7 Things Every Christian Athlete Should Do in Their First 30 Days

I remember my first week of college like it was yesterday, mostly because I spent it looking like a lost puppy on campus. My first class was bigger than my entire high school. I stepped out of my first lecture hall into a crowd bigger than my hometown. 

I knew two things after that first class: I was out of my league and I was a college athlete who needed help. 

There is an old proverb that says, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”  This is true for your athletic career and for your spiritual growth. Imagine walking into your first team meeting and hearing your coach say, “You know what, let’s figure this season out as we go.” You’d transfer right after that meeting. Coaches spend months mapping out a season and hours into planning a single practice because growth doesn’t happen by accident. It gets planned. 

Do you have anything resembling a plan for your spiritual life this year? 

These first 30 days on campus are when you start your habits. Who you eat with. What Sunday mornings will look like. What you do at 11:p.m. on a Friday. Where your phone lives. Nobody decides those things on purpose in October, they just keep doing whatever they started doing in August. Thirty days from now you will have a routine whether you chose it or not.  

So let’s choose it. Here are seven things worth doing in your first 30 days.  

1. Find a Church and a Christian Community on Campus.

You have your team, now go beyond that. Start by going to church. Ask older teammates, coaches, and/or your residence hall director for Bible-believing churches in the area. You may be going by yourself, but it is important to start this habit at the very start. 

Along with establishing the foundation of the church, supplement it. Parachurch ministries like Athletes in Action or Fellowship of Christian Athletes aren’t the church but they can be a great place to find friends and start a community of like minded people. 

There are many students that will not step into a church right away, but will go to a college-age ministry because their friends want to go or because something fun is promised or because there’s food. No matter your reason for going, I would encourage you to make a commitment to a college ministry as soon as possible. 

A word of caution: don’t just hang out with people that look and think like you. God’s kingdom is gloriously diverse and we steward our responsibility as His image bearers when we lean into that reality instead of moving away from it.  It is so important for us to pursue a community with those that don’t look like us to gain a better understanding of different cultures and different perspectives. 

If we are going to be a generation that shows the country what it looks like to be different and love one another we need friends that are different from us. 

Try this week: Visit one church and one campus ministry. Get one person’s phone number at each. 

Scripture to sit with: Acts 2:42-47; Hebrews 10:24-25; Revelation 7:9-10

2. Look for Ways to Serve Somebody 

Here is something nobody wards you about: college athletics will train you to be served. 

Think about it. Someone hands you gear. Someone tapes your ankle. Someone schedules your tutor, plans your meals, books your travel, washes your practice clothes. Almost none of that is bad; it’s actually a gift, and most of it exists so you can compete. But live inside that system for five years without pushing back on it, and you will quietly become a person who expects to be taken care of. That’s not a character flaw you notice happening. It’s just the water you swim in. 

The antidote is small and unglorious. Serve somebody. Often. 

Start inside your program with jobs nobody claps for. Carry equipment you didn’t use. Stack the chairs. Stay after and help the freshman who’s still learning the ropes. Then get outside the athletic bubble where nobody cares what your stat line is: a church nursery, a food pantry, a setup crew, a tutoring program at a local school. Serving people who can’t do anything for your season is one of the fastest ways I know to stay grounded. 

Jesus said He didn’t come to be served but to serve. That sentence should land differently for people whose whole daily existence is built around being served. 

Try this week: Do one thing for your team that isn’t your job and that nobody assigned you. Then sign-up for one thing off campus. 

Scripture to sit with: Mark 10:42-45; Galatians 5:13; Philippians 2:3-4

3. Search for a Mentor

The churchy word for this search is to find someone to disciple you. This may not happen your first week but you can intentionally look for someone to care for you beyond your sport. Someone who cares for your spiritual and personal growth. Keep your eyes open at church, at your campus ministry, in your locker room. 

You’re looking for a mature Christian whose life you’d actually want, not just someone who’s fun to be around. An older teammate, a chaplain, a person from church who’s thirty years down the road from you, could all be potential candidates. If you are going to grow, you need to have someone help you along the way. 

