Everyone around an athlete wants something. Fans want a highlight, recruiters want a signature, and even churches sometimes want a testimony for the stage. Corwin Anthony and Natasha Shorts of Athletes in Action have spent years on the other side of that dynamic, and their answer cuts against almost every instinct sports culture trains into people. The direct answer: treat athletes as people, not platforms. Help them build an identity in Christ that survives the end of a career. Be present for honest questions about Christianity, race, and suffering. Confront prosperity thinking directly. And never push someone onto a church stage before they are spiritually ready.
Why Is It So Hard to See an Athlete as a Person and Not a Platform?
The first obstacle in reaching athletes is the same temptation almost everyone around them gives in to. Fans see status and opportunity. Even well-meaning ministries can fall into seeing a potential testimony before they see a person.
“We really see the athletes not just for their platform, not just for how everyone else sees them as like the glitz and glamor. We see them as human beings and help them really know what does it mean for you to not only worship God in your sport, but worship God in your life.” – Natasha Shorts
Someone might object that a platform is exactly what makes an athlete worth reaching, since their visibility could influence so many other people. Shorts and Anthony do not deny that visibility exists. They argue it cannot be the starting point, because athletes are trained from childhood to manage a public face, sign autographs, sit for press, and perform for cameras. When someone shows up who genuinely is not there to take anything from them, it creates an opening that performance never will. Corwin Anthony calls this a ministry of presence, not a technique but a commitment to be there when the moment comes, even if the moment takes years to arrive.
Why Is Identity the Real Issue Underneath Athletic Ministry?
Much of what makes athletes hard to reach is the same thing that makes them vulnerable. From a young age, many are told they are athletes first and everything else second, until the sport stops being what they do and becomes who they are.
“Especially in the black community, like this is, I've been raised to become. And then when that doesn't pan out, it's like, okay, well, who am I outside of that?” – Natasha Shorts
Shorts says this pressure runs especially deep in the Black community, where families invest enormous hope in a son or daughter becoming a professional athlete. The investment is real, the love behind it is real, and so is the identity formation. When a career ends early, through injury, a cut roster, or simple attrition, the loss is not only financial. It is existential. The obvious response is to tell a struggling athlete to find their worth elsewhere. The harder, more honest work is walking with them while they actually rebuild it, which is closer to what Jerome Gay describes in a related conversation about identity: a person can hold a real and good feature of who they are, race, ethnicity, or in this case a sport, without letting that feature become the foundation their whole sense of self stands on. The foundation has to be something that survives the end of a career.
What Temptations Do Professional Athletes Face That Most People Never See?
Ministry to professional athletes operates in an environment most discipleship advice was never built for. The temptations arrive with resources behind them, not just opportunity.
“The wrong kind of people target athletes, especially those that are in the limelight. And they have to have just an extra measure of discernment and wisdom if they're going to survive.” – Corwin Anthony
Anthony, who chaplained for the Miami Dolphins for about ten years, has watched players receive offers of free trips to the Bahamas scheduled on the same nights as Bible study, a competition that is concrete and well-funded, not abstract. Beyond luxury offers, predatory agents and people with personal agendas circle players who have not yet learned to identify them. Anthony remembers a team captain, a man every rookie wanted to emulate, sitting alone in the locker room after practice and calling him over to say he was scared of himself. The player had seen the pit he was standing in and needed someone present enough to turn to. That is the entire case for a ministry of presence in one moment: the person who matters most is rarely the one performing confidence in front of everyone else.
Is Christianity the White Man's Religion, and How Should You Answer That?
Athletes ask the same hard questions everyone else asks, often with sharper edges because of where and how they encounter Christianity. Shorts says the question she hears most from Black athletes, at predominantly white institutions and at HBCUs alike, is whether Christianity is the white man's religion.
