New group  has approximately 20 members

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

New York Mills recently gained a new organization, a chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which was organized by social studies teacher Will Grieger. Meetings are held each Wednesday morning before the teaching day begins from 7:35-8 a.m. in Grieger’s classroom.

Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) started in 1954 and has national chapters across the country. Included in the Central Lakes area of FCA, the NY Mills chapter is under the guidance of Bill Adamson of Alexandria. He works on staff for the Minnesota FCA and oversees 16 high school and two college chapters in his region. He enjoys seeing the organization grow.

“Typically, the ones we’ve started up started like this,” said Adamson of the nine new members of the NY Mills chapter. “Now they’re 20 plus, hopefully next year they start inviting their friends. That’s part of the process, the more they do that, the more kids come in. The kids inviting does a lot more than us inviting them.”

Adamson said that the second week was the second chapter meeting and the new members were still getting to know the program. Each week, the chapter participates in a Bible study and questions to discuss within their small-group. The group prays with each other and discusses the Bible passage for the week. They also get a word of encouragement from a Kingdom Bible Minute video from Ron Brown.

The first week’s questions for each member include, “What are you thankful for?” and “What are you struggling with?” Adamson mentioned that the Discovery Bible Study question sheets help guide the group through the process each week.

“One of the things that I’ve noticed doing this is that the biggest struggle we’ve seen by far is mental health,” said Adamson. “Whether it’s confidence or identity, we’re providing a space to come and you’ve got people to encourage you. There’s definitely a need for developing the spiritual.

“We look at it as three dimensions,” he continued. “The body, mind, and spirit. In sports, we tend to focus on body, what we need is the mind and the spirit also. If we develop all of those, we have a full person. Teams that coaches who have focused on that, we’ve seen the teams become stronger overall.”

The Bible study guide sheets coincide with “The Athlete’s Bible,” a Christian Standard Bible text, used by each member of the group. The back of the Bible showcases study plans and sections titled “Warm-Up,” “Workout” and “Wrap-Up” working though different questions, passages, and reflection based around training one’s faith.

“I like to use the phrase ‘spiritual training,’ they do physical stuff all week, but they need the spiritual part that lasts forever,” said Adamson. “That’s what we keep focused on, this is the spiritual weight room.”

Pastor Stew Burns was also in attendance last week as he guided the group through prayer and part of the Bible study. His congregation, Central Haven (Assembly of God) in NY Mills, donated the first batch of Bibles for the students to use throughout the week.

“They graciously helped out there,” said Grieger. “I’ve had different youth groups contact me and they’ve put it out in their church bulletins and things like that and we’re looking for any others that want to share with their youth groups, that would be great.”

Grieger first experienced FCA while teaching in Parkers Prairie. There, he saw the group increase from three to four members the first couple years to a growing group by the time he left.

“I was sitting in church one day, thinking ‘how can I help my students? How can I give something I never had to them?’” Grieger then took the past month to get things set up. “It’s so nice to have such a supportive community and church community around that can accept a multi-denominational thing, we’re sitting down in the mornings and having a Bible study, praying together.”

Eventually, Grieger will be taking a supervisory role as the students will be able to lead each week’s Bible study and actively choose their own lessons. He hopes to find a few leaders in the coming spring and fall to help lead their peers through the weekly devotions. 

“I give them the place, the space and the time and the students will be running it, choosing lessons that matter to them in here rather than myself,” he said. “I’m welcome to have any visitors contact me or if they want to provide a snack or anything else.”

As the group grows bigger, Grieger is looking forward to the potential the chapter has with student-coach relations and with students growing in their faith as well as in their relationships with each other.

“I’m looking forward to just helping these kids have a better relationship with God,” he said. “I’m excited to have a better relationship with these students, have them see me in a different light than just a classroom teacher or their coach. I’m just so tickled at how many we’ve had. Starting with nine, two weeks in a row, it’s cool. I’m just so thankful.”