Faith on the Field of Play

Twenty-five years after he first set foot on campus as a freshman football player, Wes Yeary returned to Baylor's athletics department last fall with a slightly different focus. But the hiring of Yeary, the University's first full-time sports chaplain, is only the first step towards making Baylor the nation's leading training center for athletic chaplains.

As a defensive back under head coach Grant Teaff from 1983-86, Wes Yeary, BS '87, was a member of three bowl teams as the Bears went 30-16 during his four seasons. Hired as sports chaplain last spring, Yeary's responsibility is now to "establish relationships with the athletes and be there for encouragement, for support in times of need, and to help provide opportunities for spiritual growth," he says.

"We have a lot of folks who work with our student-athletes athletically and academically and socially," notes Director of Athletics Ian McCaw, "but it's been part of our plan for several years to have a spiritual leader who's working with our student-athletes on a daily basis and leading Bible studies, devotions, doing chapel services for teams, looking into mission trips, and really focusing on a day-to-day basis on the spiritual welfare of Baylor student-athletes.

"Student-athletes certainly face some demands on their lives and on their time that other students don't. And there are so many great learning opportunities through athletics, so much that athletics teaches you. You celebrate and certainly give glory to God, but at the same time you have to deal with losing and adversity. I think that's why you see so many athletic ministries thriving nationally, like Athletes in Action and Fellowship of Christian Athletes."

Baylor's planned chaplain training center would partner Yeary and the athletics department with the University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary to provide well-trained chaplains for not only those national ministries, but also the growing numbers of professional teams and university athletic programs that are employing full-time chaplains like Yeary. The University has already set initial support-raising plans into motion to garner provision for the new Truett program and for the work Yeary has begun since returning to Baylor.

Moving into ministry

After spending his early years in Lubbock and Houston, Yeary's family moved to Miami when he was in fourth grade. Upon graduation from high school, Yeary decided to head back to his native Texas to play football at Baylor.

"I heard Coach Teaff speak at an FCA Orange Bowl prayer breakfast, and I wanted to be under that kind of influence," Yeary says. "That's what really drew me to Baylor. When he invited me out for a recruiting visit and I got to campus and just really saw the mission of Baylor, I was drawn to that."

After graduating with his degree in education in 1987, Yeary went back to Miami and spent five years as an assistant coach at his alma mater, Coral Gables High School. During that time, he also began to work with FCA in Miami's inner-city schools and at the University of Miami, where he first met Tommy Tuberville, then a position coach for the Hurricanes.

The pair would reunite in 1996 when Tuberville was hired as head coach at Ole Miss and brought in Yeary to be FCA director for the university, and yet again in 2006 at Auburn. There, Yeary helped develop a chaplain training program for FCA.

"Auburn became the host site for FCA's Chaplain Training Program. We put together a curriculum there, where men and women would come in and spend nine months with us," Yeary says. "A local pastor provided Biblical training, and then they got hands-on experience working with Auburn coaches and athletes. When they completed the training, we'd send them out to work with coaches at other universities."

"That's how highly Wes was thought of by FCA--that he was actually their national trainer for athletics chaplains," points out McCaw. "He truly is recognized as the leading athletics chaplain in college sports."

Part of that reputation has come about as a result of his now-annual speeches to coaches at their national convention. After Tuberville led Auburn to an undefeated season in 2004, he was named Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association. Speaking at the national convention, Tuberville described the impact chaplains had on his teams "and created a bit of a buzz with all these coaches who began to ask, 'How can we do that?'" remembers Yeary.

At subsequent conventions, Yeary began speaking to coaches about his experience and the training program he was leading at Auburn. At his very first meeting, a young coach from Houston came up to Yeary to talk about how to get a chaplain working with his program. Just a couple of years later, that coach would move on from the University of Houston to take the head job at Baylor. His name: Art Briles.

Drawn back to Baylor

"I saw the benefit of a full-time chaplain at the University of Houston when I hired a chaplain there," Briles says today. "It's so very important, the need for a more well-rounded development of the student-athlete, with a spiritual overtone."

When Briles made the move to Baylor, he initially asked his chaplain at Houston, Mikado Hinson, to follow. But when Hinson declined, McCaw called upon Yeary for assistance in filling the position at Baylor, because of his national reputation as one of the top chaplains in the country.

