We Before Me: A Lesson in Humility

Getting a team to actually put the group ahead of the individual is one of the hardest things to build as a coach. You can't just tell athletes to be selfless and expect it to stick. What actually works, at least in my experience, is grounding it in something bigger than a locker room rule, and Scripture gives us more than enough to work with. Four verses in particular have shaped how I think about this: Galatians 6:2, Philippians 2:3, Mark 10:45, and Hebrews 10:24. Each one hits a slightly different angle on the same idea, that a team built on we instead of me doesn't happen by accident.

Galatians 6:2 says it simply: "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Bearing someone's burden means actually showing up when a teammate is struggling, even if it costs you something. That's a timeless kind of kindness, the sort that ends up mattering to both people involved, not just the one being helped. It asks athletes to put someone else's need ahead of their own for a minute, which sounds small until you watch it happen in a locker room after a rough loss. No one on a team gets to where they're going by carrying only their own weight.

Philippians 2:3 pushes it further: "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves." This is the verse I come back to most with athletes chasing playing time. Individual recognition isn't wrong to want, but it has to sit inside a bigger frame of team success, or it curdles into something that actually hurts the group. Counting a teammate as more significant than yourself doesn't mean thinking less of your own game. It means being willing to set personal glory aside when the team needs something else from you that game.

Mark 10:45 takes it to its furthest point: "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." That's about as extreme an example of service as exists, and it's worth sitting with even outside a strictly spiritual lens. If the standard for service is someone giving up everything for people who hadn't earned it, then giving up a few minutes of playing time or a little recognition for a teammate starts to look a lot smaller and a lot more doable. Nobody's asking an athlete to be a martyr. Just to remember what real sacrifice actually looks like when it's modeled at its highest.

Hebrews 10:24 rounds it out with something more relational: "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works." This one's about investment, not just sacrifice. Stirring someone up toward good work means actively pushing your teammates to be better, not just staying out of their way. It looks like a captain who checks in on a freshman she barely knows yet, or a senior who takes time to encourage a teammate who's struggling in practice. That kind of investment compounds over a season in ways that are hard to measure but impossible to miss once you've been part of a team that actually has it.

None of these verses are about disappearing as an individual. They're about understanding that your gifts, your effort, and even your ambition mean more inside a team that's actually pulling in the same direction. We before me isn't a slogan you put on a locker room wall and hope it works. It's built one burden carried, one ego set aside, and one teammate encouraged at a time.