Playing Football for God

Pastor Clarence Presley strolled from the sidelines across the turf at Renton Stadium to place his hands on the shoulder pads of one of the Auburn Panthers and 5 Star Cougars.

Kneeling on the ground, the young players and their teammates listened as Presley prayed, thanking God for the day and for the ways in which the Panthers played their hearts out in their 26-13 championship win against the 5 Star Cougars.

A soft rain was falling in the stadium in Renton, south of Seattle, Wash., on this Saturday morning in November as the Northwest Premier Junior football league championships took place.

All morning and into the afternoon, Presley helped to oversee the games and took time to pray with and pray over the teams, whether they won or lost.

He did this as commissioner of the football league and as pastor of Word of Truth International Ministries, a Christian Reformed Church outreach that includes churches and ministries in Seattle-area neighborhoods, a discipleship center, and a network of other urban missions and ministries, including the football league, which is for elementary and middle-school-age youth.

“The Holy Spirit has been working through us in so many ways,” said Presley during a break between games. They have patterned their ministry after that of the early church in Acts, he explained, when Jesus followers’ went out “to preach the Word wherever they went.”

Finding Faith

Growing up in Seattle, Presley faced poverty, was affiliated with gang culture, sold drugs, and was a wandering soul.

Lacking stability, he felt lost and without hope. But when he got married and his daughter was born, he called out to God for help, and his life began to turn around.

More than 20 years ago, he started a nondenominational worship community among homeless people living at the Seattle Union Gospel Mission.

The church had grown and was meeting in a storefront about 12 years ago when he met Randy Rowland, who was pastoring Sanctuary, a CRC congregation that ran the Green Bean Coffee House and held its Sunday service in a theater in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle.

Through conversations with Rowland and Harry Weidenaar, who was then serving as pastor of Shoreline CRC in Seattle, Presley said, “I began to realize that I was more Reformed than I thought I was.”

Although he lost half of his church membership when he joined the CRC and at times found it to be a challenge to be part of a denomination, he was able to join with Rowland and a cluster of Seattle-area CR churches, most of which were church plants supported by Christian Reformed Home Missions (now joined with Christian Reformed World Missions as Resonate Global Mission) that were trying to do ministry in urban settings in creative ways.

Resonate Global Mission, a unification of Home Missions and Christian Reformed World Missions, continues to support Presley’s work today.

“The cluster became my family,” he said. “As we met, God began to focus me on discipleship, and training leaders became the entire DNA of what we have been doing.”

Training and Sending

Word of Truth Ministries International is based in Tukwila, an area in which Presley grew up and a community bordering Seattle that is known for a high crime rate.

Church members come from the neighborhood, are taught how to grow in Christ, to “find their sweet spot” — what they most love to do — and to use whatever talents they have to help others and further God’s kingdom. Once they have been trained and are ready, they are sent out, said Presley.

“We are about helping people establish a relationship with Christ and become leaders,” said Presley.

Today, these leaders do ministry in their neighborhoods, their workplaces, and wherever else they find themselves. For instance, one man has become familiar with residents of an area nursing home and has started a Bible study with them. Another woman has become a business consultant and weaves her faith throughout all she does. Another man owns a water treatment company and uses it to disciple his employees in the faith.

Others have begun a catering company that has at its core the mission to provide good food while at the same time connecting with customers about what God has meant to them.

The church also conducts job training, parenting classes, and tutoring for students. It began a baseball ministry for area youth a few years ago, believing that young African American boys and girls, especially in the city, have few chances and few spaces in which to learn to play the sport.

“We are in this as brothers and sisters who want to help others walk in freedom,” said Presley.

“We follow wherever the Spirit leads and get involved in many ways. We try new things. You can’t be afraid to break some eggs.”

Matthew Wayman is a longtime member of the church and credits Presley’s ministry with helping to keep his family together after his father murdered his mother.

“We tried everything else [to give us comfort], but nothing worked, and so we tried God,” said Wayman, a pipe fitter whose sister, Athena, is Presley’s wife.

“All of my siblings started going there, and we are all still there,” he said. “Clarence teaches; he really teaches the core values of the church. His heart is for the community.”

