[title subtitle=”words: Dwain Hebda
images:courtesy Arkansas Fellowship of Christian Athletes”][/title]
It was a Sunday morning, seven years ago. Brandin Natzke opened his eyes and scanned the intersecting lines of his life from flat on his back. What’s next? he thought.
The worst day of his life was now two months old, a blur of pain and sorrow that smeared one day into the next. Two months since his father told him his mother wouldn’t be coming home, that the two-week search had yielded her body in a pond where her killer had left her, that she was gone.
Two months through which the then seventeen-year-old had tried every day to claw his way back into the light.
Two months of feeling himself sinking into despair, the weighty lure of alcohol, drugs and worse tugging at cuff and hem.
Relief and release seemed close at hand, he thought, just give in and it’s over.
And yet, Brandin’s eyes still opened, day after day, just like they had this Sunday. But today felt different somehow. He couldn’t continue to live this suffocating life anymore. One way or another, something would change today.
“God, give me some motivation to go to church this morning,” he remembers praying. The echo of his amen still hung in the air as a shrill tone sliced through the room. A pal was calling to invite him to church. Brandin had his answer.
“That’s how God works, man,” says Brandin, now twenty-four and a graduate football coach at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. “You put your pride aside, you put your pain aside and just be dependent on the Lord. He answered immediately.”
God didn’t just kick Brandin out of bed that day, He put him to work. At that very church service, Micah May was giving a talk about Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) summer camp. Recognizing Brandin as a past attendee, Micah called him up front to tell of his experiences.
“I got in front of all those people and I just started bawling,” Brandin says. “I was just trying to talk about camp and I was hurting so much I just started crying. That’s exactly when everybody knew I needed help and that’s when my coach started pouring into me, Micah started pouring into me. All these godly people just swarmed me and from there the rest is history, from what God did in my life just that one morning.”
As Brandin’s experience shows, FCA’s summer camps can have a powerful effect on attendees. For some, the seeds of faith are being sown for the very first time and those seeds may lay fallow until the moment they are needed most. For others, like Anna Ledbetter, FCA camp had an immediate reenergizing effect on a lifetime of church-going.
“Going to church your whole life, you kind of get into a routine,” she says. “You know, ‘OK, I’m going to get my Sunday clothes on, I’m going to go to Sunday school and then listen to the sermon in the big church.’ You just start getting into that routine and that’s not how it’s supposed to be, but that’s just how it happens.
“So, going into that first camp, I was really nervous. And I know the Devil was trying to get me before I went because I was like, I don’t even want to go anymore, I don’t think people will like me. I was really scared when I first got there. But when I got to talk to all these people who understood exactly where I’m at and what situation I’m in, it really comforted me and spoke to me. It let me know I’m not alone and I was able to worship the Lord with people my age and people who understand me. That was definitely a changing point in my life.”
Fellowship of Christian Athletes is an international organization founded in 1954 to leverage the power of sports for something greater in its players and coaches. Based in Kansas City, Missouri, and present in sixty-two countries, it’s one of the most recognized organizations of its kind in the world. In Arkansas, FCA is well-represented in middle and high schools where it operates in student-run organizations called huddles. It can also be found at the collegiate level.
Micah, FCA multi-area director, says even as the organization has grown to massive proportions, its effectiveness still lies in the simple premise of providing peer-to-peer support to each member as they forge their personal relationship with Christ.
“There’s no one that can reach a student quite like another student, for the good or the bad,” Micah says. “In some of the schools, we’ll do an FCA before school, maybe an FCA during lunch with the high schoolers. Some even do FCA after school.
“Then we do sport-specific FCA too, where the football team may want to do something after football practice during the season to grow their leadership and things like that. It’s always a choice, always a student-led leadership team.”
Adults like Brandin who came up through the ranks as a
camper, then as a huddle leader at summer camp and who continue to support the program today, often lend critical moral and spiritual support to local huddles.
“A great influencer is a coach; Billy Graham said a coach will influence more people in a year than most people do in a lifetime,” Micah says. “So, we focus on those coaches as well as athletes because we believe they are the influencers in the schools. So goes them, so goes the school.”
FCA summer camp takes this same formula and blows it up to include hundreds of middle and high schoolers from across Arkansas. Every morning starts with a brief Bible study and worship followed by a range of sports activities, such as flag football, basketball and camp-specific games dreamed up by organizers. Leadership training and more Bible study break up the competitive activities with a lot of small group discussion led by the college-age huddle leaders. The evening is spent at chapel featuring a guest speaker and of which the worship band is a particular highlight.
“We operate with the strategy of E3 – engage, equip and empower,” says Micah. “We want to engage them where they are and equip them to go back to their campuses and lead.” The camps are coed and nondenominational; in fact, a camper isn’t required to have a faith life at all to attend.
“With me not having a church background, I got to experience what it was like to be part of God’s presence and what that Christian community was all about at that FCA camp that week,” Brandin says. “I got to see what it was like to have somebody else help you with your struggles and to know that Christ is there for you. I got to experience that heavily for those three or four days.”
Many campers who return in their college years as huddle leaders find the camp experience hasn’t diminished. In fact, being able to provide direction and support to others opens a whole new level of understanding of how to put faith into action.
“Being old enough to realize you can see yourself in someone else is really life-changing,” Anna says. “You start to think, ‘OK, now I can help someone else because I’ve been through it.’ It might not be the exact same situation you’re in, but with Christ you are always OK.
“When you start realizing that other people can see through your shield and see your flaws, you start thinking, ‘OK, what am I going to do now? The camouflage isn’t working! I don’t have any other protection.’ That’s where the Lord comes in; He is our protection and He’s gonna take care of us and that’s the beauty in it.”
FCA Summer Camp Fast Facts When: June 2-5 (Junior High); June 6-9 (Senior High) Junior or Senior based on the grade student is entering in 2019-2020 Where: Spring Lake Baptist Assembly 145 AR-171, Lonsdale, Arkansas Who: Students entering grades 7 – 12 (including graduating seniors) Cost: $250 per camper, including a $25 non-refundable deposit upon registration. Scholarships are available! Learn more at scafca.org/camp. Devin Dickinson Registration Coordinator & Office Manager ddickinson@fca.org 501.802.0439 Angie Heaton, Assistant Director aheaton@fca.org
Arkansas Fellowship of Christian Athletes
479.649.8815
arkansasfca.org
