#51 - "An Evangelistic Slam Dunk/The Roots of Basketball

[Please try to watch, "The Coral Ridge Hour" (actually only a half hour broadcast), every Sunday. (In Orlando, it is broadcast on channel 40.1 at 5 pm.) The first half is a usually a great message by Dr. D.James Kennedy and the second half is usually about a cultural or public policy issue from a spiritual perspective. I hope that you will circle May 18th to be sure to tune in for a very special broadcast on the story of where our country is headed. DON'T MISS IT!]

[Christians in Football. - I can't remember when I've heard of so many nationally known football players who are outspoken in their Christian witness. Among these are Drew Brees, the quarterback for the Superbowl Winning New Orleans Saints; Sam Bradford, the Texas Univ. quarterback that won the Heisman Trophy (best player in college sports) in 2008 who was yesterday selected as the #1 draft pick in the National Football League annual draft yesterday; and Tim Tebow, the FLorida Univ. quarterback who won the Heisman in 2007 and who was a first round pick in yesterday's draft. Also, the coach and owner of the Indianapolis Colts (who played in this year's Superbowl) also talk openly about their faith in Christ.]

The following is by Chuck Colson, Breakpoint.com.,April 7, 2010

Here’s a good trivia question for you. Which major sport was invented as an evangelistic tool? Find out.

It was the basketball game for the ages. On Monday night, April 5th, the Duke University Blue Devils survived a desperate, last-second shot by the underdog Butler University Bulldogs to win the NCAA men’s basketball championship. It was a great game—a classic “David and Goliath” matchup, given that Duke has appeared in eight championship games under head coach Mike Krzyzewski, and that Butler had never even made it to the Final Four. You may hear folks talking about the game for some time. When you do, you can add to the conversation by revealing an interesting fact: Basketball was invented more than 100 years ago by a Christian theologian as an evangelical outreach tool.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, one of our Centurions, John Murray, recalled the story of the game’s founding. The inventor of basketball, James Naismith, became convinced that he stood a better chance of exemplifying the Christian life through sports rather than through preaching. So he took a job as a physical education instructor at the YMCA’s International Training School for Christian Workers in Springfield, Massachusetts. Naismith’s vision was “to win men for the Master through the gym.” In 1891, Naismith set out to invent a new indoor game that students could play during winter. He spent weeks testing various games, including versions of soccer, football, and lacrosse, to no avail. “Finally,” Murray writes, “Naismith decided to draw from all of these sports: with a ball that could be easily handled, play that involved running and passing with no tackling, and a goal at each end of the floor.” In short, he came up with basketball. From the beginning, Naismith and his athletic director, Luther Gulick, held the players to a high standard. As Gulick wrote in 1897, “The game must be kept clean.” A Christian college cannot tolerate “not merely ungentlemanly treatment of guests, but slugging and that which violates the elementary principles of morals.” He recommended that a coach should “excuse for the rest of the year any player who is not clean in his play.”

Basketball served as an important evangelical tool during the next 50 years, Murray noted. In 1941, Naismith wrote that “whenever I witness games in a church league, I feel that my vision, almost half a century ago, of the time when the Christian people would recognize the true value of athletics, has become a reality.” In the last 100 years, we’ve seen no shortage of Christian athletes who use their skill, self-discipline, and sportsmanship as a witness to Christ—from Olympic runner Eric Liddel in the 1920s, to football player Tim Tebow in our own generation.

In fact, so many athletes give the glory to God after a game that sportswriters sometimes get irritated with them. To which I respond: Which would you prefer—players known for their faith and good sportsmanship, or players who are arrested for assault or drug use?If you have a young basketball fan in your family, tell him or her the story of how basketball was invented. And pray for Christian players who can use the public’s love of sports the way Naismith envisioned when he invented basketball—as a witnessing tool to “win men for the Master through the gym.”

Further Reading and Information
The Spiritual Pathway to March Madness John Murray | Wall Street Journal | March 1