Kevin Washington stood outside the bus, ready to head to the airport and return to his everyday life in Texas. He had just finished a weekend at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes National Collegiate Camp for the second straight summer. A 250-pound starting linebacker at Abilene Christian who transferred to the school after playing at famed gridiron power Notre Dame, Washington looked at Danny Burns, the thinly framed former collegiate distance runner now serving as one of the camp directors at NCC.

“Hey, Danny, can I come back next year?” Washington called out.

“Are you graduating after this year?” Burns asked.

“Yes.”

“Then, no.”

“Why not?” Washington asked, quickly moving past disappointed and onto perturbed on the emotional scale.

“The only way you can come back next year is if you are on staff,” Burns said.

Washington smiled.

“Alright.”

Twelve months later, Washington saw Burns at the same camp and said, “You remember I wasn’t supposed to be here, right? You told me I had to be on staff to come back…and now I’m back.”

Washington was, indeed, back as a member of FCA’s staff. Burns’ subtle suggestion the previous year, the impact of one of Washington’s college coaches and the passion for competing for Christ that was learned at the National Collegiate Camp sent Washington off onto a path that he continues to follow today as an FCA staff member in Abilene, Texas.

Washington said he considered making an attempt to play professional football, hoping that would give him the platform to share the gospel. He sought counsel from a coach at Abilene Christian.

“I had a really great coach at ACU,” Washington said. “He said, ‘If you want to go to the NFL for a platform, don’t do that. If you want to try and play in the NFL, you need to do that because you love the game and that’s what you are called to do. But, if you feel you don’t have a platform, God will provide that for you, whatever it is.’

“I thought about that,” Washington said. “What I really love to do is play sports and share the gospel, and helping people see the effect it has on their lives. I remembered what I learned at the NCC, and how the coaches there taught the gospel through active competition. That’s what I wanted to do. If I can talk about Christ while playing sports, and talk about Christ while other people are playing sports, why wouldn’t I want to do that? I love working and training, I love competing, and NCC showed me that this is not only a way, but for me, the primary way to minister through the sport, not just around it or after it.”

Competition and fellowship with other competitors are the roots of Washington’s love for NCC.

“The competition is a major component for us,” Washington said. “Even if we aren’t supposed to be as competitive (at the camp) as we are, we can’t help it, because we’re athletes and it just comes out of us. That is probably my favorite part of the experience. The staff is intentional and lets that natural competitiveness come out and they teach us through that. NCC integrates the gospel as we compete, so we are being taught on our terms in our own language, and we can apply that to things we do every day.”

And even amidst that fierce competitiveness that comes when you get a group of college athletes from across the nation together in one spot, there is the feeling of camaraderie and encouragement.

“We have a lot of fun,” Washington said. “You get to know athletes from different kinds of schools across the nation and make friends that you’ll have for a lifetime. There’s a lot of encouragement. God can bring people together from different states, different backgrounds, different sports, different schools, and they are all united under one banner. It showed me that when I go places, I know that there are other people like me around, and that encourages me.

“Also, it takes you outside your own little bubble. You get a bigger perspective. It gives us a much fuller picture when we can see what God is doing outside our own back yard.”

Washington credits the NCC staff for setting the tone of the camp and for pouring into the lives of the athletes and equipping them to take the gospel onto the playing field.

“They know how to speak to college athletes on the athletes’ level,” Washington said. “They know how to not just say, ‘This is what you should do,’ but ‘I’ve been there and I’ve walked through this; let me walk with you, as well.’

“The staff makes it clear, ‘We want to interact with you as a person, not just try to pour Biblical truth down your throat.’ It’s ‘We care about you and want you to enjoy this, and, yes, we are going to make sure you understand the gospel, but we want you to understand that we care about you as a person.’”

“The coaching is so intense,” Washington said. “Everything they are coaching and teaching is geared toward helping a college athlete understand and implement the gospel. It is intense and passionate all over camp, whether it is in the weight room or on the field.”

Washington said teammates saw a difference in the way he competed and trained immediately after he returned from his first visit to NCC.

“When I came back to campus, people would ask, ‘What are you doing? Or why are you doing it this way?’” Washington said. “Because of the teaching at NCC showing us how to acknowledge the training and interact with others, I was able to communicate why I did things the way I did, why I competed the way I did.

“After our workouts, I’d get those questions, and I’d be able to say, “This is why you’re about to pass out and why I’m breathing easy,” Washington said with a laugh.

The camp’s impact reaches much further than the hearts of those who attend NCC. It can change teams and campuses.

“Our God is so good that he allows us to worship Him by doing what we love,” Washington said. “NCC changes and transforms the way we compete, the way we practice, the way we train. It takes it to a new level.

“There’s a new goal that’s been set by Jesus Christ and not by ourselves. That goal is constantly growing and demanding the best in ourselves in every single situation. People see that and notice something’s changed and want to train like that.

“It makes you the best athlete you can be. That is what God is calling out of us. When people ask, ‘What are you doing, and why?’ we can say, ‘We can free you from getting too high or too low. We know the source of constant motivation.’ It transforms the team.”

“You are going to come back to campus equipped to understand what the gospel actually means to you as an athlete,” Washington said. “You’ll learn a different way to compete and live that will transform the way you live and the way you compete into something you never would have imagined. As athletes, if we know what it means to compete for Christ, we’ll also understand what it means to live for Christ. This is a different breed of camp for a different breed of person.”   

Originally appeared on FCA.org in 2013