Yesterday, Reggie White passed away at his home near Mooresville, North Carolina. He was 43. He is survived by his wife, Sara, his son, Jeremy, and his daughter, Jecolia.
Reggie was one of the biggest men I ever knew, in body, soul, and spirit. In almost every way that greatness can be measured, Reggie was one of the greatest men I have ever known. To say that he will be missed just does not capture the void that his passing makes.
As I watched the tributes to Reggie on nearly every television channel yesterday, the reason he was such a great man was clear. All briefly talked about how he was one of the greatest football players of all time, but then they would talk far longer about what a great person he was. He was a great father, husband, leader, teammate, friend, and, over and over, they would talk about what a great man of God he was. He was a great man in all of the most important ways that true greatness is measured.
I first met Reggie and Sara in 1992 when he called and asked me to come speak at his church in Knoxville, Tennessee. Some friends of mine who played for the Washington Redskins gave him some teaching tapes I had done on racism, and he asked me to come and speak on this at his church. I was immediately impressed with Reggie’s love for the Lord and for people as we talked, and so I agreed to come. I stayed with the White’s at their house, and from the very beginning I knew that both he and Sara were two of the most remarkable people I had ever met. Over the years I spent quite a bit of time with them, and my respect for them never wavered, but continued to grow.
After that first weekend at their house Reggie and I started talking on the phone quite frequently. He was playing for the Philadelphia Eagles, but almost all of his conversations were about the city of Philadelphia. He was deeply passionate about trying to help with the inner city problems, but did not quite know what to do. He was especially grieved about some of the kids who had been drug dealers who he had helped lead to the Lord. After this they were not able to find jobs, so they were quickly recaptured by their former lifestyles.
This one problem vexed Reggie the whole time that I knew him. However, he was not one to just sit around and talk about problems, but was determined to do something about them. He tried many things. He started businesses. He started The Society of Nehemiah, named after the biblical restorer of the walls of Jerusalem. With this he tried to do what Nehemiah did, get different families to each take a section of the wall and rebuild their part, so that soon they would all fit together.
I went with Reggie to a number of cities to promote this idea, starting in Philadelphia. After years of trying to enlist city and church leaders, Reggie often expressed disappointment at the results. However, he was accomplishing far more than I think he ever realized. A few were taking his ideas and producing extraordinary results. Some of these became examples for President’s Bush’s Faith Based Initiative.
I heard one of Reggie’s teammates on the Green Bay Packers say that once Reggie set his mind on something, like dominating a football game, nothing could stop him. He was one of the most tenacious people I ever met. When he became a free agent he was the most sought after player in football, and could have played anywhere he wanted to. When he said the Lord had spoken to him about going to Green Bay, Reggie was in disbelief. He said that the coaches had always threatened the players with sending them to Green Bay if they did not do good, and he was wondering if the Lord was punishing him. However, when he went there he quickly fell in love with the people and the place.
Even so, Reggie’s main personal goal for choosing a team was not the contract that he received, but the possibility of winning a championship. He went to Green Bay with the one goal of bringing that team back to prominence by winning a Super Bowl. But the first couple of years he was there they had some very hard times. I received quite a few phone calls from Reggie those first couple of years, as he wondered if he had heard the Lord right. I have never met anyone who hated losing more than Reggie. Even so, he stayed, and the goal was accomplished.
He was the same way about his goal of helping “his people.” Reggie desperately wanted to see the black community free spiritually and economically. This was a far higher and more difficult task than winning a Super Bowl.
One issue that the lottery is helping to illuminate is the difference between riches and wealth. Studies of former lottery winners are so shocking that one has to conclude that winning the lottery is almost a sure way to have your life destroyed. That is because, as the Scriptures teach, there is a difference between riches and wealth. Riches may come easily, but it also “makes for itself wings.” The only true source of wealth, which is enduring resources, is diligence or hard work. Reggie watched the lives of many athletes destroyed by riches. He wanted to help his people, but he wanted to help them find the source of true wealth. One way that he saw to do this was to start Urban Hope.