Then go ask. That conversation feels far more awkward in your head than it does out loud. Most people are honored to be asked and have never been asked by anyone. 

If you are beyond your first year, reach back. Think of where you were 12 months ago and pursue someone who is there now. You don’t have to have it figured out to walk with them. This is Proverbs 27:17 in real life—iron sharpening iron, which we unpack in this discipleship tool on the verse if you want a starting point for conversation. 

Try this week: Write down three names of people who could mentor you. Ask one of them to get coffee. Don’t commit to a consistent meeting. Just start the process

Scripture to sit with: Proverbs 27:17; 2 Timothy 2:2; 1 Corinthians 11:1

4. Establish a Bible Reading Rhythm 

You just moved into your dorm and now you get to decide what you want to do with your time and space. I picture it as a fresh start and fresh starts are the easiest place to install a habit. Making Bible reading a priority and discipline will go a long way as you grow up through your college career. 

Be realistic about this rhythm. You are not going to do an hour a day in season and pretending otherwise is how people quit in one week. Ten honest minutes at a fixed time beats a heroic plan you abandon. Attach it to something already on your schedule; after your alarm, before your lift, on the bus, the ten minutes before lights out. Coaches call this stacking. It works for the same reason it works in training: the cue does the reminding. 

If you don’t know where to start we have created a few devotional series for athletes. Two worth considering are: The Christian Athlete 7-Day Devotional and The Athlete Identity Crisis 30-Days to Understanding Your Identity in Christ.  If you would rather do it with a teammate, our Bible studies would be a good place to start. If you would like a Bible on your smartphone we would recommend searching YouVersion in your respective app stores. 

Here is another reason this matters right now. Over the next five years you will be challenged in your faith by your professors, your coaches, your teammates, your roommates, your friends, and people on the internet you’ve never met. You need to decide if this Christian walk is yours, or is it really just your families’? 

You can’t answer that secondhand. You need to start thinking for yourself and not what everyone has always told you. What does the Bible really say about _______ (insert: alcohol, sex, grace, love, cheating, AI, Jesus, etc)? Have you searched it? Have you put the work in? 

We can easily be swayed by those around us if we do not have a firm foundation. But if we’re rooted in the Bible we have an opportunity to engage those that don’t think Biblically with the love and truth of God and what He says. You need to start thinking for yourself by letting the Holy Spirit guide you as you read your Bible. 

Try this week: Pick the time, the place, and the passage. Write all three down. Start reading.

Scripture to sit with: Psalm 1; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; Acts 17:11

5. Decide Your Boundaries Before They’re Tested 

No athlete decides how to handle a tight game in the last thirty seconds of a tight game. You take the reps in practice so that when the moment comes, your body and mind already know what to do. Everybody understands this in sports. We can make the mistake of not applying this principle to our Friday nights. 

Here is the thing about the first month: the decisions coming for you are entirely predictable. You already know what they are. 

• The party where you’ll have to decide about alcohol, and the ride home

• The relationship that will move faster than you planned

• The assignment you didn't finish and the AI tab you could open

• The team parlay group chat, and the very normal-seeming slide into betting on games

• The group chat that turns on a teammate and waits to see if you'll join

Not one of those will surprise you. What surprises people is how fast the moment moves and how much easier it is to go along when you haven’t decided in advance. 

Daniel is a guy worth studying here. Before he was ever pressured, he “resolved” not to define himself (Daniel 1:8). The decision was made before the plate ever showed up. That’s not rigidity. That’s preparation. It’s the same thing you’re doing when you rep a situation in practice. 

So do the work now. Name your three or four predictable pressure points. Decide, in writing, what you’ll do. Then tell one person—a mentor, a roommate, a teammate who’s after the same thing—because a boundary nobody knows isn’t a boundary, it’s a preference. And have an exit: the text you send, the excuse you use, the ride you already lined up. Coaches script the first fifteen plays for a reason. 

Try this week: Write down three decisions you know are coming and what you’re going to do. Send them to one person. 

