Near the church where King’s Cross Community Church (PCA) gathers for Sunday worship in Springboro, Ohio, sits Wade Field, home of the Springboro Wee Panthers football program. On Sunday mornings, Pastor Casey Cramer can hear the cheers from the football field inside the church. Two religious communities.
“Everybody is worshipping on Sunday mornings, but often they are worshipping in the wrong arena,” he said. “That’s where Kelsey and I saw a real opportunity.”
Cramer loves sports, but he wants families in Springboro to love Jesus more than they love football.
Professional Success, Personal Anxiety
According to the NCAA’s estimates, 1.5% of college football players will make it to the pros. Casey Cramer was in that elite group, achieving the athletic success that most people only dream about. The pressure just about destroyed him.
A gifted athlete, Cramer played several sports in high school and earned the opportunity to play football for Dartmouth. He was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a seventh-round pick. He was cut and picked up another three times in his first year with the NFL, having to reprove himself each time he moved to a new city.
In November 2004, Cramer was signed by the Carolina Panthers.
“I was picked up by the Panthers on Tuesday and started in front of 70,000 fans on Sunday,” he said. “Having to function at a high level but having high anxiety broke me.”
He noticed that his Panthers teammate, kicker John Kasay, had no such anxiety. Kasay, who remains the Panthers’ all-time leading scorer, kicked game-winning field goals with ease while Cramer was battling panic attacks during practice. Cramer asked Kasay what made his life different. Kasay opened the Bible to Philippians 4 and read Paul’s admonition not to be anxious about anything and about the peace of God that will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
Cramer, who grew up nominally Catholic, wanted to know more. Kasay led him through Scripture, and Cramer joined the team Bible study. A few weeks later he told Kasay he was ready for that peace of God he had read about in Philippians. The night before a game, Cramer prayed, “God, if you’re real, show yourself to me.”
During the next day’s game, Cramer dropped one pass and fumbled another. The Panthers cut him.
Cramer chuckles at the memory. “What kind of God does that? He was teaching me what my life was truly about.”
Cramer spent four more years in the NFL, and with each team he joined, Cramer also joined the team Bible study and developed a relationship with the team chaplain. After a while, he realized he wasn’t the new believer on the team anymore, but the one others were looking to for wisdom.
After injuring his shoulder while playing for the Tennessee Titans, Cramer retired from the NFL but stayed in Nashville to join the staff of his local church, Midtown PCA. He enrolled in classes at Covenant Theological Seminary with the goal of being a chaplain or serving in sports ministry. Instead, he fell in love with the local church.
He earned his Master of Divinity degree from Covenant and served on staff at a couple PCA churches in Nashville. In addition to pastoring, he became team chaplain for the Tennessee Titans before returning to his wife’s home state to plant King’s Cross Community Church. King’s Cross particularized in March 2024.
Confronting the Local Religion
Springboro is a suburb of Dayton, Ohio; it’s a community that is growing and young. The average age in Springboro is 34, and 29% of the city’s population is minors. But the greatest mission field in Springboro is also the biggest hindrance: youth sports.
Before coming to Springboro, Cramer saw the Nashville sports obsession and thought it was pretty bad. He thinks Springboro is far worse.
To be clear, the Cramers love sports. Not only did Casey play football in college and professionally, his wife Kelsey was on the golf team at Wheaton College. Their five children – ranging in age from junior high down to kindergarten– each play several sports. Football, soccer, baseball, lacrosse – the Cramer kids do it all.
And through those teams, the Cramers have met families that they can invite to join them for church.
“The best thing about the kids being involved in sports is so much exposure to so many families,” Cramer said. “That’s why we haven’t given up on sports. We will be able to reach more non-Christians than if our kids were not playing sports.”
But with each team comes the pressure. Each sport demands time, and Cramer has to tell coaches that his family will not be traveling on weekends for tournaments. And there’s no shortage of opportunities for additional training, elite teams, and more weekends spent on the field.
“The biggest rub for me is I don’t think the time commitment when I played was as long,” he said. “The time commitment and financial commitments were not what we’re seeing now.”
He admits it was much easier when he was a children’s pastor telling other parents to say no to sports, instead being the parent who says no to his kids’ coaches.
Underneath all of the time and money parents throw at team sports is a fear. Fear that their children won’t make the next team and won’t get the scholarship. Parents worry that their children won’t make friends if they don’t have a spot on the team. It’s not that different from the anxiety that drove Cramer to talk to his teammate Kasay in 2004.
Sports can suck away time and resources, but they also open up doors. Dayton has a faith-based baseball program called Dayton Impact, and Cramer was invited to speak to the 16 teams in the program. He said some families from Dayton Impact have begun attending King’s Cross.
As King’s Cross gets its youth ministry up and running, the Cramer kids are inviting their unchurched teammates to join the youth group. Cramer has noticed that parents might not be interested in attending church, but their children are.
“A lot of the parents are burnt out and don’t have interest in church, but their kids do,” he said. “There’s this curiosity of faith that we’re seeing in this next generation. They are hungry for God.”
Sports offer an avenue for building relationships and inviting these students into a gospel-centered community. The students don’t necessarily understand it, Cramer said, but they enjoy it.
Cramer has the credentials to speak about elite athletics, and then he can introduce people to Jesus.
“Athletics is a universal language that all can speak, and it provides a chance to speak the language of the nonbeliever to earn their trust, build a relationship, and speak Christ into their lives. These relationships are built across socioeconomic barriers, racial barriers, so many different natural barriers because you are playing for the same thing – even though we’re playing for something different, the glory of God. “
He knows that parents who put their trust in athletics to secure their children a happy future will find empty promises and burnt out children.
And he will keep preaching to the worshippers at Wade Field, inviting them to find true security not on a field or court, but at the cross.
ByFaith: Who do you favor to win Super Bowl LIX?
Cramer: It’s hard not to think the Chiefs will win again. They are the complete package and are one of the greatest teams, arguably, of all time.