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The Road to J.O.Y. Leading with Faith, Playing with Purpose, Leaving a Legacy by Scott Drew. Thomas Nelson. 239 pages. 2022
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This book, written by Scott Drew, the coach of the Baylor University men’s basketball team, is about the culture of J.O.Y. (Jesus, Others, Yourself), and Baylor men’s basketball. As his co-author Don Yaeger writes, this isn’t a book about a basketball team, rather it’s a book about a ministry. In this inspiring book you will read about how Coach Drew integrates his faith and work as the men’s basketball coach at Baylor.
The book takes us through the 2020-21 season, in which Baylor won the NCAA Championship and the parade which followed in Waco, Texas. Drew had taken the job in 2003 which he writes was arguably—because of a tragedy and scandal—the most infamous team in all of college sports. He writes of his life leading up to Baylor – his father was also a basketball coach, and his brother made a famous shot to win an NCAA game for Valparaiso. He attended Butler University, where he tells us he learned how to be a coach. He would replace his father as head coach at Valparaiso, where he coached for a year before taking the Baylor position. In his first season he and his coaching staff tried to figure out how they could be competitive with only eight scholarship players.
His first three years, and the third year especially, helped solidify in his own heart the kind of foundation they were trying to build at Baylor. He writes that helping take a program from the brink of the NCAA “death penalty” into the NCAA tournament in five seasons was the kind of thing that God had to be involved in.
Most important, Drew writes that they saw their program as a ministry (chapel messages, players accepting Christ, being baptized, etc.). He writes that as coaches they spend as much time on their spiritual posture and positioning as anything else. There’s nothing more important that they can teach the players. He tells us that he is a basketball coach and likes to win, but he has come to understand that winning the game of life is the only game that matters.
He tells us that in the off-season of 2019, he started reaching out to men of faith whom he felt he could learn from. The coaches knew they needed to increase their pursuit of God and incorporation of Jesus into their program. Coach Drew called coaches Dabo Swinney and Tony Dungy. They started to tell him about a culture of J.O.Y., which stood for Jesus, Others, Yourself. They implemented the culture of J.O.Y. into their daily routines at Baylor and putting Jesus first in that overt way literally changed their program.
He writes that their team came together inside that Indianapolis (COVID) bubble in ways that only made them better as a team, even when basketball was the furthest thing from their minds. Their entire group, one through thirty-four, was there to invest in and pour into one another. He tells us that in some ways, it was three weeks of the closest thing to the early church lifestyle any of them had experienced.
Baylor would beat Gonzaga in the national championship game, the culmination of the eighteen years Coach Drew had been at Baylor and the incredible challenges God helped them to overcome.
I really enjoyed this inspiring book about how Coach Drew integrated his faith and work as the men’s basketball coach at Baylor University, the challenges and successes. Below are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

Faith and Work Book Club – Won’t you read along with us?

We are reading through You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News by Kelly Kapic. The list of demands on our time seems to be never ending. It can leave you feeling a little guilty–like you should always be doing one more thing.
Rather than sharing better time-management tips to squeeze more hours out of the day, Kelly Kapic takes a different approach in You’re Only Human. He offers a better way to make peace with the fact that God didn’t create us to do it all.
Kapic explores the theology behind seeing our human limitations as a gift rather than a deficiency. He lays out a path to holistic living with healthy self-understanding, life-giving relationships, and meaningful contributions to the world. He frees us from confusing our limitations with sin and instead invites us to rest in the joy and relief of knowing that God can use our limitations to foster freedom, joy, growth, and community.
Readers will emerge better equipped to cultivate a life that fosters gratitude, rest, and faithful service to God.

This week we look at Chapter 3: Are The Limits of My Body Bad? Praise God for Mary. Here are a few quotes from the chapter:

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