By Mallory Mattingly
In a new episode of the “Sports Spectrum” podcast, New York Jets team chaplain and former NHL player Adam Burt encouraged listeners to “go all in with the Lord.”
Sports Spectrum’s Matt Forte asked Burt how he would encourage people who are “halfway in, halfway out and comfortable in their Christian walk?”
“The halfway guy, you lose on both ends,” Burt declared. “If you’re going to sin, then just go sin, man, and if you’re gonna do it, do it, right? But if you’re gonna live for the Lord, live for the Lord.
“Here’s my appeal in that, as someone who — I got a little bit of a few miles behind me — and as I look in the rearview mirror, that day when I pushed in all the chips with the Lord,” the team chaplain continued, “It’s like I don’t have any regrets. In fact, I don’t think I lost anything. And I gained everything.”
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This past January, Burt took all of the life experience he has and put those lessons into his new book,
“The world is filled with unsatisfying answers to life’s big questions. What if there were responses that could guarantee a life rich with depth, meaning, purpose, and destiny? In The Longest Game: Winning in Life, author Adam Burt draws on his 14 years as an NHL player and 20 years as a pastor to provide winning answers to life’s most pressing questions,” a synopsis of the book reads.
Those questions include, “Who am I?,” “What am I here?,” “What’s wrong with the world?” and “How can it be fixed?”
In December, Burt announced the book on his social media page.
“I did a thing! This book has been a bucket list item for more years than I can remember….. and it’s finally available for preorder on Amazon. I would sure love any support my Insta-fam could give!!!” he wrote. “It’s a book that I believe will encourage you in your daily walk with God ….. with some hockey 🥅 🏒 stories too!!!”
In an interview with the NHL, Burt talked about what it meant for him to leave a life of sports and pursue a career in ministry.
“I feel like God’s given me a unique front seat to people’s lives, and kind of like high-level people,” he told the NHL. “So, I thought, you know what? There’s something there. I should share something.”
He also talked about his book and why he decided to split it “into three sections, like three periods in a game.”
“I didn’t get to win a Stanley Cup or do anything like that, but you remember that 2000 team where we played the longest game,” Burt said. “And honestly, I was getting worried, because there’s a few of them that were getting close to breaking the record and I was like, ‘I better do this or I’m going to have to change the title.’ I was going to initially just focus on that and take little tidbits of that and then put it into kind of faith and winning in life, that type of thing.”
“And then as I got into that, I thought, ‘You know what? There’s just so many great stories and stuff.’…Wayne Gretzky and I, we squared off one time,” he continued. “There’s a 5-on-5 brawl and then we just happen to be paired up. I’m like, ‘I don’t want him, he’s too small, it looks bad.’ Plus, you’re not going to fight Wayne Gretzky, all you can do is lose, so I pushed him away, and he grabs a hold, and he’s like, ‘Oh no, man, just stay here.’ I’m a rookie and Wayne Gretzky says this. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, will you sign my stick afterwards?’ I just have so many stories.”
Now after his 14 years in the NHL and 20 years serving as the New York Jets team chaplain, Burt urges Christians to live sold out for Jesus. From his experience, he knows that “halfway in, halfway out” Christians “lose on both ends.”
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