Urban Hope was a remarkable program developed by a number of people through Reggie’s leadership and encouragement. It was designed to help people who wanted to start a business and taught them basic management principles beginning with writing a business plan. It then offered grants to those who excelled in the training. The success rate of those who started businesses with the help of Urban Hope was over 95 percent, which is remarkable when measured against the average success rate for new businesses of less than 25 percent.
One major problem that very successful people face is that they become the biggest targets in the world. I have walked through hotel lobbies with Reggie and seen total strangers come up and ask him for large sums of money, and then get angry when he did not give it to them. One shoeshine man spotted Reggie and, without even introducing himself, asked him for fifty thousand dollars. I thought the man was joking, but Reggie did not just brush him off. He asked him what he wanted it for; I think Reggie was sincerely looking to see if this was someone that he could help. The man replied that he wanted it for a business that would “make a fortune.” Reggie briefly explained his Urban Hope program to this man, and said that if he passed the course he could get a grant for his business. The man became quite angry because Reggie would not just write him a check on the spot.
Many are unaware of how almost every professional athlete, entertainer, or successful businessperson, loses most of their family and friends very quickly. This happens because many people tend to think that they hit the lottery when they are close to someone who becomes successful. If you give them money or make them a loan, the odds are ninety-nine times out of a hundred that they will quickly lose it. Then they continually demand larger sums of money. The only way to end this when it starts is by saying “no,” which is almost certain to end the relationship. For this reason many, if not most, successful people cannot go back to their neighborhoods, and many times even their families. Most of these would like to help their friends and family, especially those who are trapped in poverty, but few find a way to do it in a way that really helps them.
This is not a white or black thing, but true of almost everyone. Even so, I think Reggie wanted to win this battle even more than he wanted to win the Super Bowl. He was always looking for a way to truly help people who needed it without ruining them with easy money. After he won the Super Bowl he called, and I tried to congratulate him, but immediately he wanted to talk about ideas he had come up with to help the inner city.
Except for when he occasionally called me after an important game, Reggie and I seldom talked about football. He deeply loved the game, but he loved people a lot more, and was constantly thinking of ways to help others. He sincerely considered every human being important, and I never saw him give off an air of being too important to talk to someone.
One of the longest phone calls I ever had with Reggie was right after he had made the speech to the Wisconsin legislature that was so controversial. As I saw it repeated yesterday on a number of newscasts that Reggie had made “disparaging remarks about other races,” I want to state as clearly as I can that this is a lie! Reggie would never do that. In that speech he was sincerely trying to be complimentary of different races and cultures, explaining how we can learn important things from each one, and someone in the media interpreted it as stereotyping. When I asked Reggie to share with me what he had said, I could understand how some might take it as that, but it was definitely not what Reggie was trying to do.
Many have told me that they believe what had turned that incident into such a hostile matter was when Reggie was asked if he thought homosexuality was a sin. His response was that he was not the one who said this, but the Bible, and if you believed that the Bible was the Word of God, which he did, you had to believe that homosexuality was a sin. Others who were there said that nothing he said seemed to have been taken wrongly until that statement was made. Even so, as much as this controversy cost Reggie, and it did cost him millions in endorsements as well as a television commentator’s contract, I never one time heard Reggie make a disrespectful comment about another race or homosexuals.
Right after this Reggie was scheduled to speak at one of our conferences in Charlotte. He had retired from football because of his back problems, which were at that time so painful that he could barely stand for more than a few minutes. During the conference he asked me if he could have an altar call for homosexuals. I had been with Reggie before when he had made some of the strangest altar calls I had ever seen, but this one was the biggest stretch yet. I told him that these were Christians here, and even if there were some struggling with this, they probably would not come forward for prayer in front of a few thousand people. He was steadfast, and since we had made the agreement that we might die of a lot of things, but boredom would not be one of them, I agreed thinking at least this would not be boring. Hundreds came forward for prayer.
I was stunned, feeling that these were some of the most courageous, honorable Christians I had ever seen. Reggie felt the same way, and insisted on praying for each one personally. As I watched, he and Sara took the time to pray for each person. After about an hour I offered to bring him a chair to sit in, knowing how bad his back must be hurting. He said that he was not feeling any pain, and that he thought that the Lord was healing him. After well over an hour, Reggie and Sara came up to the hospitality room and he was convinced that he had been totally healed of his own back problems just by praying for those who wanted to be free of homosexual sin.
