A Ministry That Coaches Coaches!

This is Robbie Dilmore from The Christian Car Guy and Kingdom Pursuit, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build a kingdom. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds.

Enjoy it and share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. The big time coaches, Coach Wooden, the legendary Wizard of Westwood. But who is encouraging these coaches? Who's building into them? Who's caring for their soul, their family? These guys are working hours.

They gotta chase these 15 young people around and try to keep them straight and keep them right and train them to win championships. There's a man of God with me right now. And this is in a coffee shop, friends. You could hear some grinding. You could hear some pounding. You could hear some eating of some delicious. They just brought us this five-flavor pound cake, bundt cake.

John McLamb, it's tough when you're talking about sports and staying fit, looking at something like that, isn't it, brother? I'll tell you, I was just getting ready to say, if I keep nibbling on this, I think I'll finish it in about a minute. We cut up in five pieces.

If you eat all five pieces, you've eaten the whole piece of cake. But you went the healthy smoothie route here at Buy Good Coffee, giving a shout out to one of our great Truth Network sponsors here in Winston, Salem, North Carolina. You're here in Truth Talk with Stu Epperson all over the country. And I get to sit down with one of my favorite people. This guy's a great man of God, a great story, playing tennis, being a tennis pro at the highest level. And now you're ministering to coaches. Who is John McLamb?

I want to know that, answer that question. Well, Stu, great to be with you. John McLamb, where do we start? Local guy from the Winston-Salem area. Grew up in this area and moved away for 13 years to Dallas, Orlando, Atlanta. I've been in the sports industry, sports marketing, been on the school side and the athletic administration, fundraising. And now, today, I work for Nations of Coaches. Nations of Coaches was a vision of Mr. Jim Haney, who's a longtime executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. Mr. Haney had a very convicted and clear vision that basketball coaches who have just an unbelievable platform to influence and impact young people needed to be poured into themselves. He said, who is pouring into coaches? So since 2008, Tommy Kyle has been the executive director of Nations of Coaches.

We've added regional directors. We currently have 130 character coaches serving in men's college basketball programs across the country. So these young people, they show up, they're gifted their talent, they get recruited, they sign the deal, they got a scholarship, they're going to play ball.

In a lot of cases, these young men don't have a dad. There's a lot of broken homes, a lot of brokenness, and that coach could be the only father, mentor, pastor they ever meet. So this is an investment nation of coaches. And some of you may have never heard of this ministry, but you guys, God's working. Talk about how that dynamic happens and how God's using your ministry in the lives of these coaches and some pretty big names that you've been tossing.

You're not just name dropping. These are guys you're in life with. These are guys you're on the phone. You're on the phone. We came in here praying with a coach. Talk about how that works.

Absolutely. The very heart of our ministry is our character coaches, character coaches who are living life with the coaches, the men's college basketball coaches, their wives, the wives ministry. Not only are the character coaches pouring into the men's college basketball coaching staffs and their players, our ministry, we have wives of coaches that lead coaches' wives Bible studies, which during COVID when those went virtual, we had as many as 130 coaches' wives across the country engaged in virtual Bible study. But to get back to your point, 77% of men's college basketball players come from single or no parent homes. 200 nights a year basketball coaches are on the road and away from their home. Coaches are 24% more likely to get divorced because of their time commitments. So our mission is to reach these individuals, these coaches who have an influence, an impact, and to reach them and those that they impact for the glory of God. And the ministry is called Nations of Coaches.

With me is John McLamb, one of the directors of this thing. And John, I tell you, people don't realize that, but to take from another phrase, coaches' lives matter, right? These guys have kids. Besides the grown-up kids that are running up and down the court that they're trying to wrangle and keep safe and get them, make sure they're meeting curfew, make sure they're getting to the bus, make sure they're getting to the hotel, make sure they're eating right and eating clean, and make sure they're in the weight room at 6 a.m., make sure they're doing the two-a-days and all that.

The grown-up kids, they've got little kids, and they've got relatives, and they've got a mom who's having some health problems, and then they've got a wife. So you guys are really trying to build into them because they're building in the next generation of guys that might be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. And you want those guys to be pointing to saying, glory to God, in His name we play, as opposed to going the other way. But a lot of it starts with pouring into that coach.

Yes, absolutely. And basketball is the one sport that was created on this Christian platform. As we know, Dr. James Naismith looked for an opportunity at a YMCA for what his kids, his students could do. It was started with a peach basket, and people don't realize that it goes back to its Christian roots. So what we're saying with Nations of Coaches is we want to bring the game back, bring it back to what it's meant to be. We've gotten away from that in a lot of ways.

