He was one of the most exciting young footballers of his generation. And, despite a series of injuries over the course of his career, Arsenal's Jack Wilshire remains a promising Premier League midfielder, who might yet have his best years ahead of him.
In a recent interview with football website Kicca, Wilshire revealed that one of the key factors in his recovery from, and perseverance though those various setbacks was his emerging Christian faith.
Wilshire – currently on loan at AFC Bournemouth – says that while he doesn't go to church every Sunday and doesn't call himself 'religious', he is a Christian. 'Of course I believe in God...' he told the site, 'sometimes, you know what it's like, you're sat there thinking about everything, and everything runs through your head and you think "Oh, I wonder if there's a God," and I think there is.' He added: 'I think it has helped me get through injuries a little bit.'
Before we all rush to proclaim Wilshire as the next Tim Tebow, these are clearly the comments of someone gently exploring and engaging with the Christian faith. He's not about to write an evangelistic book or make a surprise appearance at Spring Harvest. And if we do start treating him as a Christian sporting idol, then we'll probably both end up disappointed, and more importantly push him away from the God he has begun to encounter.
I do find Wilshire's comments fascinating however, since they seem indicative of a growing sense that as the UK becomes less religious, and the influence of the institutional Church here lessens, the average person not brought up with faith appears to be becoming more open-minded toward it. Unburdened by a religious background, and through injury granted more 'sitting there thinking' time than he would have wanted, Wilshire has perhaps simply been playing around with the big questions of life. Is there a God, he's wondered? Maybe there is.
Interestingly, Wilshire's comments echo those of another footballer, the now-retired Gary Lineker. As we reported earlier this week, Lineker rather provocatively tweeted on Easter Sunday, 'Funny how we get brainwashed as children into believing these bonkers religious stories' before adding, 'Might be true though, I suppose.' So while he struggles with some of the behaviours of Christians, and with the plausibility of the Bible, he's open-minded enough to admit that there might be something in it after all.
Wilshire seems to have gone a step further, perhaps encouraged by a footballing culture that accepts religious belief and diversity with surprising tolerance. Later in his Kicca interview, Wilshire explained: 'There are players in the team who are really religious and everyone has their different views. You've got to respect that.' For Wilshire, the mix of those influences and his own internal journey appear to have tipped the balance toward supposing that Christianity might indeed be true.
All of this is both interestingly positive and challenging for the Church. As the Christian religion has declined a long way from being a power to which citizens are expected to submit, people are now seeing the whole thing as much more attractive. The door of the church no longer spells rules and discipline, but an invitation to draw on a greater power beyond ourselves. People like Jack Wilshire might never find their way to weekly church attendance, or to joining a 'life group', but he is interested in engaging with God.
The question then is what churches need to do to receive this new breed of open-minded, unchurched and perhaps never-churched people. The focus will need to shift from trying to make people fit the Christian 'shape' that we have defined for them, to giving them space to explore their big, deeply-felt questions. Ultimately, our churches remain places of discipleship, but our methods and our starting points may all need to change.
It's great that Jack Wilshire has begun to explore and encounter God, and with another fresh injury concern this week, we should pray not only for his soul but for his frustratingly fragile body too. No doubt a few Christians will get excited that he's become the latest sportsman to offer a celebratory glance to heaven, but the really thrilling story here is that as an unchurched person asking the really big questions, he's certainly not alone.
Martin Saunders is a Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO of Youthscape. Follow him on Twitter @martinsaunders.