Several days later he was still healed. He then prayed to be able to play another year, and to play so well that he would win the Defensive Player of the Year award. He un-retired, did play, and did win this award, and also had the specific number of sacks (tackling the opposing quarterback behind the line of scrimmage) that year for which he prayed.
After that year Reggie retired again, and moved to the Charlotte area. He did not do too well with retirement, and was persuaded to play one more year for the Carolina Panthers. It was the worst year ever for the Panthers, but Reggie had a very good year by anyone else’s standards. However, Reggie was a team player, and did not care about doing well himself when the team did not. After that season he retired for good from football. From the testimony of other players I knew, when Reggie finally left the game for good, they all felt that it created possibly the biggest void ever in a sport when a single player left.
This is hard to understand, and even harder to explain. The void Reggie left in football was not just because he was a great player. There are people who have an extraordinary presence. I have known quite a few super successful people, all of which are dynamic and unique, some of which are more famous than Reggie, but none had this remarkable presence that Reggie had.
During the Year 2000 celebration, Reggie was listed on the internet as one of the ten most influential Christians of the twentieth century! Reggie called me when that was posted, and complained that he was just a football player, and did not feel that he had yet really done anything very significant as a Christian. He had not directly, but he was a major presence, and his presence made waves throughout Christianity of which I know he was not even aware. At all times Reggie was a remarkable person, and capable of doing something remarkable at any time.
Reggie, Bill Horn, and I went to Iowa for a big Republican rally in which fourteen candidates all had large circus tents, which they filled with celebrities, food, and other entertainment meant to gain support for their presidential candidacy. As we walked around and people spotted Reggie, soon he was garnering a larger following than the candidates. When Reggie began drawing crowds away from the frontrunner’s tents, I pulled him aside and told him that we could win this thing! He laughed, but that night when the head of the Republican Party was asked by a reporter if Reggie White was going to be on the ticket, his reply was that he thought one of them might be on Reggie’s ticket. He had that kind of presence.
After he finally retired for good from football, Reggie immersed himself in the study of the Word, and the Hebrew language. As is common with those who have the insatiable hunger for deeper knowledge and understanding, sometimes they are open to those who have carried doctrines to extremes, and I felt that this happened to Reggie. However, I was never too concerned about Reggie, knowing that his sincere love of the truth and his integrity, would ultimately lead him to ultimate truth. I have known many who were called to extraordinary ministries or to extraordinary leadership to go through this stage, which resulted in more wisdom and understanding than those who never had been through a similar thing.
However, when I refused to let Reggie teach some of the things that I considered to be wrong in our churches, it did create a riff between us. This lasted until just a few months ago when Reggie came up to the mountain, and we spent several hours talking and riding around. We did not get into the issues that had separated us, but determined that our friendship would be above them. Within days he had bought a lot close to us and started building a retreat home. I felt that we were ultimately going to be closer than ever, and was really looking forward to seeing him and his family more. Just last week I was told that they had their certificate of occupancy for the new cabin, and could start staying in it. He never got the chance.
When I received the call early yesterday morning that Reggie had just passed away, I could not grasp it. Strange as it seems now, I flipped on the television and channel surfed for a couple of hours until it finally hit the news before I started to really believe it. I could not help but to think about what one of my sons had said to me the day before, how the day after Christmas was the saddest day of the year. When he said it I felt a strange anointing on that statement, and had actually begun to brace myself for bad news.
Knowing the void that the players felt when Reggie left football, I think everyone who knew him to any degree feels the same way about him now having departed this life—there is just a huge void, and how could anyone else ever fill it? I realize that much of this feeling is from personal loss, but I think there is more to it than that. There must be great joy in heaven because he is there now, but he will be missed here, terribly.
Reggie lived more in his short life and accomplished more than many do who live much longer. Our goal should not be to live long, but to live well. I have never known Reggie to do anything that he did not do with all of his heart. Those who live that way do become bigger than life—this life that is. Only eternity can contain them. Reggie is one of that great company of witnesses who is looking down on us and I am sure, cheering us on now. Let’s give him something to cheer about.