On the corporate level, with all the money, and we get it. We understand it's part of it. It's part of big-time sports. But within that framework, we want to come in, and that's what we're doing. We come in, we serve, connect, and equip these coaches, and do so in a way that equips them so that they can be even that much more powerful and influential.

That's so cool. I love your reference to basketball. And these are mainly basketball coaches you're working with, but you've got connections to all kinds of coaches, and you're ministering and facilitating that. And we do know that it's got to be God's favorite sport, because the only real game shaped like the earth that God created, I'm just saying, is the round ball. But we're not going to offend all the folks getting into football season and in baseball, and there's some other sports out there.

But I'll tell you what, nothing like dropping buckets, right, on those young guns. So John McLamb, we digress, but let's get back to this. My buddy Andy Bowersox has a great ministry called Energize Ministries. He's part of our Wednesday in the Word.

You've been to our Wednesday in the Word time, a great group of men getting together in the Word. But he's constantly talking about how pastors need to be encouraged. Who do they talk to? Their families need to be loved. Let's take pastors away on a retreat. So we really support them.

We've had them on this show many times, but the head coach is very similar in a lot of ways. And the assistant coach, they're literally on the road. They're away from their family. They're looking at temptation. Who do they go to talk to? They're supposed to be the strong one. The team looks to them.

And when they fall apart, when they break down, it's real bad news. So you guys are trying to preemptively and intentionally love on these coaches and meet their needs. Can you talk about the parallel there? Absolutely. So, so much similarity and likeness between pastors and coaches from a standpoint of they are constantly pouring into other people. They're given what they have. They've committed their lives to it. They've got time demands that are placed on them. They've got people. Coaches have these commitments and people pulling them in different directions. Pastors do. And they're constantly pouring their lives into other people to make a difference for other people, spiritually, personally, pouring into their families.

But so often they don't get poured into themselves and served and equipped. And that's what we want to make sure we're doing. And that's our mission, our focus, our vision for the future, growing this throughout the rest of the country. We're based in Alabama. I'm here in North Carolina. A regional director, Steve Roberts, is in South Carolina, where there's a real high level of focus on South Carolina and the Carolinas now.

I love talking to you. It's because I can ask you about all these coaches. Everyone sees them on the TV, but they struggle. You think about a great coach that went to heaven recently, Bobby Bowden.

They're doing a big celebration here for his life. A man, a God who loved Jesus, a man, a God who would call a bunch of these coaches. You thought he would hate because they're on the other team and they're fighting and battling. And yet he was mentoring and discipling and loving and praying for people. The impact that he's had, I've talked to people who got saved under his prayer in his ministry, who have gone on to do great things for Christ. So the impact a coach can have. Leave us with a closing thought of how we can pray for our coaches. And then I want you to give the Nations of Coaches website too before we get out of here. Absolutely. Nations of Coaches website is simply nationsofcoaches.com.

And I hope you'll check that out today. What we say, and we reference this quite often because it's so true. Reverend Billy Graham is well known for saying that a coach can impact more people in one year than the average person can in a lifetime. So if we believe that, and we do, who's coaching the coaches?

Who's pouring into those coaches on a daily basis? And that is our mission. And it's our mission to pour into them, to pour into their wives through our coaches' wives ministry. And to make them just the absolute very best people. Mothers, fathers, husbands, wives that they can be.

I love it. And that would be also a prayer challenge. You threw out a prayer challenge to everyone listening out there. They all see these guys, maybe they're mad at them because he's on the other sideline or he's on the opposite end of the court and they can't stand that guy. But how can they pray for their coaches right now?

Absolutely. Pray for your coach. Pray for your coach, the character coaches. If you're there, if you have a basketball program and this is the first time you're hearing about us and you say, man, I'd love to do that, contact us at nationsofcoaches.com. You can contact our national director, Pete Weary. The information's on there.

You can contact myself. But pray for your coaches that they will be protected and guarded from all of the temptations that they're surrounded by every single day. And we all are. Their hearts will be protected. Their minds will be protected. And that they'll grow and they'll grow in the truth and that their family will grow in the truth.

Because if the coaches are growing and surrounded by Christ-like mentors, men and women in their lives who are pouring into them, that's going to filter down. And that's, yeah, that's our prayer. We're grateful for you. We're going to pray for John here, too, with Nations of Coaches.

You guys, your whole team's amazing. Grateful for what you all are doing. Nationsofcoaches.com.

Nationsofcoaches.com. Thanks for being with us here on Truth Talk, man. God bless you.

We'll have to take a picture and post it of this delicious five flavor Bundt cake. We're at Buy Good Coffee, which is delicious coffee, too. And this is my favorite place to do Truth Talk. So we're just hanging out. And what a blessing. Thanks for what you're doing, my friend.