When Winning Really Matters: Calling, Coaching, and Walking Through the Fire with Coach Josh Austin (Pt. 2)

In this second conversation with Williams Baptist University head men’s basketball coach Josh Austin, host Dr. Stan Norman picks up the story right where Part 1 left off—at the moment when faith moved from the margins of Josh’s life to the center of his calling. Josh shares how a hard sophomore season, a stairwell conversation with a stranger, and a renewed hunger for God’s Word reshaped his priorities, redirected his dreams of the NBA, and clarified his desire to use coaching as a platform for ministry rather than just a pathway to wins and summers off.

From there, the conversation turns to calling, mentors, and the long obedience of showing up: Josh talks about the coaches who formed him, the step of faith that took him from unpaid volunteer to 24-year-old interim head coach, and the surprising way God “kicked him through” an open door into college coaching leadership. He also reflects on how God eventually led him and his family to Williams, giving them a deep sense of peace that this small campus in Northeast Arkansas was the place they were meant to plant their lives and ministry.

Josh and Dr. Norman then walk through one of the hardest vocational seasons of his career—a year of losses, culture challenges, and discouragement on the court—and how passages like Galatians 6 taught him not to “grow weary in doing good” even when the scoreboard said otherwise. Josh explains his coaching philosophy, why he believes every player is wired to want to win, and how he is working with team chaplain Pastor Jamar to help young men find their true identity in Christ rather than in minutes, stats, or results.

The episode concludes with a deeply personal story of loss and community: Josh recounts the night his family received a 1:30 a.m. phone call that their campus home in the Cove was on fire, what it was like to FaceTime while watching their house burn, and how returning to a smoke-damaged home and a daughter’s ruined bedroom became a classroom of grace. Through the hands and feet of the Williams community—housing, practical care, and presence—Josh and his family experienced what it means for the body of Christ to carry one another’s burdens, and how God often uses trials not only to sustain us, but to prepare us to comfort others with the comfort we have received.

If you are a coach, parent, student-athlete, or anyone wrestling with calling in a season that feels more like loss than victory, this episode will help you see how God can redeem disappointing seasons, redirect ambitions, and use even house fires and hard years to deepen trust, shape character, and reframe what it really means to “win” in Christ.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the LifeWorks Podcast. We are rejoined today by Coach Josh Austin. And in our last episode, we left with a cliffhanger of you were moving into college when your faith started taking on a higher level of seriousness and reality for you. Is that fair? Yeah. Okay. So you decide to go to college. Are you going on an athletic scholarship? Are you going to be a collegiate level athlete?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

I um I signed with Central Baptist College. They were a junior college at the time.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Couldn't get a scholarship here, huh? That's right. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

To be honest, we didn't even know Williams, really. I mean we've we've grown in that. I feel like we've we've changed that. We're trying. I think we're doing a good job of it. But uh signed with Central Baptist College um because um I thought I was going to the NBA.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

