Kingdom Impact: A Chaplain's Calling

One calling, 16 head coaches, and an 860-mile drive to a Cracker Barrel rendezvous. It all comes together to form the foundation of a Kingdom-building movement at the University of Louisville, now 20 years in the making.

Chris Morgan is the guy you see but you don’t know. If you’ve ever watched a University of Louisville football game, you’ll recognize him. White guy, average height, brown hair, probably wearing a red UofL polo. Chances are, when the quarterback went scrambling out of bounds, you saw Chris dodging the collision. He’s also always at UofL baseball games, too. When that foul ball got ripped into the dugout, you saw Chris standing by the fence line. He seems a bit out of place—at a glance you know he’s not one of the athletes—but he’s not a coach either. So, who is he?

Chris Morgan is the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) Chaplain at the University of Louisville. In a nutshell, he’s a former college athlete who got his world rocked at an FCA chapel in undergrad, gave his life to Christ, graduated school, and like so many other 20-somethings after college, he was searching for answers with his career. After some time working with kids with disabilities, Chris felt himself called into ministry to pour into young athletes. He’s a husband to Tammy, who serves alongside him, and a dad to his three beautiful girls. Most of all, he’s a disciple-maker. Chris’ humility wouldn’t let him say it himself, but his 20 years of faithfulness to God’s calling has transformed thousands of lives at the University of Louisville.

The Road to Denton

When you look at UofL’s campus, it’s obvious that a spiritual revival is in progress. However, the transformation here in our own backyard started hundreds of miles away in a small Texas town.

Chris always loved being around sports. The camaraderie, the passion, and the fellowship always sucked him in. So when Chris felt a nudge toward ministry, he knew that he was wired to work with athletes.

“I always loved athletics,” he said, “but I also wanted to use that platform to talk about having a relationship with Christ.”

After graduation, Chris reached out to Steve Wigginton, the Area Director for Louisville FCA, and said he wanted to join the staff. Steve suggested that if Chris was really serious about ministry, he should go learn under Tom Nelson, a Baptist preacher who heads up an academic program for young ministers.

In Denton, Texas. Nearly 900 miles away.

Intrigued and a little confused, Chris phoned Tom about the program. First thing, the minister asked, “Do you read your Bible every day, Mr. Morgan?”

“Yes sir, I try to,” Chris replied.

“Okay then. If you want to join the program, I want you to first pray about it,” Nelson said, “because if this isn’t what you’re called to do, it’ll devour you.”

After a few minutes of chatting, Chris hung up the phone. “In the athletic world, I got used to getting recruited,” Chris said. “But after talking to Tom, it was clear he wasn’t recruiting me.”

That prayerful week confirmed it for him: Chris knew he needed to learn under Tom. When he let the minister know, Tom gave Chris instructions to meet him at the Cracker Barrel in Denton, Texas. Chris packed up everything he owned and made the drive.

At the Cracker Barrel, Chris walked in and the lady at the counter immediately asked if he was there to meet Tom. She took him over to a table where two other young men were sitting. A few minutes later, Tom walked up and asked, “Which one of you guys is Morgan?”

“That’s me,” replied Chris.

“Tell me what you know about the book of Habakkuk.”

Suddenly the truth was beyond clear: Chris was way out of his element. So he gave the most honest reply he could. “I don’t think I can even spell Habakkuk!”

The young guy next to Chris, on the other hand, dove right into a 20-minute discourse on Habakkuk that might stop a seminary professor dead in his tracks. Chris politely sat there, hoping it wasn’t obvious to everyone in the whole restaurant that he was totally out of his league.

When the young man finally stopped to take a breath, Tom looked him straight in the eye. “Are you done?” he asked. “Good. You’re cocky and you’re arrogant, so I don’t think I should let you take this program. But look at Morgan. He’s dumb, but he knows he’s dumb!”

From that moment on, Chris was in. For his whole life, he had been accustomed to being the best in the room, but under Tom’s wing he knew that wouldn’t be the case. There he would need to rely on God to control his life and guide him. Chris knew God was calling him into this new season, and he knew that he would have to work hard to grow into the minister God was calling Him to be.

