Joe Ehrman (MenandWomenforOthers.org) is a fascinating soul.
I recently became aware of his story a few months ago through the little league where I volunteer as a baseball coach. The league recognized a year ago the need to teach coaches techniques for coaching. Through a partnership with Wake Forest University, a new enterprise began as coaches expressed a greater interest to learn and to find things to coach – more compelling than just winning.
Coaches began to link with coaches of many other sports and ideas began to cross germinate. A few coaches heard about Jo Ehrman, the former standout of the Baltimore Colts in the 60s and 70s. Ehrman became a minister after his football days and returned to the Baltimore area. His story has been captured by his friend, Jerry Marx, The Season of Life (currently in negotiation for movie production).
For more than two decades, Ehrman has been serving as a pastor to a church in Baltimore, a the Defensive Coordinator for the Gilman Academy Football Team, and the organizer of the Men and Women for Others Organization – which gives him an outlet to travel the country to teach coaches of all levels the power of using coaching as a means to introduce to youth the value of living for others.
In the last year, a few local coaches became introduced to Ehrman through one of his seminars. As a result local coaches have started their own expression of Ehrman’s concept with coaches across the Piedmont Triad.
Athletes for Others (AthletesforOthers.org) formed at the beginning of 2008 in Forsyth County to link volunteer coaches together around shared goals of using sports to affect the lives of children to bring about a broad societal change.
Already Jerry Moore (ASU Football Coach) and Ron Wellman (AD at WFU) are part of the Board of Directors.
Joe Ehrman was invited to lead the first Athletes for Others seminary in Winston-Salem on October 12, 2008. Coaches from all over the Piedmont working with rec leagues, the YMCA, and little league sports attended. Ehrman was convincing in his presentation about the need for a massive societal effort to teach youth the significance of empathy and living for a cause greater than themselves.
It is not enough to have pity or sympathy – feeling sorry for the pain and suffering of others. It is far more important to have compassion to the point you know what it is to stand in the shoes of the one who is suffering. That is empathy.
For more than 20 years Ehrman and his partner at Gilman have embraced a style of coaching that uses positive messages instead of the stereotype of yelling, demeaning, and shaming players into performance. Ehrman attempts to teach players to see the power of living for others as a stronger engine for performance than success or personal achievement. Annually Gilman has one of the best teams in Maryland, which has been ranked among the top 15 in the nation twice the last decade. This is not a Pollyanna or soft hearted approach to coach. It is a dynamic approach that helps players engage truth.
Ehrman noted that more than 40 million youth are currently engaged in some level of sports across America. His research indicates that this massive audience is far more likely to respond to the prompts of coaches rather than parents, teachers, or preachers. The desire to play and perform compels athletes to pay attention to the coach. At the same time, too many coaches use the messages of domination and greed, while objectifying opponents or diminishing others without thought of character or values.
Ehrman believes that coaches can be the most powerful tool in turning the tide of greed, self-absorption, and violence in our society. They alone have the most powerful pedestal from which to teach the deeper truth of empathy, leadership and justice.
Counting parents and athletes it is estimated that nearly 100 million people are actively involved as players, coaches and supporters of sports. Ehrman challenges his audiences to recognize that sports represent the biggest secular religion in America. Consider how charities, religious communities, and non-profit enterprises are presently languishing for volunteers and the gifts of time, talent, and financial support. Yet the average family is dedicating more money to sports fees, equipment, and season tickets for their favorite college and pro teams.
Ehrman contends that for many athletes and their families, involvement in sports is a search for the deeper values of community and belonging that used to be identified with church and synagogue. Instead of railing against the success of sports, he is seeking a way to help coaches see sports as a vast opportunity. It is through positive coaching that kids learn more than the sport. His specific approach teaches the truth about empathy, leadership and justice while challenging kids to reverse the trends of racism, sexism and violence. His players discover the way the world could be by being a team for each other. The ripple effect is now touching thousands of coaches across the country and tens of thousands of kids and youth.
I am more motivated and excited than ever to coach baseball. I look forward to the potential of addressing social change through the vehicle of sports. I also long for the church to discover a similarly inspiring new outlook. Unfortunately the audience is different. It is more concerned about self-preservation and confused about being a community for others due to the extreme challenge of low attendance and low stewardship support. Maybe this new kind of coaching will help ministers like me to reconnect and reform the vision of being the Body of Christ today. Maybe it will help the church see beyond what it needs to what it could be if it commits anew to being a community of empathy built to live for others.
Empathy is still a part of the church. We are still good at helping our own folks in a time of loss or need. But Ehrman has set a whole new bar for what it means to engage the world with the message of empathy. It seems to be compelling enough to get many in the church past the concerns of self-preservation and tradition. I guess we will see.
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