Normally, I do not pick up my mobile when I don’t recognise the number. Providentially, I did so just after midday on Monday 12 November 2018. Upon answering, I recognised the mild Geordie accent immediately, but I had never heard this voice sound so sad before.
‘Stuart, its Phil here from the club. I’ve got some bad news I’m afraid. … Rob died last night. Could you please come in tomorrow to be there when I tell everyone?’
The next day, 70 or so staff and players at Championship club Brentford FC gathered to hear shocking news. Their friend, colleague – and for many, mentor and inspiration – Rob Rowan had died suddenly. He was the club’s technical director who set the strategy for football development. He had helped launch the career of many young players. He was just 28.
No other day in my three and half years as a sports chaplain has been anything like that, thankfully. When new players or employees start at the club and I introduce myself, they often ask what I actually do. It is quite hard to say what I actually do as chaplain. My explanation is: ‘I wander round getting to know people so that when they need to talk to someone they can.’ While many times I’ve come back from Brentford’s training ground wondering if I really have achieved anything useful, Phil’s call that Monday lunchtime is a reminder to me that what we ‘achieve’ in any ministry, including chaplaincy, is not usually measurable. It is in God’s hands.
That day also serves as a stark reminder of the motivation for serving as a chaplain. It is tempting to think that professional footballers have everything they could ever want. However, the truth is they, and everyone who works in any sport, are merely human. So Jesus’ response to the crowds should be ours too: ‘When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’ (Matt. 9:36). Facing a room full of shocked, grieving people brought that home to me very forcibly.
It is this desire to show Christ’s compassion to others, including of course sharing the good news of the gospel, that is motivating more and more people to get involved in sports chaplaincy. Currently, there are over 500 volunteer chaplains serving in a wide variety of sports. You can find chaplains in rugby, cricket, horse racing and athletics clubs to name but a few, and at every level from local gyms and amateur teams to Manchester City. Sports Chaplaincy UK (SCUK) trains chaplains and oversees this work. Their vision is to see ‘an expression of the compassion of Jesus in every community called sport’.
The desire for sports teams to have chaplains is not new, but it is growing. Sir Alex Ferguson, the former manager of Manchester United, has said: ‘Chaplains can be of help to all sorts of people involved with sport, when crisis, need or difficulty comes. I commend the idea of sports chaplaincy and the work of Sports Chaplaincy UK to you.’ In the competitive world of sport where identity is often wrapped up in performance and results, compassion can be in short supply. More people are recognising the need for sportsmen and women, and those who work with them, to be cared for holistically. For example, at the end of last year, an organisation representing golf clubs across the UK asked if SCUK could provide them with chaplains at each of their 3,000 courses. When, I wonder, was the last time a secular organisation approached a Christian one asking it to send workers? The words of Jesus come to mind again: ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest’ (Matt. 9:37–38).
It was prayer that opened the door for me, a lifelong supporter of Scottish Rugby, to serving as chaplain to an English football club. In May 2016 I was involved in planting Immanuel Church, Brentford. At the time, we wanted ways to develop links in the community and to serve the town in the name of Christ. The most obvious community was the football club. For months we prayed for a way to serve, but nothing happened. A friend who was chaplain of London Broncos rugby league team, suggested I went to a SCUK induction day to learn what a chaplain does. I confess to being a bit sceptical, however I went along. Not only was the training invaluable (as is the ongoing support) but through it Matt Baker (then Pastoral Support Director in English football for SCUK) was able to introduce me to Dean Smith, then manager of Brentford. Dean welcomed me up to the training ground, introduced me to all the staff and players, and told me to keep coming every Thursday. When Dean moved on, his assistant Thomas Frank was promoted. Thomas has continued to welcome me each week.
Almost every Thursday since then (until the lockdown struck), I have walked the 20 minutes from my house to the windswept Brentford Training Ground, praying that I will be useful. As I wander round I try to get to know each person as an individual. What are their families like? What are their struggles, their hopes and fears? This is true of all the people I meet, from the stewards on the gate to the striker whom premiership clubs are rumoured to want to buy. I can find myself discussing anterior cruciate ligament injuries with a player who will be out for nine months, sharing stories about our children, or simply listening to banter and trying to figure out how to respond. Occasionally the conversation will be much deeper. I’ve had young players talk about their struggles, and other staff open up about career hopes and fears, or health worries and marriage problems. In the wake of Rob’s sudden death inevitably there were conversations about death and life. In the time I’ve been at the club, one couple endured a still birth and other players and staff have lost fathers and close family members. Every year there is also the painful moment when young players do not have their contracts renewed. Suddenly, all their dreams of a professional football career crumble around them.
When I first started, a chaplain at another club advised me to be consistent. ‘Go at the same time every week, and keep going. That is very important.’ It has been good advice. I am not well versed in football. I don’t speak any language apart from English (so I was no help when an Algerian player’s father died earlier this season). I am not the most outgoing or gregarious. I often feel like an outsider. In short, I don’t feel like a good or gifted chaplain. Many other people have better pastoral skills than me or are more gifted evangelists. However, it seems consistency – or faithfulness – in a changing world does make a difference. Anyone who wants to serve Christ and love others can offer that. I suspect, in God’s providence, this may be one of the factors that led Phil to call me that day in November over 18 months ago.
Standing before that room of 70 people who had just been told their friend and colleague Rob had died suddenly, reawakened me to the most fundamental need every human being has. It was a privilege to be able to tell them my hope as a Christian. I read to them Jesus’ words to grieving, bewildered Martha:
Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’ (John 11:25–26).
The following month I was asked to lead a memorial service in Griffin Park – the club stadium. I shared the same truth on that day too, with Rob’s widow and mother in attendance too.
Sport for many in our country is a religion. Often pastors like me view sports clubs as competition, taking young people away from church. Inevitably it seems almost everything from park runs to rugby, cricket and football training happen on the Lord’s Day. But sport is also a community where the compassion of Christ needs to be demonstrated and communicated. As I have found, it doesn’t require remarkable gifts, just a willingness to serve our remarkable God. A large number of chaplains are not ordained clergy, but people who are willing to learn, serve and invest in relationships. How might the Lord work if more of us were involved in our children’s football clubs or athletics clubs? How many people could see and hear about the impact Jesus makes on our lives if those 3,000 golf clubs got the chaplains they want? My hope and prayer is that the Lord will send out more labourers into the harvest field that is sport.