So so I and that is a well well-trod path to the NBA game through Conway.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Exactly. So I I went there and in my freshman year, I had I had a good year. I had a really good year my freshman year. And um, and I remember starting my freshman year, that was the one thing that that I knew I needed to like I wanted to start off right. Like I'm gonna pursue the Lord in this. And and I did. I I really developed a really good routine of just getting in the word and and putting him first, and and um things were just going well. I mean, I was doing better in my classes, you know. I when I graduated high school, our guidance counselor told me not to go to college. She was saying you don't need to go to college. Wow. That's right. And so uh so I was actually doing very well uh academically. Uh everything was going well. And then I remember my sophomore year, going into my sophomore year, I had all these expectations. Like that was the year when you're a junior college, that's the year that okay, now we got to work on getting scholarships to the four years. And it didn't start off that well. Um, and it it was mainly because I had I went away from it was almost like, God, I've got it from here. Now I'm gonna take it. And then I remember I we were in a scrimmage game. We played Oklahoma Wesland in a scrimmage game, and that was a team they were talking to me. They were kind of recruiting me a little bit. And we scrimmaged them, and I had zero points and eight turnovers that game. And my grades were already suffering. Everything was not, it was just the opposite of what it was my freshman year. And I remember walking back to the dorm room and I ran to a guy by the name of Will Fraser, and we walked in the stairwell together, and he just turned around and he asked me, he said, Josh, he said, I just got he goes, Are you a believer in Jesus? And immediately I said, Yes, I am. Like there was no doubt in that. Like I had no doubt in my salvation in that. And um I am. And he said, Well, I just feel like something, and he didn't know me. I just feel like something's off. And I literally just sat there in that stairwell and just we sat there for an hour and I just opened it all up and then told him out everything my freshman year, and then this, and and he said, Okay, and then he did so he said, He said, Okay, well I'm gonna go ahead and tell you, I don't care about any of that. He said, But there is one thing you did say I feel like is the problem. And I said, What is it? He said, Your your life, your relationship with Jesus. Where is it? And I'm like, man, I went away from that. I went away from spending time with him and and just in just soaking myself in in him and his word. And I mean, I right then was when I realized, okay, Lord, this is more than it's almost like a team. Like, you don't want me just on the team. You want all of me. You want me to, and not just necessarily it's not for basketball, it's not for my grades, it's not for this, this, and this. You want me. And that was at that moment was when I realized, okay, I'm need to, I need to embed myself in him. And and I once I did, and I did, and I told him, I'm like, and I don't care about basketball, I don't care about my grades and all this kind of stuff. A lot of people say, okay, well, my life was bad, now it's good. Like, I still had struggles. But at that moment was when I realized, okay, this is a relationship, this is something that he wants to spend time with me. And I did that. And when I did do that, I realized the Lord's going to take away what's most important to me to get back to him. And I realized that real quick. Like, he's a jealous God, he wants to be number one in my life, and and that when that happened, you know, and I still have faults, I still have days where I'm struggling and and all that, but at that moment is when I realized, okay, this is different. This is what I need to be doing. I need to be just pursuing him.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

So when in all of this did you begin to sense God working for a calling uh beyond a college life, beyond collegiate level athletics, but a calling for vocation, a calling for a career ministry kind of thing. When when did you begin to sense that happening and what did it look like? And how do you think God was working through that?

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yeah, I so I felt like shortly after that was when I was like, you know, because at first I wanted to be, I wanted to be a coach in high school, and the reason why is because coaching looked fun. Man, I get to be around sports all day, and yeah, I get my summers off. Like, it looked fun, and I and I loved the sport. It was shortly after that when I started like working with kids and stuff like that, then I'm like, you know, this is this could be a very, this is what I love doing. And so as it went on, I I ended up changing my major and I went back and I'm like, yeah, I want to get into coaching. I want to get into this because it's not just having the summers off. I want to be in there, like I love the sport, but I want to use this as a platform to minister. To I can now I can preach Jesus by using basketball as a tool. And instead of me just out there like a crazy loon yelling it, now I can be like, hey, let's work on triple threat, let's do this. Hey, by the way, do you know Jesus? You know, it didn't work.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Were there any coaches or mentors in your life at this time that would kind of speak into your life about calling and ministry and coaching and all that?

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah, I felt like the I had two coaches really. I had one coach that really instilled in me about the importance of showing up every day and busting your tail to to win. Um, and that was Coach Keener. He's now the athletic director at Glen Rose, Arkansas.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

But then I had the the spiritual side I had was Coach Stan May. Um and his wife, um they run a camp in in uh Glenrose called um Family Farm Christian Day Camp. And he was my seventh grade coach, but he was also our FCA sponsor.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

