I have loved sports since I was very young. I had the opportunity to play college basketball for Warner University and for Toccoa Falls College. At Warner University I was a member of the 2002 Elite Eight Team that went 30-5 and was ranked as high as #2 in NAIA. This team was inducted into the Warner Hall of Fame in 2015. In 2003 our team was the 11-seed and we made it to the Final Four. After my sophomore season, I transferred to Toccoa Falls College to focus more on my preparation for ministry. At the NCCAA level, I led the nation in rebounding and was selected as an All-American in my junior season.
While I will forever remember my college teammates, it wasn’t until after college that I came to grips with the value of basketball when given over to the Lord. I began traveling overseas with the game of basketball with an exhibition team from Bellevue Baptist Church. Through this experience, I met Randy Shepherd, founder of Crossfire Ministries. He, along with Jamie Johnson, would help shape my life and allow me to speak to thousands of people, young and old, at halftimes and at school assemblies, orphanages, and church settings all around the Philippines and Honduras.
It was in my preparation for these trips that I would have the opportunity to speak to hundreds of college students inside various basketball gyms. If they ever asked me, “What do you do for a living?” I would tell them, “I am a pastor and an aspiring rapper.” They’d laugh at me and I would tell them, “You’re laughing cuz’ I’m white.” They’d laugh and then I’d say, well consider this real quick…
“Let me start by saying I believe RAP is an ART, that can beckon our souls back to the START….when into darkness of creation was SPOKEN, before sin entered the world and everything was BROKEN. You see RAP takes up the task of INVENTION, whether it is good or not rests on the content and the INTENTION….because if it is consistent with the Word of God and comes from a heart of LOVE…perhaps you and I should receive it as though it were from ABOVE.” (I would tell them there are about 60 more lines, but the last 2 lines were the ones they needed to hear…) “The GOSPEL isn’t built around Morals, Music, Membership or even you or ME, it’s built around a story of forgiveness that was purchased for us on a TREE.”
This quick interchange usually allowed me to share one verse and ask one question. That verse, Romans 6:23. The question, “Which side of the comma do you live on?”
As much as I love Crossfire, it is just one of the many ministries that I have partnered with to share the gospel using sports. I have served as the keynote speaker for end-of-the-year banquets with Upward Sports, various huddles and retreats with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and several 3-on-3 tournaments and church-hosted AAU events. While these avenues have given me the largest audiences, coaching has surely allowed me the greatest impact on individual lives. Spending an entire season investing in the hearts and minds of a young person who desires to get better is something that makes coaching one of the greatest channels for ministry in my life.
The message I share at most Athletic events is “The Better you Perform, the Bigger your Platform.” It is my hope that Christian athletes will achieve excellence so that they will have an opportunity to reach a larger audience. Proverbs 22:29 says, “See a man who is excellent in all his ways, he will stand before kings and not obscure men.” I challenge young athletes to trust God’s gifting and God’s lifting, it will keep their mind from drifting and the glory from shifting…from God to them.