In a Resonate Global Mission video, Using Pain to Heal, Athena Presley talks about the effect domestic violence had on their family and how she found the strength, with God’s help, to visit her father in prison.

Taking Church into the Stadium

The idea for the football ministry came about seven years ago when Presley’s sons were playing in a league. On the one hand, he was disheartened by the win-at-all-costs approach of the coaches and unsportsmanlike conduct he saw at games.

But then one Sunday the league in which his sons were playing held a big event called a Jamboree, in which teams held brief scrimmages against one another.

“I couldn’t imagine not going to church on a Sunday and to go to a football game instead,” he said. “But I found someone to fill in for me, and I went. There were maybe 5,000 people there, and it was exciting.”

Being at the game made him ask a question: How many people across Seattle were in churches on that Sunday during a time in church history when membership, nearly across the board, is declining? Maybe, he thought, this is where the people were, and this is where God wanted him to go.

Not long afterward, that league fell apart and some concerned leaders asked to meet with Clarence to consider how to resurrect a new league — and to do so by offering a different direction with a God-given emphasis for players, coaches, and fans.

In the process, Clarence recruited several men, who he knew were strong Christians, to step in and become coaches. This was key because Presley believed good coaches could reach youth in grade school and help prepare them for what life would deal out as they grew.

On this recent Saturday morning, the Rainier Ravens, who are in the early elementary league, faced off against the Puget Sound Lancers. Soon after the opening kickoff, the Ravens’ J’Shaun Wilson burst out around the left end and ran 44 yards for a touchdown.

Led by cheerleaders who are also part of the elementary and middle school football league as well as the ministry, the fans erupted in the stands. The Ravens eventually won the game, and the division championship, by a score of 31-0.

After the game, the Ravens’ assistant coach, Demetrius Dickerson, who works for the local power company, had a big smile on his face. Thirteen weeks of practice nearly every day and a series of games had led up to that day’s championship trophy.

Taking a break, he sat in a small room just off one of the end zones and said he had met Presley a few years ago. He and his wife, looking for a place to worship, attended Presley’s church. Although they now go to another church, they have remained friends, and he was happy to be recruited as a coach.

“I see this as a ministry. I believe the players see coaches in a different way,” said Dickerson. “We love on them, pray for them, help them out.”

Sometimes he has needed to push the players and get after them for the way they act. But he always does so in a spirit of love. He said he believes it is important to provide kids in sports with godly leading and direction.

Bookie Gates, who grew up in the area and played professional baseball for the Arizona Diamondbacks, connected with Presley after he left baseball several years ago.

Now involved in the sports ministries at Word of Truth, he was drifting and had no sense of God in his life when he met Presley, who told them they needed a quarterback for a men’s flag-football team sponsored by the church. So he joined up.

When Presley invited him to church, it only took him a few weeks to realize, as he put it, that “the hand of God was on me” — and he hasn’t left.

Eventually Gates began the church’s baseball ministry and is now actively involved in the youth football league.

“We want these kids to have a platform to build on, not just in sports but in life. We make it a positive experience,” he said. “Out here is where we see the tabernacle of God on display and moving through our community. Seeds are being planted.”

Matthew Wayman, Presley’s brother-in-law, also helps coach one of the teams. He makes sure to encourage and build up the players, realizing that many of the boys have no fathers at home.

“Our team is a family,” he said. “We go bowling. We hold sleep overs, have barbeques. We go over game films at the church. We are a brotherhood. It doesn’t matter who carried the ball across the goal line or who made the tackle. We are all in on it.”

Clarence Presley has come to see the football league, with its 48 teams and nearly 1,600 players and cheerleaders, plus their family members, as part of his parish.

By connecting through the sport, he can meet families and talk to them about their challenges, as he did once when the babysister of one of the players in the league was murdered. He was able to stand with and show care and concern to the family following the tragedy.

He has also, with the help of others, joined with the local police and a range of local groups to start a flag-football league that brings underserved communities and local law enforcement together to establish positive relationships and reduce the tension between law enforcement and communities of color.

“We don’t compartmentalize our ministry,” said Presley. “God is sovereign and in control, and we go where God leads us. We as a church need to be part of all of these systems — these groups and organizations in our community. All of life is ministry.”