by Shannon Caughey

You don’t coach with the hope that your athletes or team will be mediocre. Your goal is not that those you coach will just show up. You coach to win. Whether the possibility of victory is in your favor or the odds seem stacked against you, you do everything you can to help your athletes and team succeed. 

When it comes to the more significant opportunity you have as a coach—the chance to influence your athletes and fellow coaches for Christ and his ultimate purposes—adopt the same mindset. Coach to win. How do you do this? A passage of Scripture that utilizes athletic imagery, Hebrews 12:1-2, lays out a game plan: “¹ Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, ² keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

In this and the next few devotions we’ll look at what these verses tell us about how we can live and coach to win at “the race that lies before us”—the life of faith in Christ. Let’s start with understanding our place in the bigger picture of this race. The “therefore” at the beginning of v. 1 points back to Hebrews 11, a chapter that is sometimes called the “Hall of Faith.” It describes men and women who followed the Lord despite facing significant obstacles and opposition—even when hoped-for results remained unseen to their human eyes. They lived by faith rather than shrinking back when challenges came.

These faithful people who have gone before are now “a large crowd of witnesses surrounding us.” The intended image is not that of a crowd of spectators watching us. Rather, it’s about us looking to them and learning from them as they bear witness to what the life of faith in the Lord is all about. Through their experience, they teach us about things like the trustworthiness of God, how to keep deepening our confidence in him, how to fight through discouragement and fight off distractions, how to prioritize what’s most important in coaching and life…and so much more. We benefit from the wisdom of those who have preceded us in this race.

But we will only seek this wisdom as we understand our place in the bigger story of what God is doing. God is unfolding his grand redemptive plan in this world. This plan includes us. It also includes those who have gone before us who trusted Christ and lived for him—including in the arena of coaching. God’s plan additionally includes those who will come after us. Knowing this reminds us that we are never “the only one” who has faced (or will face) the specific challenges we encounter as we seek to live and coach for Christ. Others—the large crowd of witnesses surrounding us—have run the same race. We can learn from and be encouraged by them.

How do we do so? Immerse ourselves in the Bible, learning from the witnesses that God includes in his Word. Seek out mentors who are further down the faith journey than us. Older Christ-following coaches who pass along what they learned from their experiences can be especially helpful. Another way to access the wisdom of the “large crowd of witnesses” is to be a reader. Good Christian books and biographies have much to teach us.

I know a high school coach who regularly gives this challenge to his athletes: “Leave the program better than you found it.” He’s reminding them that others have come before them—and there will come a day when they hand off the baton to still others who will come after them. The same is true for you as a coach. Regarding influencing your athletes and fellow coaches for Christ and his ultimate purposes, what would it look like to “leave the program better than you found it”? Learn from and be encouraged by the “crowd of witnesses” who have gone before you, and pass along a legacy of glorifying Jesus to those who will come after you. As you do so, you will be truly coaching to win.

For reflection: What steps can you take to learn from and be encouraged by the “large crowd of witnesses” who surround you as you run the race of faith? Choose at least one of these steps and decide how you will pursue it.