Praying Fields: Hoyas for Christ - On Faith at washingtonpost.com

Hoyas for Christ

When Brent Tomlinson arrived at Georgetown in 2005 to play football, he started looking around for a Christian group for athletes along the lines of Athletes in Action or Fellowship of Christian Athletes and found nothing. Surprised that a Jesuit university wouldn’t have a fellowship group for athletes, Tomlinson asked around and learned that there had been such groups in the past but they died out from lack of interest by the students.

“It always started and somehow stopped at one point,” said Tomlinson, a wide receiver out of Hoffman Estates, Ill., who will be a senior in the fall. “It’s just never actually gone all the way through. So I started talking to people and I was like, ‘Well, why don’t we have one?’”

Thus began Hoyas for Christ, a student-run group that Tomlinson founded for Georgetown athletes to share their faith.

“I’ve always been amongst my friends one of the more religious people,” Tomlinson said. “When there’s religious questions, they’ll come to me thinking I may know the answers. But I never was huge on necessarily fellowshipping and stuff like that because that wasn’t part of my upbringing. When I got here though it wasn’t like I felt the driving need, but it was just like you could just tell something was missing.”

With the help of strength coach Augie Maurelli and assistant strength coach Matt Domyancic, Tomlinson began to put the group together, just months into his freshman year. They originally tried to set up something through campus ministry but found the bureaucracy overwhelming. Eventually, they decided to go out on their own. On a Wednesday night in the weight room after the team had finished lifting, eight football players gathered to talk about their faith and pray.

“Everyone just pulled up chairs around the middle of the weight room,” Tomlinson said. “Some guys are working out by the mirror, doing extra dumbbell work and we’re sitting there having Bible study.”

From those modest beginnings the group has grown more than four times in size and includes representatives from nearly all of Georgetown’s varsity sports. There are field hockey players, cross country runners and soccer players, among others. Tomlinson ultimately went to Georgetown senior associate athletic director Patricia Thomas and told her what he was doing.

She gave her blessing and the group is now sanctioned by the athletic department.

From the beginning, Hoyas for Christ has tried to provide a comfortable atmosphere for exploring one’s faith. The group will discuss passages from the Bible and how those verses relate to their daily lives. Or they will read a religious book and talk about the author’s ideas. They end each meeting with prayer requests and a closing prayer.

“I don’t count its value in the number of people [who attend each week],” Tomlinson said. “The best thing about it . . . when you get to college and everyone starts challenging your beliefs, the whole cliché of finding yourself and everything, a lot of people in the group like it because it’s a way for their faith to be challenged in an appropriate setting. There’ll be discussions about major issues that you face in college – sex, drugs, alcohol, whatever. … It’s another support network.

That’s what it’s become and that’s what most people get out of it.

“You have students [at Georgetown] who are Muslim, Jewish, atheist, whatever, and they’re brilliant, and they’re hard to argue with. They’re smart Georgetown students so that adds a whole other aspect to it too because you’re constantly being challenged [about your faith], and that’s what’s also great. … Doubting your faith is the strongest step to building it.”

Tomlinson’s own spiritual journey has been unusual. Born to a Jewish mother and Christian father, Tomlinson was raised Jewish until he was nine. Then his mother accepted Christ, and Tomlinson also became a Christian. Before coming to Georgetown, he attended a Catholic high school and went to a Baptist church, Maywood’s Good Shepherd Church.

His faith is “a foundation of something. It’s not something that I wear and go out and try to push,” Tomlinson said. “But it’s just something that’s allowed me and my brothers to be successful. It’s the foundation that my parents gave to us. That’s why it’s really important to us. … Along the way, I’ve had encounters with people who have meant a lot to me in my life. Everyone who has been a role model for me at one point has had the same foundation. Me being pragmatic, saying well obviously there’s a benefit to that, there’s something going on there. Everything I’ve been able to do has somehow come from that.”

Besides Hoyas for Christ, Tomlinson takes an active role in the football team’s spiritual care. When the team travels to a road game if one of the Jesuit priests can’t go with them, Tomlinson leads the chapel service. He reads a Bible passage, gives a short sermon then leads the team in prayer.

Faith always has been and continues to be a large part of Tomlinson’s life, but he struggles to understand God’s role in his athletic endeavors. He doesn’t believe that God helps him catch a football or that He favors one team over another. But he does believe that Christians deal with adversity somewhat better than non-believers, whether that is the momentum swings in a football game or the recovery from injury.

“One of the big things we always talk about in our group and somehow it always comes up as far as athletics go is the idea of who you are playing for, and when you talk on a Wednesday night it’s much easier to grasp than when you’re playing on a Saturday,” Tomlinson said. “The reason I play football is because I can. I’ve been blessed with so many athletic abilities that to not use what I’ve been given would be a waste. . . . I’ve always been raised under the notion that if you don’t play to your fullest ability you’re dishonoring God because you didn’t use the gifts he gave you.”

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