"Coach Briles thought very highly of Wes," recalls McCaw. "So when I said I was going to give him a call, he said, 'When you do, ask him to take a look in the mirror; tell him that's who we're looking at in terms of being our chaplain at Baylor.'"

"When I heard that, it really stirred my heart," Yeary says. "I loved Baylor. I had an incredible experience here as an athlete and grew more spiritually in that time period than probably any period in my life, so the thought of coming back and giving back in that kind of way excited me."

"From the first time I met him, it was clear that Wes is a very godly man," says McCaw. "He has a very strong walk with the Lord, and a great personality. He's got a smile that lights up a room, and people just gravitate to him. He is a very genuine person and very engaging, very relationship-oriented."

Opportunities to minister

Those attributes come in handy as Yeary works with each of Baylor's 18 varsity sports, including serving as the football team chaplain.

"For me, the biggest ingredients in ministry are time and relationships," he says. "The time you invest and the relationships you build with those athletes and coaches where they get to know you and develop a trust in you. You really just love on them and encourage them and, through that, are provided opportunities to minister to them--whether that be sharing your faith or helping them grow in their faith or dealing with some kind of issue that they're going through."

With football, Yeary's involvement ranged from team chapels held every Friday night during the season to small-group Bible studies and being available to meet with students one-on-one.

"To me, college is one of the most exciting time periods in life to get to be a part of. As young men and women leave home and are out on their own, many for the first time, and making decisions on their own, to get to walk alongside them and provide some spiritual guidance and point them toward the Lord is exciting," he says.

For years, professors and local pastors have served as volunteer chaplains with particular sports at Baylor. The football team has benefited from the service of chaplains like former university chaplain Dr. Milton Cunningham, BA '50, and local pastor Ramiro Peña, BA '88. Head baseball coach Steve Smith, BS '86, has worked with volunteers such as former professor and provost Dr. Randall O'Brien, Dr. Byron Weathersbee, BS '85, and Dr. Steve Sadler, BA '74, PhD '90, since early in his tenure at Baylor, while Mark Wible, MS '80, an assistant pastor at Waco's Highland Baptist Church, began to work with the men's basketball team as chaplain shortly after Scott Drew was hired as head coach.

Yeary now works hand-in-hand with such volunteers, pitching in when needed with each of Baylor's athletic programs--whether that's to serve the players or the coaches.

"What I've done with Wes is invite him into our staff meetings," Smith says. "I've been trying to offer opportunities for our players to grow spiritually for 14 years now, but I had not really done that for any of our staff. So Wes was a part of our weekly staff meetings this fall, where he would open us with a devotion, with a message."

"My role is to be available to any coach or athlete," Yeary says. "Part of the beauty of having an office here in the Simpson Athletics and Academic Center is the accessibility to all the athletes; they all come in here to study, to see the academic counselors and tutors, and I'm excited to be available to them as well."
McCaw says the location of Yeary's office in the new facility--right next to the Richard W. "Bootsie" George Jr. Student-Athlete Academic Center--was no accident.

"That was very intentional to put him there where he has an opportunity to have the most interaction with student-athletes," McCaw says. "We took some time and thought about where the highest traffic would be, and so we put him in the academic center because our student-athletes come through that area on pretty much a daily basis. Wes has said that the number of people who have come by to see him since we've moved has picked up dramatically."

Yeary has also been able to join teams of athletes going out on mission trips, traveling with associate athletic director Tom Hill, MS '89, baseball players Brooks Kimmey and Shawn Tolleson, soccer player Andi Fagan, and track and field athletes Danielle Bradley, Brittany Bruce, Joseph Hawkins and Diamond Richardson on a trip to Mexico over Christmas break. He also plans to take a group of athletes to Kenya in May to work with an orphanage and some schools there.

"Sports is really an international language, and so it's a neat way to take our athletes over there to connect with others and use that as an opportunity to share our faith as well as serve them with needs they may have," Yeary explains. "We're involved in local ministry, as well. The goal is to provide as many opportunities as we can for them to grow in their faith and to use the platform they've been given as athletes. Whether it's deserved or not, athletes have a respect from our society. What a way to use that--to impact the world for Christ."

Training chaplains at Truett

Coming to Baylor, Yeary was concerned about the future of the chaplain training program he was leaving at Auburn. But during his interview, he met with Dr. David Garland, dean of Truett Seminary, and McCaw to discuss the possibility of taking that FCA training program and developing it into a master's degree through the seminary.'

