Archive: Concentrating On Conversions

By Sara L. Anderson

One of the most recognizable faces in the National Football League stares out at the gridiron from under his trademark hat. So intense is his concentration, so unchanging his expression, that writers have compared his visage to one etched in granite. What many people do not realize is that Dallas Cowboys’ head coach Tom Landry, a United Methodist, directs equal intensity toward encouraging people to put their faith in Jesus Christ.

“I’m really kind of an evangelist—most people think I’m a Baptist,” the third winningest coach in the NFL says with a chuckle. But Landry takes seriously the role he feels evangelism should play in the denomination. “I think we neglect this a great deal,” he says of United Methodists.

Personal Conversion

The issue may be of extra importance to Landry because he discovered his need for a personal relationship with Christ somewhere other than through his denomination. Thomas Wade Landry was born September 11, 1924 to Ray and Ruth Landry in the Rio Grande Valley town of Mission. The Landry family lived a half-block from the Methodist Church. Ray Landry was Sunday school superintendent, and the family made it to church every Sunday.

“We didn’t study the Bible as a family; we prayed over meals when we had company. My parents’ view was that we were Christians,” Tom explains. “I was taught good principles by my family, but I never knew what the Gospel of Jesus Christ was all about,” he recalls. “I never really heard it, although I’m sure many ministers preached it from the pulpit. But my ears were closed and my eyes were shut, as the Scripture says.”

So Landry continued to attend church and considered himself a Christian. After a stint in the Air Force, he married Alicia, played football at the University of Texas and developed his football career as a player and coach for the New York Giants. He had everything that would make a yuppie of today grin with satisfaction. But Landry still looked for that illusive, missing “something.”

The Landrys had moved to Dallas, and in 1958, Tom, who read the Bible from time to time, was invited to a prayer breakfast and Bible study.

“I had never studied the Bible before and I was 33 years old at the time,” he says. “When I started studying the Bible, God opened my eyes to what the Gospel was all about. I became a Christian.”

Tom and Alicia, members of Highland Park United Methodist Church, remained faithful Methodists after their conversions. But they weren’t always comfortable with the direction the church was taking.

Frustration nearly led Landry to leave the denomination in the early 1960’s. “It was all social gospel, even in our church, even in Perkins Seminary at SMU,” he recalls. “We had a Sunday school teacher at that time who said the 10 Commandments were out of date.”

Then Landry decided he wanted to start a Thursday morning Bible study/breakfast for the men of his church. He wasn’t sure how to go about it, and he had trouble finding anyone in the church who would help him arrange it. “Finally, one assistant minister helped me, and I started it,” he says.

“I was going to move out, but for some reason God kept me in the Methodist Church,” Landry says. His perseverance was rewarded. Leighton Farrell, who had worked with Landry during the 1972 Billy Graham Greater Southwest Crusade in Dallas became the Highland Park pastor. “When he came into the pulpit it was revitalized because he believes in the Word of God,” the coach says, adding that Highland Park now has five services every Sunday.

Landry attends the early morning service when he’s home, even when the Cowboys are scheduled to play only hours later. In the past he’s held church office and taught Sunday school. But with the obviously heavy demands on his time, Landry limits his outside-football activities to those he considers best suited to his gifts and most significant.

Of utmost importance to Landry is the role he feels evangelism should play in the church. Because of this he is participating in the United Methodist Foundation For Evangelism’s plan to raise money to establish chairs of evangelism at all UM seminaries. Part of the strategy involves promoting the sale of fine art lithographs, reproductions of the Kenneth Wyatt paintings of “The Twelve (Apostles)” and “Offer them Christ.” Proceeds from the sales would help to endow the chairs of evangelism.

“I became concerned with the areas of Scripture and evangelism because I believe in the inerrant Word of God,” Landry explains. “Unfortunately, some of our Methodist churches do not believe this.

“A church needs to be Spirit-driven to be a really flourishing church,” he adds. “John Wesley was one of the great evangelists of our time, and we’ve gotten away from that in our church. But that’s what the Methodist Church needs.”

Conversion Of Priorities

Landry is not one to merely talk about evangelism; he quietly and consistently lives his relationship with Christ—before the city of Dallas, the press and his players. His life aims are not what you would expect from a coach whose team has won two Super Bowls and 20 playoff games.

In fact, the first thing Landry noticed after his conversion was that his priorities fell short of the Scriptural goal. “What you consider most real and valuable in your life is [really] your religion. Football was my religion,” the coach says. While going through high school and college Landry thought that if a person was successful in football, “then that was what life was all about.” He says he began to discover the fallacy of such thinking after being part of the New York Giants world championship team.

“I was searching at the time a friend got me into that Bible study. Once I accepted Christ, my priorities changed,” he says. “God was first, my family second and football was number three.”

The coach has not kept those convictions a secret, much to the chagrin of some of his players. The Cowboys’ great defensive lineman, Bob Lilly, recently told the Waco, Tex., Tribune-Herald, about hearing the priority speech when he was a rookie. “He said he wanted us to know how he had his priorities arranged …. I remembered after he had left, we rookies agreed we’d never win because he had his priorities all out of order. But 27 years later, I believe he was right,” Lilly says.

Landry is not one to be reticent about his relationship with Christ, but at the same time he is not abrasive. He wants to be a witness in his organization through example. He has initiated chapel services and Bible studies with players and their wives held on Thursday nights. “To me this is the way I influence our organization. It’s good to see the number of players that eventually accept Christ,” Tom says.

While Cowboys party animals have been known to chafe under such a straight-laced coach, others have been deeply influenced by his walk with God. Denver Broncos’ head coach Dan Reeves and Chicago Bears’ head coach Mike Ditka are among them, not to mention Lilly, who after his retirement from football, also trusted Christ.

Landry has also been criticized for maintaining a bit of aloofness from his players because he feels they would not respect a buddy as a leader. Yet Tom can let his guard down at appropriate times. He made a brief appearance on the team’s music video, submitted to being tossed in a swimming pool during the 1978 Super Bowl victory celebration and donned a real-live Cowboys outfit for a credit card commercial. Besides, the granite-faced stereotype is definitely broken when Landry isn’t concentrating on screen plays and roll outs.

Landry’s Christian activities go beyond his team and the church. He has given much time to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, at one time serving as national chairperson. He’s a board member of Dallas Theological Seminary and has given testimony to God’s faithfulness at evangelistic crusades sponsored by Bill Glass and James Robison, as well as Billy Graham. He’s been involved with prayer breakfasts sponsored by city and state officials, and a form of that Bible study he started through the church 20 years ago still exists.

While his commitment to the UMC is evident, Landry is ambivalent when asked for his impressions of the current state of Methodism. “Encouraged and yet not encouraged,” is the answer. “So many of the Methodist churches are too liberal—for me,” he says. “I just can’t accept that. But I think the church is still of Jesus Christ, wherever it is. Our only hope is in Jesus Christ and the church.”

If a Cowboys’ offensive strategy isn’t working, you can be sure Coach Landry will work on improving it. He feels the same way about the problems of the denomination. “It’s our job as lay people to try our best [to bring about reform],” he says.

Part of “doing our best” for Landry involves not hand wringing, but fervent prayer. “If we’ve got enough people praying, there won’t be any question that [the United Methodist Church] will turn around. That’s the problem we have. We need to get more of our members concerned about the problem and praying that God will change it.”

Sara L. Anderson is associate editor of Good News.