The story of Texas Christian University’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes begins with P.D. Shabay, a former TCU football player who brought FCA to campus in 1965.

“We started a Bible study every week,” Shabay said in a prerecorded video featured during the organization's annual banquet. “And the next year we actually said, ‘let’s start the FCA chapter at TCU.’”

That decision led to the first FCA banquet, held at the TCU student center, featuring then-Dallas Cowboys head coach Tom Landry as the keynote speaker. Landry’s lone request was a $20 honorarium.

“Those were the very infant steps of FCA at TCU,” Shabay said.

A Ministry of Presence
Now, TCU FCA operates with a staff of five, including Campus Director Chauncey Franks, who has led the organization since 2010. Over that time, Franks has seen the banquet grow from 75 people in 2012 to over 700 each of the past two years.

The staff size is unusual for a collegiate FCA chapter, which typically consists of just one or two people. Franks says the staff size at TCU contributes to the depth and breadth of the ministry.

“We have a ministry of presence,” Franks said. “It allows us to go life on life, where we’re not coaching plays, but we’re coaching the heart.”

The annual Night of Champions banquet – which this year saw more than 700 attendees gather in the Sam Baugh Indoor Practice Facility on April 23 – is simply the culmination of work happening throughout the year.

In practice, that work takes shape as one-on-one mentorship, discipleship, pregame chapels and a steady presence through the harder seasons of student-athlete life: injuries, lack of playing time and the questions of identity that arise when sport begins to demand more than it gives back.

Franks has also seen his role expand beyond TCU’s campus in recent years, as he now works with other FCA chapters to better equip their leaders for ministry.

“We have become known, in a lot of ways, as having one of the best collegiate FCA ministries in the nation,” Franks said. “We’ve trained everybody from schools in the SEC, ACC and Big 12, and everything in between.”

A Story Comes Full Circle
Mitchell Traver, who played baseball at TCU and was involved with TCU FCA as a student-athlete, returned to serve on the FCA staff and traces the full circle of what TCU FCA does over time.

“I’m a product of TCU FCA,” Traver said. “I don’t actually know what my life would look like without TCU FCA.”

What keeps him in the work, he said, is the chance to walk alongside young people as they wrestle with questions of identity in a culture quick to define them by their performance.

“Kids don’t really know what it actually means not to be defined by your performance in a world that’s going to define you that way,” Traver said. “Seeing those lights come on repeatedly, that’s the gift.”

Fellowship Through Formation
Kade Durnin, a sophomore pitcher for TCU baseball, serves on TCU FCA’s leadership team and considers it one of the most important things he does on campus.

“Being a part of leadership for TCU FCA calls you to a higher standard,” Durnin said. “The motto there is fellowship through formation.”

Looking out at the Night of Champions attendees, Durnin reflected on what he was seeing.

“It really shows how big of an impact TCU FCA has had. The generational impact,” Durnin said.

Durnin was one of five student-athletes who participated in a panel discussion at the dinner, sharing their experiences of TCU FCA with the room. Others included Duncan Chan (men’s tennis), Ansel Din-Mbuh (football), Josey Whitaker (women’s track and field) and Quinn Calhoun (women’s track and field). They each shared their testimonies from the stage, reflecting on the impact of TCU FCA in their lives and representing men’s and women’s athletics across team and individual sports.

Building for the Next 60 Years
A foundational gift from Tom Lehman, a former PGA Tour professional golfer, seeded the director’s position years ago. Today, all five staff positions are fully funded by donors outside the university. The staff includes Franks and Traver, along with Coleman Maxwell, an 11-year veteran who works closely with football and recently launched a leadership development program with the men’s basketball team; Carrie Casey Burnett, a former Sam Houston State student-athlete who has served for five years; and Maya Wilson, a Rice basketball alumna who joined the staff over a year ago.

The landscape of college athletics is shifting rapidly, however, and Franks is carefully considering what TCU FCA will need to look like on the other side of that change. His vision is to endow the director’s position, ensuring the ministry’s continuity is not tied to any single leader.

“I want to make sure that TCU FCA is here 60 years from now,” Franks said.

Franks recently earned his Executive MBA from TCU’s Neeley School of Business, a credential that has equipped him to lead a ministry with a growing annual budget, a fully functioning board and ambitious goals for the future.

“This Neeley degree has helped elevate my understanding of business and given me the language to go into different spaces and circles, to cast vision and invite people to be a part of that,” he said.

-Jamie Plunkett