I like football season. I barely understand the way the game is played, and I don’t closely follow any team, but I enjoy the rhythm of the season. Fall Saturdays feature the college games with traditions like Homecoming and tailgate parties. The sportscasters and programming of pro football games feel familiar to me also. We’ve had fun attending college football games, especially at our kids’ schools, and have made it to a few professional games. Football has been momentous for my husband and me. We officially met at my college Homecoming game and we became engaged after attending a Navy football game in Annapolis.
Extra Yard for Teachers (EYFT) is an initiative leveraging the college football program to honor teachers and inspire people to become educators. EYFT just finished an 8-day blitz of events, but each week of the collegiate football season, players share about a special teacher who inspired them. As a teacher, I appreciate higher education athletics recognizing the formative contributions of educators.
I came across a remarkable football story reading a waiting room magazine. Rob Mendez is a young man without arms and legs, the result of a rare congenital condition. From a young age he loved football and passionately learned all he could about the game, dreaming of becoming a coach. Understandably, securing a coaching position proved challenging given his extreme physical limitations. Mendez said this:
“Two years ago, I rolled out of a church service dejected, out of work, wondering if I’d ever get a chance to become a head football coach. I remember finding a quiet spot near a bush and just asking God to give me a sign that I wasn’t wasting my life, that there was a place for me in football. A few days later, I got the phone call for the interview at Prospect. And now all this has happened.” (ESPN, July 2019, p. 60)
Mendez got a JV Head Coach job, coached an 8-2 winning season and was awarded ESPY’s “Jimmy V Award for Perseverance.”
Mendez’s turning point followed his participation in a worship service. He shares how he felt very down but it seems that time spent in church strengthened him to plead to God regarding his dreams and despair. It wasn’t long after that his coaching opportunity came along.
Church has a way of doing that. Joining worship, leaving the concerns of life at the door, experiencing fellowship, being lifted in song, and hearing the Bible preached, result in change and produce healing. Many people think they can experience God without going to church. You can experience God on your own, but church is God’s vehicle for fully encountering Him and Christian community. Corporate worship uniquely offers connection with other believers and a focused time learning through Scripture. Psalm 73: 16-17 describes frustration thwarted by joining others in the place of God: “it was oppressive to me until I entered the sanctuary of God.” God’s design is for us to “flourish” as we enter “in the house of the Lord … the courts of our God” (Psalm 92:13). The New Testament restates it clearly: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing” (Hebrews 10:25). Leave your excuses at home and go to church next Sunday.