At Ohio State, track athletes brought the question to her directly. In Cape Town, athletes raised the history of their grandparents being given a Bible rather than land, framing what Christianity has meant in their family's actual experience. Shorts does not dismiss the objection or rush past it. She takes people to Scripture and works through it with them honestly, because a real historical grievance deserves a real answer, not a deflection. The objection that this question is too political for ministry to engage misunderstands what is being asked. It is a question about trust and history, and trust has to be earned by taking the question seriously, not by changing the subject.
Why Does Prosperity Thinking Run So Deep in Sports Culture?
Anthony names a different distortion that shows up constantly in locker rooms: health and wealth thinking, the assumption that faithfulness should produce wins, the same way effort produces results on the field.
Athletes are especially susceptible because winning is the metric their entire world runs on. Anthony recalls a coach who opened his facility to Bible studies and still could not win, and who eventually came to Anthony to ask him to explain it. The theological error here is straightforward to name and hard to dislodge once someone's whole career has trained them to expect performance to equal reward. Chaplains and ministers working in sports have to be ready to confront that thinking directly, not just hope it fades on its own.
Should a Church Put a New Athlete-Convert on Stage Right Away?
When a professional or high-profile athlete walks through the doors of a local church, the instinct is to put them on stage immediately. Their presence feels like an opportunity too good to waste.
“Don't push someone up there when they're not ready. And so even just like getting to know them and seeing them as people, seeing them as people who are hurting and broken, who are in need of a savior, just like everyone else in the room, like that makes a difference.” – Natasha Shorts
Shorts names that instinct as one of the clearest ways a church can fail an athlete who came looking for something real. An athlete who has just said they are a Christian may not yet know what that costs or means. Putting them on a platform before they are grounded sets them up, and holds them to a standard they were never given time to grow into. The public fall that often follows damages the athlete and, as Anthony notes, the reputation of Christ along with them. The slower path, learning who they actually are, letting them grow quietly, giving them the same discipleship any new believer needs, is less exciting and far more durable. The platform can come later, if it comes at all.
Quick Answers
- What makes athletes harder to reach with the gospel? Years of being seen as a platform, not a person. Athletes learn early to perform for others. A ministry that wants in has to show up differently: no agenda, no camera, no hustle for their testimony.
- Why is identity such a big issue for athletes? Their sport is often the center of their self-concept from childhood. When the career ends or stalls, so does their sense of who they are. The gospel offers an identity that does not depend on performance.
- Is Christianity the white man's religion? This is a real question real athletes ask, particularly Black athletes. Corwin Anthony and Natasha Shorts take it seriously and engage it from Scripture and history, not by dismissing it. It deserves a thoughtful answer, not a deflection.
- Should churches give athletes a platform right away? No. Shorts and Anthony both warn against it. An athlete who is new to faith needs discipleship, not a spotlight. Rushing them onto a stage before they are ready often ends badly for everyone.
- What does a ministry of presence look like in practice? It means being there consistently, never asking for anything, not posting photos with them on social media, and being the person they know they can call when something is wrong. Trust is built over time, not in one conversation.
This week, identify one person in your life who is used to being seen for what they do rather than who they are. Not necessarily an athlete, but anyone whose identity is tightly wrapped around performance or achievement. Make one move toward seeing them differently, a question that is not about their role, a conversation that is not about what they produce. Ministry of presence starts small.
Listen to the full conversation: this episode of The Jude 3 Project podcast is available on the Jude 3 Project podcast feed. The conversation covers sports chaplaincy, the identity pressures unique to athletes, how to handle hard theological questions in a locker room, and what the local church can do differently.
Corwin Anthony played football at UCLA and joined Athletes in Action staff with his wife Kim. He served as chaplain for the Miami Dolphins for about ten years and now oversees AIA's NFL chaplain program, which serves approximately ten teams. Natasha Shorts has been on AIA staff for about six years, working at Otterbein University, Ohio State, and the University of Tennessee, and leading an AIA team in Cape Town, South Africa. Both serve under Athletes in Action, a ministry of Cru.