Scripture to sit with: Daniel 1:8; 1 Corinthians 10:13; Romans 12:1-2; Proverbs 4:23-27

6. Ask Yourself, “Why do I play my sport?”  

Honestly, I think this is one of the most important questions you need to consider for your college career. 

I remember the day I was asked this question by my discipler. I didn’t have an answer. I needed some time to think through it and figure out why I really played. 

I walked back to him the next week having realized I was just going through the motions and didn’t really know why I was playing. I was just doing what I always did. And that was not a good motivation.  

How you answer this question plays a significant role in your self-esteem, your drive to pursue greatness, and your intentionality to use God’s gifts for His glory. Are you playing for your parents? Are you playing for the coaches or fans? Are you playing for the money? Are you trying to prove everyone wrong? To prove everyone right? 

There are hundreds of reasons to play a sport but I think only one that holds up to the pressure: to thank Jesus for the opportunity and gifts He has given you and bring glory back to Him. That reason doesn’t evaporate when you lose, get hurt, ride the bench, or win it all, which is exactly why it’s worth building on. If your motivation is tied to production, it will fail you in the exact season you need it most. (we dig into that further in More Than an Athlete.) 

Christian athletes should be the hardest working, best teammates, and most motivated people in the building. Not because they're trying to earn something, but because they finally know why they're out there.

Try this week: Write one paragraph answering, “why do I play?” Don’t write the answer you’re supposed to give, write what you’re really thinking and feeling. Have a conversation with a mentor about what you wrote. 

Scripture to sit with: Colossians 3:23-24; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Galatians 1:10

7. Commit to One Day a Week of Rest

Every coach you’ve ever had understood periodization. You don’t go max effort seven days a week. You build in recovery, because that’s when the adaptation actually happens. Training without rest isn’t more training. It’s just an injury on a longer timeline. 

Your soul works the same way, and almost nobody plans for it. 

Sabbath isn’t a new productivity trend. It’s older and better than that. God rested and built rest into the rhythm of creation and handed it to us. In a sports culture that quietly teaches you you’re worth what you produce, stopping for a day is an act of resistance. It says out loud that the world keeps spinning without your effort. We wrote about this at length in Sabbath and Sport, and it’s worth your time to read the article. 

Two practical notes for athletes.

First, pick a realistic day. For most of you it won’t be a clean Sunday because you will have travel, competition, or lift. That’s fine, just find a block to start: Sunday afternoon to evening, or a weekday chunk. Start the resistance small and grow it as you learn the new schedule. Put it on your calendar like it’s a practice, because if it floats it disappears. 

Second, rest your attention, not just your legs. Lying on your bed scrolling for four hours is not rest. You know this because you get up more tired than you laid down. Comparison doesn’t take a day off, and your feed will happily show you every athlete “out-training” you while you’re trying to recover. Put the phone in a drawer for the block. Do something that actually fills you: a real meal with people, time outside, a book, a nap, a hobby. (If you want to think harder about how you use our social media the rest of the week, start here.) 

Try this week: Choose a day and your block. Tell your roommate. Phone in a drawer. 

Scripture to sit with: Exodus 20:8-11; Matthew 11:28-30; Mark 2:27

Your First 30 Days: A Practice Pan

Seven things is a lot to start at once, and starting all seven at once is how people finish none. So here’s the order I would run it. 

Day 1-10: Visit a church. Visit a campus ministry. Pick your Bible-reading time, place, and passage (and start). 

Day 11-20: Write down three names of possible mentors and aks one to coffee. Write your boundaries and send them to somebody. Do one unassigned act of service. 

Day 21-30: Choose your Sabbath block and take it. Write your answer to “Why do I play?” and talk it through with someone older than you.  

Are these the only seven things that matter? Definitely not. But these are the ones that tend to get skipped, and they’re the ones that quietly determine what the next five years will look like. 

When I think back on my first week of college, this is the article I wish somebody had handed me. I was out of my league and I needed help. I was fortunate to land somewhere that had help available. 

If your school does not offer that help I’d genuinely love to be a resource. Email me at tyler@thechristianathlete.com to start the conversation.