I first met Coach Z while I was a student at Tennessee Temple University. During my senior year, I worked with the baseball Crusaders as the public address announcer. After all these years had passed, I decided to make a phone call and catch up with the coach who made the PA work fun.
John Zeller grew up in a tiny town in Pennsylvania where the only organized sport was baseball.
“Being the youngest of five brothers—we’re within eight years of each other—every day in the spring through the summer, we played baseball. That definitely developed my interest. I loved to play,” he says.
Zeller gave his heart to Christ when he was nine years old. As he grew older, he wanted to find a college where his desire to study, play baseball, and live for the Lord could develop. In 1971, Tennessee Temple College, in Chattanooga beckoned and became John’s home-away-from home.
Stepping onto campus, John felt the burn to coach. Zeller played baseball one year for Coach Ron Bishop, and upon graduating in 1975, Zeller left Chattanooga for his first coaching gig in Charlotte, North Carolina. For the next six years, Coach Zeller patrolled the dugout before returning to Temple as the head coach of his alma mater in 1981.
courtesy: Tennessee Temple University
In 1984, with Zeller at the helm of the Tennessee Temple Crusader baseball team, the idea for SCORE International—Sharing Christ Our Redeemer Enterprises—was developed as a sports ministry. Four men signed on the dotted line: Ron Bishop, Lefty Glasscock, Marty Benton, and John Zeller.
“I got hooked up with SCORE because when I signed that paper work with Lefty in ’84, we were already on the board of directors,” Zeller says. “And mainly it’s a sports ministry, using the vehicle of sports. We use it as a vehicle to share the Gospel with people.”
courtesy: Tennessee Temple University
Coach Z finally left his alma mater—which had since become Tennessee Temple University—to become the head baseball coach and athletic director at Master’s College in California. A few years later he went back to the Carolinas to coach and then south to Florida to work with a church as a recreation director.
In 2006, Coach Zeller was asked to take the reins from SCORE founder Ron Bishop.
SCORE’s mission statement—to glorify God through missions in obedience to the great commission—is carried out in various countries and in various ways. The Dominican Republic and Costa Rica are hotspots for baseball c!inics involving current and former major league ballplayers. The Dominican Republic produces more major league players than any other Latin country.
courtesy: SCORE International
MLB players and front office personnel to have worked with SCORE include: Eric Stults, Andy Petite, Mariano Rivera, Robinson Cano, Nelson Cruz, Ian Kennedy, Lou Pinella, Otis Nixon, Alfonso Soriano, J. R. Murphy, Slade Heathcott , Andy Phillips, Andy Benes, Kevin Malone, Brett Butler, and Glen Braggs.
Zeller explains, “They can use their platform as being a believer in Christ, as an influence to draw people,” said Zeller. “If you take Mariano Rivera, Andy Petite, Lou Pinella, Otis Nixon, and you take any of these guys down to the Dominican Republic, which is a baseball-crazy country, you’re going to draw 1,000 – 1,500 kids.”
SCORE gets the platform because they put on the clinics and teach the game of baseball.
“And the players want to come there and use their gift, and using it in a way to tell other people about Christ. And that’s why they do it; that’s why they come down here.”
SCORE is involved in more than just baseball. They also have a ministry impacting women.
courtesy: SCORE International
“We have a home for ladies that’s a safe haven for them. They can get off the streets and into rehab,” explains Zeller. “The boys in the DR, they have a chance because they’re potential baseball players. Girls in the DR? They’ve got no chance. We have fifty-one girls in our girls’ homes; half of them have been sexually abused since they were little children, and the other half have just been abandoned—people can’t feed them, so they just kick them out,” says Zeller.
Another way SCORE is helping others is by providing clean water.
courtesy: SCORE International
“We partner with a ministry called Water@Work. We put in clean, purified water. We used to go down and dig wells. You can dig wells in the DR, but if you don’t have a filtering system, you’ve got bad water. So we’re putting in clean water systems. Everyone has parasites and stomach issues down there because of unclean water.”
John Zeller has overseen the growth of his organization and watched as it has added more areas of ministry. But he has never lost his desire to be shoulder-to-shoulder with athletes.
“I love being around athletes. Put me in a room full of doctors, and I don’t function too well. But put me in a clubhouse or a locker room, and I can figure that thing out really fast,” Zeller admits. “Thirty years of coaching has prepared me to do that—I think the training at Tennessee Temple, the training of evangelism, and the importance of the church all prepared me for ministry.”
As for Coach Zeller’s future?
“Wherever God leads us, we want to impact every man, woman, and child with the Gospel. So we have a lot of work to do. In the DR, between the cities of Santo Domingo and Santiago, you have about 70% of the people of the whole island. We have a call to reach out to the countries that God leads us,” says Zeller. “The birth and death ratio has never changed—it’s one to one. People have to have that answer, where they’re going to spend eternity. There is always a need for ministry; people have a need and that need is eternity.”
And SCORE is received with open arms in the host countries.
courtesy: SCORE International
“We have great favor with the countries we’re in. People know us. We’ve been there a long time, and we’re well received” Zeller says. “And they know that we’re not here in these countries just to get something. They know we’re actually here to help.”
The detour from the diamond was a surprise to this baseball coach.
“I thought I was going to coach all of my life. I set a goal that I was going to coach fifty years. And I never made it past a year after stating that goal,” Coach Zeller says.
But Coach Zeller doesn’t regret missing that goal. As he puts it, “God has a plan, and I’m part of that plan.”
For more information about SCORE, please visit:
http://www.scoreintl.org/#all
For more information about Water@Work, please visit: https://scoresponsor.org/ministries/shop/water-house-project
For more information about Lily House, please visit: https://scoresponsor.org/ministries/shop/lily-house/
