The grandfather of FCA in Michigan
It was 1964. Beatlemania had reached the United States, the first Ford Mustang hit showrooms (and cost a whopping 2,400 bucks) and the Cleveland Browns were an NFL powerhouse. It was also the year Bruce Oosterhouse first became a part of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
Six decades later, the Fab Four is a distant memory, the Mustang is nearly unrecognizable (and costs 12 times its original price) and the Browns are, well, you know. But to this day, Oosterhouse remains a steady, reliable fixture on the FCA scene. From his days as a football player at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, to his Hall of Fame career as a teacher, baseball and football coach and basketball referee to his current, longstanding role as a state and local FCA Board member, as long as FCA has been active in Michigan, Oosterhouse has been right there with it.
“He has done anything and everything in the ministry,” said Brian Broekhuizen, Area Director for Kent County, Michigan. “He is simply the pioneer and grandfather of FCA, not just in Western Michigan, but the entire state.”
A LIFELONG BOND WITH FCA
While playing at Hope in 1964, Oosterhouse’s coach told the team he was starting something on campus called the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. It was the first time Oosterhouse had heard of FCA, and it started a lifelong relationship with the organization and athletes and coaches across Michigan that has changed countless lives.
A few years later, with a degree in hand and teaching at a high school, Oosterhouse contacted the FCA’s new State Director, the first in Michigan. The Director invited Oosterhouse to join the State Board, which was gearing up for its first meeting, and lead FCA in Western Michigan. The young coach learned from fellow Board members like Watson Spoelstra, a writer for the Detroit News who later started Baseball Chapel, and Stanley Kresge, a leader in the S.S. Kresge Company (later Kmart Corporation) and the Kresge Foundation.
“I was 24 years old,” Oosterhouse said. “I didn’t know anybody. I couldn’t help but think, ‘Man, this is so exciting. We’re going to start FCA in the state of Michigan.’
In 1969, he began a streak of attending FCA Camps that hasn’t stopped. But Oosterhouse’s attendance streak isn’t the only thing about the Michigan FCA Sports Camp that has grown through the years; so has the number of participants. About 150 people attended that first camp. This year, there were close to 800. The camp has made as profound an impact on Oosterhouse as it has on the students.
“I was exposed to other coaches,” he said. “Some were college coaches, some professional coaches, and I just fell in love with this because I could see how it was impacting people. It really changed me and impacted my life.”
That first camp was also where he was encouraged to start an FCA Huddle at Kenowa Hills High School, where he taught and coached.
“Our first meeting, we had one kid,” he remembers. “So we went from there. But it caught on, and I led that Huddle for 40 years.”
Along with the Huddle at the school, Oosterhouse also started an FCA adult chapter in 1974 that continues today.
FAITH AND FELLOWSHIP THROUGH COACHING
Oosterhouse said he was attracted to FCA as a young coach because he felt it would be an easy vehicle to share his faith with other coaches and athletes. Through the years, he’s found that coaches have poured into him as much as he has into them.
“I have met people who, when we sat down and talked, it wasn’t about Xs and Os,” he said. “It was about friendships. College coaches would ask me how they could pray for me, and I would be taken aback. I’d think, ‘I ought to be praying for you.’
“The ‘F’ in ‘FCA’ is so important,” he continued. “It’s important for coaches to be around other coaches and to have that fellowship.”
It was through relationships with coaches and a lot of prayer that Oosterhouse was led to make a crucial decision about whether he wanted to focus on pursuing success in the world or be 100% committed to the Lord. He said it took him a while, but he finally concluded that winning and success were good, but nothing compares to living fully for God. It’s a message he routinely shares with other coaches and athletes.
“Without the Lord, none of this makes sense,” he said. “There’s more to life than winning and losing. It’s about helping kids through winning and losing. It’s about helping kids build their lives around what’s essential and really important. There’s nothing in this world that will satisfy you and give you peace other than the Lord.
“I try to help the coaches and students I talk to have a full understanding of what God’s sovereign plan was for me in my life and try to help them understand that God has a sovereign plan for their life and to put their faith and trust in God, no matter if times are good or bad.”
LESSONS FROM THE COURT AND BEYOND
Not that all the times have been good for Oosterhouse. Along with his teaching and coaching days, he also spent 33 years as a high school basketball official. Spending more than three decades wearing zebra stripes on the hardwood doesn’t endear you to everyone.
“Listen, I coached football for 18 years and baseball for 39 years,” he said. “And I refereed basketball for 33 years. I want to tell you, a lot of people have yelled at me. People would ask me how to handle it when you’re refereeing and people are screaming at you. I tell them, ‘You just keep going.’”
He said the game doesn’t stop, so you do the best you can and keep moving forward. There’s no time to be worried or embarrassed about the game as you call it. There was one thing, however, that made him feel awkward. But it happened away from the court.
“I never missed a Leadership Board meeting, and the one time I did, the rest of the Board did this without my knowledge,” he said.
The offense? They established the Coach O Award in his honor. It is presented annually by the Kent County FCA to someone who displays FCA’s Four Core Values of Integrity, Serving, Teamwork and Excellence.
“Frankly, I was a little embarrassed at first,” he said. “But they insisted they were going to do it. One of the awards went to one of my former players who was a Huddle coach. He gave me a big hug and said, ‘Coach, this award means so much to me.’ I have to admit, it made me weep a little.”
REFLECTING ON DECADES OF IMPACT
When Oosterhouse, who, with his wife, Mary, has five children and 15 grandchildren, looks back on his nearly six decades of serving the Lord through FCA, he sees significant changes that have led to ministry growth in full-time leadership and participants. But even today, it’s a ministry based on volunteerism — business people, coaches, parents and others who have been 100% committed to the Lord and to reaching coaches and athletes with the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ.
“It’s pretty incredible as you look back and see the impact that it’s had on hundreds of thousands of kids who have gone to camp or had an FCA experience at school, or even the coaches we’ve reached through coaches clinics,” he said. “I get to see kids’ lives change. I get to see coaches’ lives change. And that’s what it’s all about.”
Through all the changes of the past six decades, Bruce Oosterhouse has remained a steady fixture in FCA in Michigan. His commitment to faith, fellowship and the next generation of athletes and coaches is a reminder that while the world may change, some legacies stand the test of time.
