COURT HOUSE – Jon Buthy has been working with kids since 2020, and it didn’t take long for him to figure out the biggest problem children face today.
“The number one issue is failure. They are afraid to fail,” Buthy said.
Buthy is the Atlantic/Cape representative for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), which he said is all about giving children hope.
“They are trying to live up to expectations. A lot of things in sports are performance-based, or in school, everything is based on grades. For athletes, their success is based on how much time they spend on the field or court. But God’s love isn’t based on performance. God’s love is based on his grace. It’s not about what you did – it’s what Christ did,” Buthy said.
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Buthy said, started in 1954, when a man named Don McClanen had the idea of using athletes to promote the Gospel of Jesus.
“He saw that athletes were promoting shaving cream and cigarettes, and he thought, ‘Why can’t they promote Jesus?’” Buthy said.
McClanen then reached out to athletes who were born-again Christians and started developing a camp for Christian athletes. FCA was formed and it held its first conference in 1956 in Estes Park, Colorado. Since then, FCA has spread to 114 countries and its camp attendance reached 83,421.
FCA seeks to involve athletes at all levels, from youth sports programs through the high school, college, and professional ranks, using sports “to reach every coach and every athlete with the transforming power of Jesus Christ.”
Buthy was not born into FCA. He was born in Dover, New Jersey, and his family moved to Maryland when he was eight. They moved back to New Jersey in 2002 and stayed, except for attending Montgomery College in Maryland, where he studied business management.
“I was really thinking about going into retail management,” Buthy said.
He worked for the CVS chain for a while and then went to work for Frito-Lay for 10 years before going into ministry full-time.
He was attending The Lighthouse Church in Court House when he first heard about FCA. It was through a testimony at the Ocean City Tabernacle by Bethany Hamilton, a competitive surfer who, at age 13, lost her left arm to a shark while surfing Tunnels Beach, Kauai, Hawaii.
“Before she spoke, an FCA rep spoke about the group, and I was amazed that a group school could have Bibles and prayer in public schools,” Buthy said.
Buthy said he had always wanted to be a missionary in his hometown area, and about four years ago, he overheard a coach from Lower Cape May Regional High School (LCMRHS) talking to his wife about an open position at FCA.
“I overheard the conversation and later went online, applied, and got the position,” Buthy said.
The coach, he said, led FCA at LCMRHS for a year and a half before getting married and leaving the area. Buthy said FCA calls these coaches a “huddle coach,” and they use the term “huddle” instead of Bible study, keeping with the sports theme. At last count, FCA had 19,431 huddles throughout their programs.
“We call them a coach because they coach their team,” Buthy said.
Hired in 2020, Buthy said, in the beginning, he was trying to get his feet wet and not getting into deeper relationships with huddle coaches and student athletes.
Eventually, he said, relationships developed, and he started finding out where young athletes are really struggling.
“I think that has changed. I see where they are struggling most with fear of failure, and we try to show them how there is hope in Jesus,” Buthy said.
Students still face other challenges that are endemic to our society – including problems presented by drug use and addiction. Buthy volunteered for five years with Christians United for Recovery (CURE) ministry at The Lighthouse Church. He said he personally knew six people who died from overdoses.
He said he shared his faith with a number of people through CURE, and one who accepted the Christian faith died a week later. Buthy said the individual was homeless after his parents kicked him out of the house and he had been sleeping in his car, where he died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Buthy said in sharing his faith with anyone, he is trying to display the hope of Jesus Christ. He said that is the goal of FCA: “To walk the hope of Jesus Christ through the doors of public school every week and share that He gives them eternal life and forgiveness for sins and give them the opportunity to live up to their full potential. Everybody knows they have something missing, but what they don’t know is that it is the hope that Jesus Christ brings.”
Buthy said hope can bring healing to pain, develop perseverance through hard times, and bring eternal life.
Right now, there are FCA huddles in three middle schools, 16 high schools, and Stockton University. Buthy said FCA is unofficially in Wildwood High School, as well.
Contact the author, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 128.