"That really excited me, and for me, was confirmation from the Lord that He was already preparing something here," Yeary says. "I went back and told Coach Tuberville, and his first words were, 'Man, you've got to go.' He said, 'This just takes what we're doing to a whole 'nother level. The validity of the degree that you get, and the fact that doing it through the seminary outlasts a coach or a chaplain or anyone else, that's a program that can carry on and impact so many more than the few we're able to bring in each year.'"

The proposed program at Truett would create a new degree --a Master of Theological Studies in Sports Chaplaincy--covering 15 hours of Bible/Scripture classes, 18 hours of theology courses, and 12 hours focused specifically on chaplaincy. As part of the program, the seminary students would also intern as team chaplain with one of Baylor's 18 varsity athletics programs. The program is modeled after Baylor's resident chaplain program, where Truett students live and serve as pastors in each of the University's residence halls.

"Having a seminary here on campus puts us in a unique position, in that we can do something that a freestanding seminary couldn't do. We can actually put our students in the midst of undergraduate athletic programs for two and a half or three years, and they can get sort of on-the-job training," says Dr. Dennis Tucker, associate dean at Truett. "It's an ideal situation. We do all the theological training, and then we work in tandem with the athletics department, and they get all of the experience they need to be prepared to do the job when they graduate."

Tucker says that while there are some programs at other seminaries that focus on hospital or military chaplaincy, and a few universities that offer undergraduate courses on chaplaincy, he doesn't know of any master's-level program that provides a full load of Scripture and theology training and prepares seminary students specifically for sports chaplaincy.

"We've got a chance to really develop a national reputation as the place to go for sports chaplaincy," says McCaw. "It's a growing field and a powerful ministry nationally, and it's great that Baylor has an opportunity to be seen as the place where it happens."

"This fits so much into what Baylor is all about--the mission of Baylor," adds Yeary. "Not just the ministry that we can provide to the student-athletes here, but through the equipping of men and women that would come in here and go through a program that would prepare them to go out and do the same thing in other places. What better place in the world than Baylor to be that training place?"

Yeary says that even though the program is not yet in place, interest is high.

"I get calls literally from people all across the country who inquired about the program [at Auburn] and have gotten news that I've come here and that we're working on this with the seminary. These are men and women from all different states, from all different walks of life, who have a real interest in pursuing this," he says. "There are so many people who have been involved in athletics, be it as an athlete or coach, and have been impacted by it personally and know the influence of coaches and athletes."
That's one reason why having athletic chaplains is so important, says Smith, himself a student-athlete at Baylor from 1981-83.

"Athletics is a tremendous vehicle, and not just for the institution. It's not just the window to the University; it's not just the marketing arm of the University," Smith explains. "It's also the window to the heart and soul of an athlete. We have a very captive audience, and they're very open to growing. They're very open to being challenged.

"We have people here, whether they're here for athletics or academics, that while they're here, it might be the best opportunity they have in their entire life to be reconciled to God. And if that's not the purpose for Baylor University, then we don't have one."

Yeary sees the program as a "win-win"--for the seminary, for the athletics department, for the University, and for all the students involved.

"Not only would we be equipping men and women to go out and serve around the world, but they would be giving to our athletes and investing in our athletes while they're here," he says. "It just provides so many more ministers and ministry opportunities for our athletes."

At this point, the athletic chaplaincy program simply needs funding to get off the ground.

"I've talked to our faculty, and they are very excited about it, so I think we already have buy-in at the seminary level among the broader faculty," says Tucker. "The thing we do have to worry about is simply funding, because what we really need is a professor to teach in this area, somebody who knows something about sports and sports chaplaincy or just chaplaincy in general. And then secondly, we need the kind of funding that will give scholarships to students who want to come, and funds to market it to potential chaplains." 

"This is what Baylor's all about, I believe--equipping young men and women to impact our world," Yeary concludes. "I hear from coaches all across the country; the response from most of them is, 'Baylor's the perfect place for that to take place.' And it is. That's what excites me about being here, about being a Baylor grad and then coming back, is that this is what Baylor was founded on. This is one more way to join in the mission of Baylor University."

For more information on ways you can help Baylor's Sports Chaplaincy program, contact Rick Darnell in the Baylor Athletic Development office at (254) 710-2561.