Alright, I've been sitting on this one for awhile, but some of you know that before I moved to the Athens area, I lived in Birmingham and among other things, served as team chaplain for my father-in-law's high school football team. This is a pretty sweet gig - getting 10-12 minutes a week to point 85-100 guys to Jesus. I had a blast going with the team to pre-season camp, stopping by practice a couple times a week, and getting to know the players and coaches.
So I start watching this show on MTV called 'Two-A-Days' about another football team from Birmingham, the Hoover Buccaneers. Interesting stuff and because I spent five years as chaplain of another successful team in the 'ham, I perked up when they showed clips of the Hoover team chaplain (who I know since I went to his church in college) addressing the team the morning of their first game in 2005 against Nease High School out of Florida. You can see what I saw below (it takes about ten seconds for the audio to catch up with the video):
Interesting, huh? Well, this bothered a few folk in Birmingham and after two other episodes showed him twisting and turning the Scriptures into a motivational talk that seemed to have alot to do with chasing a bag of wind and very little to do with, you know Jesus, a minor firestorm started, resulting in this front page article in the Birmingham News.
Now, I know that what MTV shows isn't his full talk. And I know that they're trying to create a caricature of southern culture and football. But for the life of me, I cannot figure out how what I'm sure Terry said about Jesus is congruous with statements about 'football being king' and some pretty sketchy interpretation of the scriptures.
Only in the South can we give people just enough of the Scriptures to inoculate them to Jesus. Yeesh.
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