Missionary Derek Spain ministers to Winter Olympic athletes
By Mickey Noah
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. – When the 16-day, 2010 Winter Olympic Games open here on Friday (Feb. 12), North American Mission Board resort missionary Derek Spain will serve as a Vancouver Olympic Committee chaplain at the athletes village in Whistler, where many of the competitions will take place.
The Georgia Southern Baptist, who now lives and ministers in Lake Placid, N.Y., is also the spiritual mentor and pastor to U.S. bobsled team member John Napier, himself a believer who Spain led to a closer walk with Christ over the last year as Napier trained to compete in the Winter Olympics.
Since his teen years, North American Mission Board resort missionary Derek Spain has worked himself up from parking lot attendant, ticket taker and track sweeper at the winter Olympic Training Center at Lake Placid, N.Y.
Now he deals in cowbells, hand-warmers and Bibles – whatever it takes to share the Gospel with -- and minister to -- the dozens of world-class Olympic athletes who either live in Lake Placid or pass through – plus the thousands of fans who come to see them compete.
Spain has not only served as a NAMB resort missionary since 2001, but is also special ministries consultant for the Baptist Convention of New York, pastor of Lake Placid Baptist Church and director of North Country Ministries, a ministry focused on the athletes in Lake Placid.
“Some of them live here year-round, either at the Olympic Training Center or in town,” says Spain. “Some of the athletes we only see for a few weeks a year. They could be in figure skating, hockey, ski jumping, snowboarding, ski racing or bobsledding.”
Spain said Olympic athletes are high achievers, set high personal goals, are dedicated to their sport, and disciplined in their workout, eating and sleeping regimens. They must be in order to compete at a world-class level.
“They do have struggles, though,” says Spain. “As they get older and into their 20s and 30s, they are traveling all over the world, living in an unsupervised environment. So there are the challenges and temptations of the world. Even Christian athletes struggle with the issue of pride as they compete for their nation. There’s a temptation to be prideful about what they’re accomplishing personally.”
Spain heads up North Country Ministries, made up of members of his Lake Placid Baptist Church and Southern Baptist mission teams that travel to Lake Placid from other churches throughout North America. Through the ministry, Spain has opened doors to share Christ through serving and volunteering at winter sports events in the Lake Placid area.
“We take these opportunities to use creative evangelism tools to talk to others about God,” he said. It may be a “goodie bag” filled with candy, gum, Chapstick and maybe a Gospel tract. It may be handing out free cowbells for spectators to clang when their team does well. (A long-time tradition in Europe, cowbells help make up for the fact that it’s tough for fans wearing gloves and mittens to make much noise at winter Olympic venues!)
“Sometimes we give out hand -warmers at events,” said Spain. “Jesus told us to ‘give a cup of cold water in My name,’ but at winter sports events -- where it may be 35 degrees below zero -- people had rather have hand-warmers.” Other giveaways include New Testaments and “Jesus” DVDs.
As part of North Country Ministries, Spain conducts nightly Bible studies in Lake Placid, attended by Olympic athletes when they’re in town. That’s how Spain got to know John Napier, a member of the U.S. bobsled team that will compete in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Feb. 12-28.
Spain first met Napier several years ago when Napier’s father, William, was dying of cancer and Spain ministered to the family in the hospital. Young Napier was a teenager but at eight years old, he had inherited the love of bobsledding from his father and mother. He competed in his first international competition at 16, and raced in his first World Cup at 17.
“I later ran into John at the Olympic Training Center and invited him to our Bible Study. Several weeks passed and he began to come regularly. About a year-and-a-half-ago, he started coming every week,” Spain recalls. Eventually, Spain led Napier, already a Christian, into a closer walk with Christ.
“Over the last couple of months, I’ve seen in John’s life a real hunger and desire to follow Christ. It’s become very personal to him, and he has seen the transforming power of God change his life from the inside out,” said Spain, who baptized 23-year-old Napier on a recent Sunday morning.
Napier says Spain has been an “awesome spiritual guide for us as athletes in Lake Placid Baptist Church. Derek is always at the top of the track volunteering his time and just showing you that Christ is everywhere. We have Bible studies multiple nights a week, and he’s always here to support the athletes and minister to us
Why does the 6 foot 3, 220 lb. Napier love bobsledding so?
“I go to the top of some of the scariest tracks in the world,” he says. “We’re going 95-100 miles per hour. I love it. It’s two minutes a day but we’re out at the track for six hours a day waiting on other nations to slide, prepping our sleds, breaking them down and changing equipment – all to get ready for that two- minute ride a day. It’s a thrill and that’s why I do it – for the rush and the thrill. It makes me feel alive.”
But Napier – the four-man bobsled team’s “driver” -- said it’s hard going 90 miles an hour down an ice chute with only an inch of error on each side in a top-heavy sled that’s 12 feet long and weighs 1,200 lbs. “It’s my job to keep me as the driver and the three guys behind me safe.”
Napier said it takes good hand-eye coordination and good reaction time. “Driving is not only seeing, but it’s about feeling what the sled is doing under you. You have to drive off of feel a lot of times.”
After the Winter Olympics closes on Feb. 28, Napier will return to his “day” job as a soldier in the Army National Guard. He may get deployed to Afghanistan.
Derek Spain, who also will be in Vancouver for the Winter Olympics, will return after the close of the games to Lake Placid to resume his ministry as a NAMB resort missionary and a Baptist pastor.
“But right now, we’re praying that among the winter sports athletes of the world in Vancouver, there would be a great awakening, and that thousands of athletes in these winter sports would come to Christ,” said Spain.
A Georgia native, Spain served a youth minister at Hebron Baptist Church in Dacula, Ga., and as a youth ministry associate at Hollywood Baptist Church in Rome, Ga.
He received his bachelor’s degree in religion and philosophy from Shorter College in Rome, and a master of divinity degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Spain and his wife, Kim, have two sons, Joseph and Andrew, and one daughter, Emma Grace.
More News ... | 
