I received a note from an old high school classmate the other day. Donna. She lives about twenty-five miles from the old hometown and I live about six hundred miles from the old hometown, so we never see each other. But we do keep in touch. In the note she expressed some of her deep awe towards God. It was a very nice note, even inspiring. As I sat back and started thinking about those days so long ago, I started counting in my mind all the kids from high school who are now believers in Jesus. If we had a reunion of the believers, it would almost be our whole class. How did that happen, I wondered.

        It sure didn't start that way. As we started high school, I doubt there were a half a dozen of us that even went to church. Some of those were religious nuts. Namely David and Diana. They went to different churches, but they went every Sunday and acted like they wanted to go. That was enough to make them religious nuts. For the most part, the rest of us didn't go to church and those who did go occasionally were dragged there by their parents. It was 1970 and weird things were happening everywhere in the country and there were more important things to think about

        That year, my freshman year in high school, our high school got a new varsity football coach. Tom Duff. I wound up on the JV and the varsity teams, which was cool, but I hated Coach Duff. I wasn't alone. The man was crazy. At one point during the summer two-a-day practices, all the seniors walked off of the practice field in protest. Coach Duff never blinked an eye. When the seniors realized he was willing to play with just underclassmen, they began to straggle back. In previous years, if you were a senior, you started. Not under Coach Duff. Not many seniors started that year. His practices were brutal. At least once a week we started practice by running the cross country course in full pads. He devised ways to make us suffer while pushing us to our absolute limits. And we hit, and we hit, and we hit. I hated that man. To that point our school had been the patsy in our league for years. Coach had signed a five year contract that stipulated a league championship somewhere in that five years.

        We hadn't won more than three games in a single season for several years previous. That first year we went 4-6. Imagine people going crazy with joy over a losing season. When the season was over, the players started bragging about how hard the crazy coach was on them. We started calling him Tough Duff. One day there was a PA announcement for all the guys who were going to be playing the next season to report to the gym. We all wandered in and were met with our wild eyed coach. "TOUGH DUFF? YOU CALL ME TOUGH DUFF? HOW ABOUT THIS, GIRLS. FROM NOW ON I AM 'NOT TOUGH ENOUGH DUFF.' GOT IT? THE FIRST YEAR WAS EASY, GIRLS. THIS NEXT YEAR WILL BE YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE! 

        And it was, too. And we went 7-3. Coach had put fear in all of us, but he also gave us a feeling of confidence and pride for playing on a winning team.

        Coach never swore and he didn't tolerate it among his players. He would have moments of extreme gentleness and, in the right mood, could have you doubled of in laughter. He was a very tough football coach, but he was a caring and compassionate man. Before practices and games, he would have a short devotional from the Scriptures if you wanted to attend. To some, it seemed totally out of character. But to those of us who knew him, it seemed right in line with his character. Hardly any of us knew what being 'born again' meant, but we began to see a Christian man in Coach.

        Just before school started my junior year, Coach asked about five of us to stay after practice so he could talk with us about something. He told us that once school was going, he was going to start a Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter for our school. Weekly meetings, first one at his home. If the five of us would commit to go every Thursday night, others would come, too. One of the guys, a senior, laughed and said, "Coach, you need to get some other guys other than this group!" Coach shook his head. No, this was the group he wanted to commit to this. He was serious. No ramifications to the ones who said 'NO,' but he seriously wanted this to happen. One by one we committed to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

        And that started a transformation in the whole school. Coach was a tough coach in football, and that spread through all the sports. We began to win one league championship after another in all the sports. Our little school went from being the laughingstock to being the dreaded foe on the other teams' schedules. Yet, that isn't what I remember so well. I remember the twenty or so students who gathered at Coach Duff's home that first night and heard for the first about Jesus. It was a new concept. Everyone felt uncomfortable with it. As I said, it was a weird time, and we had a hard time relating to events from 2,000 years before in Israel. But Coach just led us along, never pressuring or pushing. He was still the same demanding coach, but he was also the one carrying the light of Christ in our school.

        That summer, between our Junior and Senior years, a couple of us attended a Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp. Both of us accepted Christ and our enthusiasm at the first Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting of the new school year spread to others. Kids began to accept Christ. Every week one or two kids were being saved. It was amazing.

        After his initial five year contract was up, Coach signed another contract. But by this time there were parents who were very upset over his 'religious teaching' in the school. About three years into that contract, he got fired. I was in college in Tennessee at the time, and when I came home on a break, I caught up with him. I expected to see a sad, even angry man, but he fooled me. "Larry, the Lord's been leading me to the ministry for a couple of years. Now I'm going for it!" He pastored in Canada for several years and then he took a little church in Taccoa Falls, Georgia. There was a Christian high school there and he wound up as their head football coach, where he won two state championships. Yay Coach!

        So, when Donna and I connect, we can both talk about the Lord. Same with Gary and Dave and Barry and Cindy and Dollie and Deven and I could go on. A year ago this past June, when I spent some time with my best friend from childhood at the Cleveland Clinic, he told me he wasn't afraid to die because he was a believer. At his funeral a few weeks later I related that story, and I could see Karen and Kevin and Jerry and Barb and Bucky and others nodding their heads. And then there is Greg and Marvin and a few others who have already passed who were introduced to Jesus.

        One man. Not a great man in the eyes of the world. But he brought Jesus to a little school and changed a lot of lives. And those lives have changed other lives. I worked with Youth for well over three decades. I am the result of a Godly man's passion and I have passed it on. One man, folks. It only takes one man to change a lot of kids.