And uh the father of the quarterback, he was the father of the quarterback.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Kind of picking up yeah. So he was him, he was like a second father to me in that, where um he has given me so much advice along this path. But and kind of going into that, fast forward to when I took over, I got my first job. I remember I was graduating college and I had an opportunity to go to Central Baptist and volunteer as an assistant, did not have any money, but I could student teach or uh substitute teach locally. And I remember I went to him and my dad was like, Hey, you need some money. Yeah. Coach May was like, No, you need to go coach, you need to go do that, you need to go do that. And and I felt it. I'm like, all right, Lord here, I'm gonna go into this, and I'm gonna hopefully my substitute teaches. It was, it really was. And then um kind of fast forward, I I did, I and I remember halfway through that year I was volunteering, and halfway through the year, there's a park in Conway, and I still go to it when we go play CBC. I'll go to that park while the before the girls play, because it was like my prayer park. And it was that way when I was in college, and that's where I went, and I went there, and I really felt led. I'm like, Lord, I want to be a head college coach, I want to be that. But if you don't want me to do this, but I really feel this urge, and this was one of the only times I've ever liked where the Lord answered a prayer so quickly, because I got home and I had a little trailer. I lived in a little trailer in Conway, and I got home, and the head coach that I was working with called me and said, Hey, I'm stepping down as the head coach, and you're gonna get a call from the AD, and you're gonna he's gonna offer you the interim job. Would you want it? And I said, Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

So, so how long had you been the volunteer coach? For a semester. That's your first kind of official.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

I was 24 years old. Wow. 24. Matter of fact, the oldest, the oldest player on that team who was an all-American, was two months younger than me. And he was, well, remember I played there when they were at JUCO.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

I was the one that showed him around campus when he came on his recruiting visit.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

And now you're looking at being the interim.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

And now I'm gonna be the head dog, the interim, yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

And did that boo from interim to regular full-time?

SPEAKER_00 10:29

It did. So whenever they he, I got off the phone with him and the AD called me. I remember I sat in the bathroom and I cried because I was scared to death. And that was when um when I stepped in as the interim, we made it to the national tournament, and they removed the interim tag, and then I always say God didn't open the door, he kicked me through one.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

How long were you there?

SPEAKER_00 10:53

I was there for five years.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

So you've been doing this gig for 20 years. Okay, and how did you wind up here?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

All right, so that's so we used to play Williams, yeah, and I would always in Williams when you when you don't know what's around Williams, because Williams is on on this bypass, it's like it's the middle of nowhere, and then boom, there's a university. Yeah, like you don't realize that there's town, there's people, yes, there's it's a great place. Yes. Um, you know that. I do. So so we used to play them, and I remember uh Coach Ryder um was stepping down, and um and I messed around with the idea and I turned in my stuff because at that time my wife was also the dean of students at Central Baptist College. She was 24, 25. Um and we were looking for a change. We just had our oldest daughter, um, and we were looking for a change, and Jeff Ryder called me, and at first I was first I was kind of like, I don't know. Like, I don't know if I want to go to Williams. And then we prayed about it, and then Dr. Swain called and offered us the place to come or to come up for an interview. And I remember me and my wife, we came up here, and immediately when we're sitting in his office, we just knew it right then. It was it was a piece, and I remember after that interview, we're driving, and this time the highway wasn't finished, so we had to go through Swifton and Tuckerman and all that area. And I remember we get all the way to Tuckerman, and then me and my wife finally say a word to each other, and we finally were like, this is the place, this is where we gotta be.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

So share with our listeners two or three things about your coaching philosophy as it pertains to your ministry. How do you see the convergence of your work as your ministry?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

