Devotional Resources from Rev Brad and Soccer Chaplains United

The first one is the Soccer Psalms.

I think we've talked about this one a lot.

I think probably many of you, if you listen to the podcast, you're probably most familiar with this one because we promoted it a lot, especially during the World Cup.

The soccer Psalms really grew out of my desire to help people in soccer connect with God's word, with the Bible.

And I felt like the ancient words of the biblical Psalms had the language, emotion, and experience that we often experience in the beautiful game itself.

Really, if you read through the Psalms, each Psalm goes through a whole range of human emotion, joy and celebration, disappointment, frustration, fear, anger, hope, gratitude, loneliness, trust, all of it.

And I think a lot of these are emotions and things that we feel in and through football, whether you're an athlete, a coach, a You work in the game, you're a fan, no matter who or where you are in the game.

I think I've seen players getting ready for a training session or a match.

I've seen a coach who carries a weight and responsibility of winning.

I've seen parents who watch from the sidelines, supporters who literally live through every kick of the ball in the stand that they see in the stand or from the screen.

And the game has a way of bringing all those emotions to the surface.

So with the soccer psalms, there's 31 psalms, one for kind of each day of the month.

And really the soccer psalm begins with the biblical passage.

And on the other side of the page from the biblical passage is a paraphrase or what I call a soccer psalm.

And the paraphrase is just a way of taking maybe soccer language or imagery and somehow expressing the theme of the psalm in a unique, fresh way.

Then after both the biblical psalm and the soccer psalm, each devotional includes a reflection and kind of a meditation, some questions that help get at hey, what do you think of this? How does this connect into you? How does the scripture connect in? How does this connect into your experience playing the game, living the game, working in the game? Really, the soccer psalms isn't intended to replace the biblical psalms, but rather it's an invitation to get back into them, to return to them in a special way, to maybe hear God's word and how it might apply in the midst of of this this thing that we all enjoy, the beautiful game of football.

So one of the things, too, that's kind of been exciting that I've been working on since the original release a couple of years ago is that the soccer songs is available in a number of different languages.

You know, the original we we we wrote it in in American English, along with a British English edition entitled The Football Psalms.

But there's also a Spanish, a Brazilian Portuguese, and a French language edition.

And I'm working right now on a German version.

I'll probably stop with the German version because book sales being what they are and the investment that it takes to put a book out.

But I thought it important because, you know, Soccer is a global game.

Football is a global game.

And as I've been a volunteer chaplain for so many years, I've just come across a lot of different people.

And sometimes it's really special when they can have something in their own native language.