeling.” The owner of four Super Bowl championship rings, Webster knows what he’s talking about.

Fortunately for Webster, the void he felt has been filled. He is one of a growing number of professional athletes who is proclaiming Christ—not football—as King.

“When we first started holding chapels, we were lucky to get two or three guys to come,” says Webster’s teammate Mel Blount. Now at least half of the Steelers attend regularly.

What is happening in Pittsburgh is happening throughout the National Football League (NFL). Shortly after he arrived in Chicago, Jimbo Covert, the Bears’ top draft pick in 1983, was invited to a team Bible study. In Dallas, some 40 players and staff members regularly attend the Cowboys’ weekly Bible class. The teacher in Dallas is Howard Hendricks, a professor of Christian education at Dallas Theological Seminary.

“The NFL is in the midst of a spiritual awakening,” says Jim Brenn, who leads chapels and Bible studies for the Washington Redskins. “It has spread to athletes at the college and even the high school level. These guys are searching for something deeper than they’ve found in football.”

The burgeoning NFL chapel movement was pioneered by Ira Lee “Doc” Eshleman, a retired minister. In the late sixties, when America’s young people were rebelling against traditional authority, Eshleman believed professional athletes could reach them.

“I’ll never forget those first chapels,” he reflects. “There was one in Detroit. Hardly anyone came. But after it was over, a little bald-headed fellow came up to me and said, ‘Doc, all my life I go to church in de old country. I go to de alter. I sing in de choir. But I never know what it means to be a Christian until today. Today I pray. Today I invite Jesus into my life.’ ”

The bald-headed foreigner, Garo Yepremian, went on to become one of the best kickers in NFL history. Today he is a successful businessman and an active member of Saint John’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Miami. “That chapel changed my life,” he says. “It showed me Christianity had meaning. Before it was just a duty.”

In 1968 Eshleman got the okay from Rams’ coach George Allen to start a chapel in Los Angeles. At a meeting of general managers after the season, Allen was accused of using anything, even religion, to win games. He replied that no coach could teach love and respect among players as chapel was doing. And he wondered aloud whether a team could become a champion without it.

“That statement by Coach Allen did more to popularize the program around the league than any one thing that was ever done,” Eshleman says. By 1970, almost all NFL teams were holding chapel services. In the early days, the emphasis was on evangelism. But soon many began to understand the unique problems that accompany life in the fast lane, and various discipleship ministries emerged.

In 1974, Athletes in Action (AIA), an arm of Campus Crusade for Christ, began a ministry in five cities to meet the spiritual needs of professional athletes. AIA’s Hollis Haff moved to Pittsburgh. Says Blount: “Hollis has been at least as big a part of the Steeler organization as [coach] Chuck Noll.”

In a society that makes sports heroes into demigods, Christian athletes have expressed a desire to be treated as ordinary people. Covert grew up in a steel town near Pittsburgh. His father and grandfather “went into the mill and worked as hard as they could,” he says. “That’s what I do on the field. There’s no difference. I love football, but for me it’s a living.”

Webster says exposure of the drug problem among NFL players “has helped society see that superstars are people, vulnerable to sin, hardship, pain, and failure.”

Those who minister to athletes have come to understand that life in the spotlight can be lonely. “Sometimes it’s hard to decipher whether someone wants to be with you because you’re a person or because of the title you hold,” says quarterback Vince Evans, who last year led a team Bible study for the Chicago Bears.

Henry Soles, president of the Chicago-based ministry Intersports Associates, notes that the divorce and separation rate among professional athletes is much higher than the national average. “With everyone enthralled with her husband, a wife feels like a nonperson, an accessory,” he says.

And athletes are under constant pressure to perform. At Chicago’s Soldier Field, it takes just three bad passes to turn the fickle crowd. “It can be a very cold business because of the emphasis on winning,” says the Bears’ Evans.

“We’re all used to being criticized,” adds AIA’s Haff. “But not in the morning paper or on the 11 o’clock news in front of millions of people.” In addition, Christian athletes face the prospect of being labelled “hypocrites” if a television camera catches them swearing, throwing a clipboard, or starting a fight.

“People see us in emotional and pressure-filled situations,” says the Steelers’ Webster. “When you see Billy Graham on TV, he’s at his best. You see the highlights. You don’t see the other 59 minutes of the game. People have to realize that becoming a Christian does not mean instant perfection.”

However, for many athletes, living with fame is not as difficult as living without it. “After it’s all over,” says Yepremian, “when a guy is out looking for a job, nobody cares that he used to play football. The people who were saying how great he is are gone. And a lot of guys are not prepared for the inevitable.

But eventually, the energy of youth gives way to tired bones. Name recognition fades. Autograph seekers and news reporters disappear. The athlete must consider who he is, haunted by the memory of who he was. A major part of the sports minister’s role is preparing athletes, spiritually and practically, for life after football.

After the final whistle blows on January 22, 49 men will be awarded championship rings, which moth and rust will consume. That’s why Webster says “there’s only one Hall of Fame that anybody should ever want to be in—the kingdom of heaven.”

To that, hundreds of athletes around the NFL are learning to say, “Amen.”

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