I believe, and I do, I believe that number one, we were all created with the competitive wire. Like we were wired with this where everyone wants to win. And I think the reason why is because the whole reason why Jesus came was so we could win. And win in him, and win in him. Yeah, and so well, the one thing that man, it's it's been crazy through my whole 20 years seeing how the Lord has even worked in me to where now with these young young men, I'm taking young men that are coming from backgrounds where number one, they may never have opened a Bible.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Or number two, a church has done them wrong. Yeah. Or they've seen them do them wrong. And now we can use, we can bring them both together, like, okay, well, let's take the facts. The facts are you want to win. Yeah, I want to win every basketball game. Okay, you want to win. Well, I want to show you, we're gonna work together with with Pastor Jamar, who comes in and works with us as a team chaplain. We're gonna do everything we can to show you that look here, that when you win in life, and you win this way, that okay, you lose a basketball game, okay. But when your identity's in basketball, winning and losing is detrimental to you. Like you you you're riding this roller coaster of uh wave. So I feel like in my philosophy, one thing that we try to do is we use basketball as the tool to to introduce them to Jesus. And and and we take that, like I said, we always tell everyone in our program, winning is the most important thing. And then they they come in and they're like, Well, what it is, and this is what we're talking about. You gotta win this way.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yeah. So fast forward to last year, I want to kind of get a little deep here. Uh probably one of the more challenging years vocationally and a summer that presented a unique trial. So real briefly, just kind of walk us through last year and how the Lord may have orchestrated things in your life to draw you closer to him through the season, through your coaching experience here.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yeah, it was the worst season of our life. That was one thing we always talk about. I've got the best wife, the best woman that just is a rock, and we walk through it together. But going through the season we went through last year with the the losses and dealing with other things and people not buying into culture and not buying into what we were we were preaching, that's hard because you feel like you're losing. And and I kept I cling, I just clung to Galatians, where it's like don't get weary and doing good. Yeah. And and it was it was awesome because real briefly, and I'll I'll be real quick with it, but through that whole season, and then we had the fire at the house. I'm gonna get to that. All right, I'm not gonna talk about then. But but you had that season and how the Lord was orchestrating and he was putting people in our lives like players where I didn't have to work as hard recruiting. Like it was it was crazy. We had we had a player here from Jonesboro, and and and we talked about this at the at the conference tournament with our team, and our team devotional. How God put every one of them in here, and I didn't have to work that hard to get them. God just put them there. And to this day from last year, because I always felt like we lost last year, we just lost. But it's crazy because there's a couple guys that we had to remove from our program that still reach out to me, and we're talking about the Bible now based on in if you would have told me that like it was hard, it was real hard. Yeah, and now the Lord's still working in them, and guys that didn't want to have anything to do with them, but they're realizing they're like, hey coach, I was reading in this, and I'm like, wait a minute, you what? You were reading in Genesis? Like, what who who just opens up the book and starts reading all the things? Yeah, so last year I had to realize, and I realize it now, it wasn't about me, but it was about if if I just if I do what I'm supposed to do, and it was hard. It's hard walking around, and you're thinking everyone's like, well, there goes Coach Austin, they're having an awful season. Like it's it's bad. Like, I didn't want to show my face to anything. Yeah, I didn't even want to walk around you. I'm just like, I'm like, I can't get around. Come on, man. Come on. Like, I just couldn't, I just wanted to get in my shell because but then looking back on it, the Lord's just working, and he's working and working through those trials because he never promised that it was gonna be easy. You know, he just promised he was gonna be there with me. And I remember I remember one morning in particular being on my knees just crying. And I remember my wife coming over there and just putting her hand on my shoulder. And I it just man, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Rough year on the court, and then the summer came, and a very significant tragedy befell two of our university families, and you were one of those two. So why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about what happened? Yeah, so how the Lord moved through that.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Absolutely. So we go every year to a coach's family camp in North Carolina.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

It's a by the way, I want to point out to you you're doing the same thing for your family that your dad did with you. We're going on vacation in North Carolina, and I'm going. It's gonna be a working one, but we're gonna go. I just want to point that out. That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

We go to this uh this camp and it's uh FCA puts it on, and we've been going for the last 13 years. Well, anyways, we've never we've always came straight back, and we never stay the night. And we'll some friends of ours, Tim Kraft, who's the head men's basketball coach at Western Carolina, they invited us over to their house for lunch, and we did. And then we stayed the night in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was 4th of July night. And I remember I got a phone call uh about 1 30 in the morning, yeah, saying, Hey, your house is on fire. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

