This is from a Kentucky Sports Radio link today. Obviously, I like it! Our great minister friend, Myron Taylor (retired in LA), is a Butler graduate who preached these things.
ADVERTISEMENTThe Stevens Way
Butler coach believes faith is something to practice, not preach
12:50 AM, May. 15, 2011
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The Rev. Kent Millard of St. Luke's United Methodist Church greets Brad Stevens before the coach's remarks at Sunday services. Stevens spoke April 10 as part of his church's capital campaign. / Charlie Nye / The StarTwitterFacebookShare
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Robert King Filed Under
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Indianapolis Colts
Butler University
Brad Stevens
When Tony Dungy coached the Indianapolis Colts to a Super Bowl win in 2007, he used the winner's podium almost as a pulpit.
He talked about the detours on which the Lord had taken his team, about being a Christian coach and winning while doing it "the Lord's way."
That's not Butler University's Brad Stevens, the city's newest coaching icon, the guy who has led his basketball team to the NCAA Championship Game the past two years.
Stevens -- who says he considers himself "about one-millionth" the person Dungy is in terms of character -- has always thought faith should be something that's lived out, rather than talked up. And, at 34, he feels like he's someone who still has a lot of personal growth ahead of him.
"I've always said that part of growth is just doing it every day," Stevens said in a recent interview about the faith that underlies his coaching and his life.
"Don't talk about it. Do it. Be it."
As Stevens' and his team's successes mounted, fans and media observers began to look beyond his mastery of X's and O's to his focus.
They began to wonder how such a young coach could seem so content at a small school, even though bigger paychecks lay elsewhere. And they wrote of his unflappability, even in tight spots.
Stevens talked about being happy at Butler and about the school's values, which have come to be known as The Butler Way -- selflessness, hard work, servanthood and humility.
But he never inserted his personal faith into the conversation.
Growing up attending Zionsville United Methodist Church, Stevens said, the most profound influence on his faith wasn't a sermon or a church service. It was a weeklong youth mission trip to Texas and Louisiana.
"I don't think we did anything earth-shattering, to be honest," he said. "We got a lot more out of it than any of the physical or manual labor that we did for somebody else."
Stevens found the work to be inspiring. But, he said, he realized the challenge was to continue to make a difference after returning home.
Stevens and his wife, Tracy, have actively supported the American Cancer Society, including hosting a basketball tournament last week at Butler. And they have financially supported the Interfaith Hunger Initiative, which feeds hungry children locally and in Africa.
But both say they need to do more.
"We have a sense," Tracy said, "that to whom much is given, much is expected."
Agreeing on a church was no easy task for the two of them. Brad was Methodist. Tracy was Catholic.
As marriage looked more certain, they tried several churches on for size -- Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist, Catholic. Eventually, they came to St. Luke's United Methodist, a Northside church that's one of the city's largest, and they just wanted to go back.
"We had some pretty heated discussions about what our faith would look like," Tracy said. "Looking back, I'm really proud of the way we handled it."
Stevens said he considers the values that underpin the Butler basketball program to be "faith-based in their origin." But when it comes to faith and his players, Stevens said, "I don't think we preach, but we support."
Player Ronald Nored, the son of an African Methodist Episcopal minister, said he has exchanged Bible verses with Stevens a few times. But he says his coach is hesitant to bring such things to the team. Even so, the example Stevens sets as a coach, father and husband has made an impression.
Said Nored, "I think he is the most genuine person I have ever met in my life -- ever."
In that sense, Stevens is just being true to his faith, said Judith Cebula, director of Butler's Center for Faith and Vocation.
"He is a classic Indiana United Methodist," Cebula said. "He is steadfast in his religious practice. He is very quiet about his religious practice. He doesn't wear it on his sleeve. He does not need to speak about it in any specific or overt ways. He lives it."
Cebula, a former religion writer at The Indianapolis Star, became acquainted with Stevens' faith story on one of those rare occasions when he spoke about the subject -- at an event her center held for incoming Butler students last fall.
The religious references, she said, were very sparse.
Instead, Stevens talked about values shared among people of many faiths.
His mode of operation -- having a faith but not trumpeting it -- contrasts with a sports faith culture in which baseball hitters cross themselves before every pitch, football players kneel in the end zone for touchdown prayers, and basketball players begin postgame interviews by "giving the glory to God."
That's not who Stevens is, and that's not a very Methodist way of doing things, said his pastor at St. Luke's, the Rev. Kent Millard.
"One of the things is humility -- you don't boast about your faith," Millard said. "You don't talk about it. You don't wear it on your sleeve. You live it out in your life."
Although members of the media covering Butler failed to get a fix on Stevens' faith, they saw something in him they seemed to like.
The Washington Post described him as "uncontroversial, unjaded, unimpressed by the fame of his peers." USA Today called him "the rare mid-level coach at the mid-level basketball program who can't be bought." The Chicago Sun-Times said Stevens was the "angelic" coach of "the squeaky-clean collection of players from Do-Gooder U."
And just before this latest championship game, a Philadelphia Daily News sportswriter wrote that "Brad Stevens is Clark Kent. He is mild-mannered. He is intelligent. He clearly has superpowers. He just does not take off his suit to prove it."
Although it originally had ties to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Butler is a secular school. Nevertheless, Butler athletic director Barry Collier, a prime architect of The Butler Way, says it would be "a showstopper" if a coaching candidate came up empty in the values department.
Like Stevens, Collier -- who attends East 91st Street Christian Church -- is reluctant to get too specific in stamping The Butler Way with a Christian seal. Instead, he says: "Those principles have been around for a long time. And it doesn't take long in my mind to find out where they came from. There is a good book where they came from."
Such an attitude, Stevens said, is necessary because Butler is a diverse campus.
As for the heaps of praise from national media, Stevens seems to find it uncomfortable. The same goes for when Collier said Butler's achievements "were good for America." Or when Gov. Mitch Daniels said Stevens and the team were "the best advertisement Indiana ever had."
"If we are playing and living and working up to all our standards," Stevens said, "that's all we care about."
Stevens also is aware that people can fail.
"We've got 18- to 22-year-old guys. They're not perfect, they're in college. Their coaches aren't perfect," he said. "At the end of the day, it's all fragile."
In the end, Stevens said, basketball is like life: There are good runs and bad ones. But he says it's not so much about the wins and losses -- he doesn't know where his NCAA tournament rings are; he's lost track of the nets his winning teams have clipped -- as about the journey.
"If you win or if you lose, it's not going to matter as much as the relationships," he said.
"And the result is not going to matter as much as the lessons."
Call Star reporter Robert King at (317) 444-6089.
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