Bears’ Smith underscores his faith
Lovie Smith had a limited amount of time during his Super Bowl XLI media session, but the Chicago Bears head coach said he could spend hours talking about his star players and their efforts to get the team to their first Super Bowl berth in 21 years.
Chicago Bears head coach Lovie Smith calls the plays but relies on his faith in Christ as “the center of my life.”Smith also wanted to spend part of his allotted time talking about what was most important in his life, his faith in Jesus Christ.
“God is the center of my life. It controls all that I do. I hope I don’t have to spend my time telling my players I’m a Christian. I hope they see it in my life every day,” he said.
Since taking the helm of the Bears in 2004 – his first head coaching job in the NFL – he has led his team to back-to-back division titles and, now, to this year’s NFL championship game.
And he has done it in the same faith-based style of his friend, mentor and opposing Super Bowl coach Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts.
After starting out as a coach in his hometown at Big Sandy High School, he spent nearly two decades coaching in college before Dungy brought him to the NFL as a linebackers coach in 1996 at Tampa Bay.
Smith grew up in a Christian home in the small east Texas town of Big Sandy, going to church regularly with his mother, his brothers and sisters.
“My mother always made sure we went to church and knew about the Lord. My faith has been with me all the time, and I knew I needed God to be a part of my life,” he recounted.
Smith’s father battled alcoholism most of his life, which led his son never to drink, and his mom always emphasized the need for a clean mouth and a pure heart.
“Lovie always had a direct line to God,” she was quoted as saying in a recent New York Times profile of her son.
The result is a solid faith and values system which has served him well in the up-and-down world of coaching.
“I don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t dance, so what is there to do to get in trouble?” he said to laughs during the media session. “When my family gets here later, we’ll have dinner out together. That will be our big excitement.”
Smith said his lack of cursing in a sport often dominated by it is another way to showcase his faith without cramming it down anyone’s throat. “I don’t have to tell you. I can show you,” he said.
Smith’s calm demeanor as he guides his team reflects something more important to him than the ultimate on-field victory.
“I believe that God has a plan for our lives,” he said, “and we have to try and fit into it.”
Colts chaplain, Dungy impart faith
Pastor Ken Johnson has overcome the roughest of family situations and personal demons to become a minister, work for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and serve as the chaplain for the Indianapolis Colts.
Ken Johnson
Tony DungyHe has seen firsthand the wonders and changes God can bring to any situation. But when he got a phone call from a person identifying himself as newly hired Colts head coach Tony Dungy, Johnson was convinced it was a prank, not God’s answer to a prayer.
“I have a good friend and we’re always playing jokes on each other. A few days after he was hired, I got a call from Tony Dungy saying he wanted to meet me,” Johnson recounted. “No coach had ever wanted to meet me, so I thought my friend was pulling my leg.
“Then Tony said he wanted to visit with me in the prisons, and I said, ‘Who is this, really?’ because no coach had ever visited in the prisons with me.”
Since Dungy was hired by the Colts in 2002, he has joined with Johnson to form one of the most active and public Christian ministries in the coaching profession.
“The first time he called me to his office, he asked me to pray for him and bless his office that God would be honored,” Johnson said.
“He is the real deal. He is going to respect everyone, but he is going to do everything in his power to be a Christlike person.”
The same can be said of Johnson, who chronicled the challenges he endured growing up in a drug-filled and dysfunctional household in his book, “Journey to Excellence.”
Johnson was a high school football star in Texas and was a teammate at the University of Tulsa with a man who later would become the Bears head coach in Super Bowl XLI – Lovie Smith. After college, Johnson spent time as a police officer before rededicating his life to the Lord in 1982 and joining the Indianapolis FCA chapter as the urban outreach leader. He began working with the Colts shortly thereafter.
Johnson’s hardest assignment came at the end of the 2005 season when Dungy’s son James committed suicide.
“When they decided to donate his organs to help others, they got letters from those they had helped,” Johnson noted. “I know Tony and his wife were very touched by all those who wrote. Just to see the way they handled that situation with grace and dignity is a bigger victory than any Super Bowl.
“In all things give Him glory – win, lose or tie – and that’s what Tony has done.”