And I'm like Now for our listeners, we have several of our families, uh faculty, coaches, administrators that live in an area called the Cove. During World War II, those houses were officers' quarters. Then when Dr. Williams acquired the property, he acquired those houses. So at the time we had 27 houses built during World War II, and they're full. We have coaches, faculty, staff living back there. That's where you are living.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Yes, yes. So we um they got that phone call at 1:30 in the morning, and uh, houses on fire, and I'm FaceTiming watching my house burn. My family's not awake, and um long story short, I ended up calling the insurance company, go ahead and claiming it, and uh, we had some renters insurance, which was good. Um, and then I had to wake up my wife and tell her we cried there in the bathroom at the hotel, and then we had to wake up our girls, they were excited about going, or like they were wondering why we're waking up at four in the morning, and had to tell them. And the first thing that I remember was Langley, my oldest, crying because she was worried about our neighbor's daughter who is about the same age. And just that moment, I'm like, that's that she's not thinking about herself. Yeah, and anyways, we we come home, we didn't know what we were coming home to, and we come home and we walk into the house, and you know, my daughter and my my wife walk to my oldest's room, and it's just torched from the top to bottom. She lost everything, and just hearing her cry was was the hardest thing. Um, but I remember the one thing I remember is just turning around and you and and other employees were were there just waiting on us. Yeah. And at that moment, it was it was awesome because you didn't you didn't feel like you were alone. And it's different. Then the season, the season when we had the horrible season, we felt like horrible. No, but uh it's but that's what's so cool was that here it was we didn't feel alone. Like it was like the Lord was like, Yeah, this is awful, but I got you. Yeah. Like, you know, and and and so we never had to worry about what was next. Like I remember us coming out and and and you guys came in and said, Okay, here's what we're doing. You're gonna stay in this apartment, then you're gonna move to that app. Like, we didn't go without, and that was awesome. Like looking back on it, and you know, we're we're sitting there. I remember my wife, she's having to, she works for another school, and she's sitting in the in the apartment. We got pictures of her at this little makeshift table doing work and and we're doing clothes lines. We we look like a it's like a refugee camp almost, like just clothes just hanging everywhere, and and we we were just um I don't know, it's just like God used the people here to help us and carry us through. And it it does still sting and we still think about it often. Sure. Um, but just knowing that the Lord through y'all like had us.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Someday, not today, don't know when, that's God's prerogative, he will ask you to steward that experience. I always think of Luke 22, where Jesus and Peter are talking, and the Lord tells him that he's gonna deny. Peter denies the denial, and Jesus said, Nope, you're gonna do it. And then he tells them, I'm praying for you that your faith may not fail. And when you return, encourage your brothers. And I I have latched on that phrase, when you return, encourage others. That Peter will have a responsibility of stewarding that horrible failure that was public and humiliating. It was a failure even in his job as an apostle. His job was to speak for Jesus, stand for Jesus, defend Jesus, uh, preach Jesus, and when it came time to do it, he dropped the ball horrifically. There would come a time, maybe more than once, we don't know all those, when I believe he would be asked to steward that pain and that failure, that trial to help others. So sometime, Josh, knowing how the Lord works, at least in my life and in the life of others, he may work in your life too. And you may draw upon that experience and that trial, what God taught you, and encourage others. You may have already done it, it may already be going on now.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Yeah, that's a that's what me and my wife we we we're we kid around, but we're serious. It's like, okay, next time we hear of anyone that their house burned. Yeah, like we're there. Like, because we see we saw. We we actually what was so emotional is we saw the hands and feet of Jesus. Wow. And we got to see that.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Well, as you were talking, uh, I was thinking about when we lived through Hurricane Katrina and a lot of those similar experiences of community coming together, community supporting, uh, dealing with loss. We didn't have much, but we had colleagues that did. Um, yeah, it's a thing. And God asked us to use those things to help others.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Well, coach, we're proud of you. We're grateful the Lord led you to Williams. We're grateful that He has and continues to carry you and sustain you. And we appreciate not just the coaching, but the ministry of coaching and the impact that you're having on the lives of so many of your athletes and beyond and through them, the life on our campus. Thank you. Thank you. Grateful to have you here today. Yes, sir. It was fun.