Chris spent the next year in Tom’s program, laying the foundation for his ministry at UofL.

A Window Cracks Open

After that year in Denton, Chris came back to Louisville and started working as an FCA Area Director, overseeing FCA programming for 40 schools in the area. Yet it wasn’t quite hitting the heart of what he felt called to do.

“With that many schools under my watch, I really was just driving from school to school putting on programming. After Texas, my heart was to find a group of people, disciple them, and watch them go to work,” Chris explained.

In 2004, a window of opportunity cracked open. A few years later, that window would be opened wide. New Head Football Coach Bobby Petrino called Chris into the UofL football complex and asked him if he would start leading chapel services for the football team. Chris’ heart pounded. He burned to work with a group of athletes that he could pour into, shape, and mold into followers of Jesus. And he knew that by working more closely alongside the football team, that could become a reality. Chris began preaching at pre-game chapels for the football team and hanging around the complex more. In 2006, they held their first FCA meeting with six athletes. Simultaneously, Chris continued to perform his duties with the other area schools. For Chris, he was closer to fulfilling what he wanted out of his ministry, but he wasn’t quite there yet.

Then in January 2007, Bobby Petrino resigned as the head coach at UofL. When the new coach, Steve Kragthorpe, was hired, Louisville's FCA ministry seemed to hang in the balance.

After Coach Kragthorpe settled in, he called Chris. Kragthorpe told him they needed to talk about FCA at UofL. He explained to Chris that he needed more, that the young men on his football team and athletes at the school needed all of Chris’ attention, not just a little as part of a larger network of schools, and that he wanted assistant coaches to have Bible studies and for Chris to have a strong presence within the team. Chris asked when Kragthorpe wanted to meet.

"Tomorrow morning!"

Chris beamed. So many nights of prayer with his wife had been leading up to this.

When they met the next day, Kragthorpe asked what needed to be done for Chris to be devoted to UofL on a full-time basis. Chris was elated: not only was his ministry at UofL continuing, but his heartbeat of pouring into a group of young athletes was also coming to fruition.

Dawn of a New Era

Once Kragthorpe championed Chris and his full-time ministry at UofL, his ministry spread like a wildfire. Soon, UofL Baseball jumped into active participation. After that, numerous coaches came into the fold, from tennis to diving, golf to soccer.

“Now that I was investing in these athletes on a deeper level at one location, I saw the law of multiplicity take hold,” Chris said.

Today, FCA is actively involved with every single sport on UofL’s campus in some way, shape, or form. Their weekly meetings now have baseball players, swimmers, soccer players, football players, basketball players—so many athletes coming together for fellowship, Biblical teaching, and prayer. This ministry has literally changed thousands of students’ lives. Chris and his growing staff see fruit daily in their service to the Kingdom.

“We do a head coach Bible study once a week, counsel and pray with various athletes, participate in pre-game and practice activities to do life with the students, lead devotionals before games and pray with athletes on both teams afterward, and we have Bible studies for athletic department support staff. We serve in any capacity that's needed,” Chris said.

What is most powerful about the ministry is the true multiplication taking place. Athletes like Teddy Bridgewater, Marcus Smith, and Nick Burdi are taking the fruit of that ministry at UofL into NFL locker rooms with the Vikings and Eagles and into the Twins’ MLB locker room. Kelsi Worrell, who is an active participant of UofL FCA, went to Rio for the Olympics, taking that fruit to her national teammates. Athletes who never go professional take it into offices and boardrooms around the globe. Together, they’re expanding God’s Kingdom well beyond the university campus.

Now, Chris looks back and sees the fruit of God’s faithfulness. “When you do something for over 20 years, you develop friendships from pastoring people, whether it’s because their parents are battling cancer, they’re laying on a training table hurt, they’re struggling with being away from school, or they’re simply new to faith.”

Even two decades in, things are just getting started. Chris knows that new athletes are always entering the campus, and spiritual needs are growing as this revival continues. But he’s confident that with the Lord’s guidance they will have the strength to continue ministering to generations of future Cardinals, training new workers for the Kingdom of God.