Before he became the pastor of The Village Church, Matt Chandler played High School Football in Texas. He wasn’t the best player on the team, in fact, he characterized himself as “not very good.”

But he was on the team and it was in that moment that the 17-year-old future pastor would first hear about the name of Jesus from his teammate Jeff Faircloth. Chandler shared the story with us in Episode 2 of the Sports Spectrum Podcast.

“He comes up to me and says, ‘I need to tell you about Jesus, when do you wanna do that?’ And although I was not interested in Jesus, the courage he had in that moment was so disorienting to me. It was really his boldness that really made me begin to consider things. He was the one that helped me understand what the gospel is and what it’s not.”

Speaking about his first experience with attending church, Chandler compared it to watching late night television.

“Church to me felt like a Saturday Night Live sketch,” he said. “But what was happening was the Lord was just drawing on me. We weren’t great friends, and he was 2 years older than me, but the thing I remember thinking the most was how gutsy that statement was.”

Chandler pastors over 14,000 attendees at The Village Church near Dallas. Among the people that attend his church are retired Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo and current Cowboys Tight End Jason Witten.

To download the Sports Spectrum Podcast, click here.