Baylor Athletes Find Faith Through Baptism
An impressive number of student athletes at Baylor University are winners in life as well as on the field or court.
“There’s not very many schools across the country that have a competitive athletics program that combine that with a faith-based mission within the school,” Bears quarterback Sawyer Robertson told “The Daily Wire.” “Fortunately, Baylor is one of those schools that does that.”
The largest Baptist school in the country has baptized hundreds of athletes in the last five years alone.
“Being able to be a part of the athletes’ lives and their spiritual journey is one of the coolest things about working at Baylor,” basketball Coach Scott Drew said. “We have close to 26 campus ministries. The local churches are packed with Baylor students on Wednesday night. At Sunday church service, there’s probably 500 to 1,000 college kids every service I’m there. At the end of the day, it’s because we have great leadership at Baylor University.”
Robertson and other teammates baptized 10 football player this season.
“How it normally goes is when a player decides that they want to get baptized and give their life to Jesus, they get to decide who baptizes them.,” he said. “So, it just happened that three guys wanted me to do it. That’s not something you turn down.”
The baptisms are part of player-led Bible studies. Several small groups meet on Tuesdays to study a video series put together by a teammate. This semester, it was organized by a safety on the team, Michael Allen. The team studied the book of Genesis and looked at Joseph’s life. Robertson said many players related to this one, which may be why it was the largest group they have had commit their lives to Jesus.
“Joseph is sold by his brothers because they were jealous of him,” he said. “Then he gets accused of something that he didn’t do and gets thrown in prison for two years, and then he eventually always works his way up to second in command of Egypt. The guys are just like, ‘How did he stay the course? This is incredible.’”
Robertson calls leading the Bible study a calling. For some players, the football team’s Bible study may be their first one.
“That’s been definitely the most fruitful thing,” he said. “You can kind of tell based off the questions that are getting asked when you break off into small groups. People have said they had no clue this was a thing, like they didn’t know about this.”
Drew has baptized so many of his players over his 23 years in Waco that the team now has a baptism wall honoring all the players who have dedicated themselves to Christ.
“I keep some of the letters from past players,” Drew said. “Whenever you’re having a really bad day or you’re like, `why do we do what we do?’ you pull out one of those letters, and it makes it all worthwhile.”
–Alan Goforth
