Phoenix Suns chaplain returns to preach, minister to team after health scare

Pro athletes and their head coaches endure a lot of stress. They also can have a spiritual connection to their game and life away from it.

For the Phoenix Suns, team chaplain Travis Hearn helps players and coaches contend with the anxieties that can surface before and after their games.

“I feel like we all are created on purpose and for a purpose. I think the people who are the happiest on Earth and the most fulfilled in earth in life, they know what they’re built to do,” Hearn told The Republic.

Hearn himself found renewed purpose late last year, after suffering a serious stroke that left him unable to speak. But he recovered enough to return to his ministry.

“When you’re in a sweet spot of doing what you’re built to do, that’s where you find so much joy and so much life. For me, ministry is about helping people. It’s about helping the hurting, and hurting all around us.”

The 48-year-old Hearn, or "PT" for Pastor Travis as his closest associates and the Suns call him, has been the team's minister since 2002. He runs their game-day chapel services one hour before every home game, where players or coaches can pray with him before they enter the court. He also holds bible studies.

“It provides a moment of clarity and perspective. You play this game, it’s an emotional game, it’s a stressful game, and for us, it’s a means to feed our families and fulfill my purpose," Suns general manager James Jones told The Republic.

"So when you walk into the building, typically from the moment you come down to rim, you’re focused on the game and that’s the biggest thing in your life. But PT just provides us a moment of clarity where we can have perspective in realize there are things way bigger than us, that life is bigger than the game of basketball,'' Jones said. "Doing life and navigating life with people who understand that, believe there are higher purposes for us as beings. It’s cool because it just gives you that balance that you need to be stable and be successful in the sport.”

Visiting team members are welcome to attend the pregame chapel services Hearns holds as well.

“The one cool thing about the NBA is that every team opens that door up for all the players time to pray whether you’re Christian or not," Suns coach Monty Williams told The Republic. "I know guys from other religions and teams have opened up different rooms in the league so they can go pray.”

Williams said he met Hearn 20 years ago before he retired as an NBA player. Their spiritual bond grew stronger when Williams was hired as the Suns' head coach in May 2019.

Williams, a devout Christian, has been attending pregame chapels since he entered the league with the New York Knicks in 1994.

“I think from there you build a relationship with different chaplains around the league just because you go all the time," Williams said. "We had a connection because he’s been there for so long. And if you’re here for as long as he has been, as a player and as a coach you understand that guy’s committed to the program, he’s committed to the players ...

"So when we (Williams and his family) moved here, he was really good about connecting with me on a personal level. Our kids went to the same school, so that helped a little bit. He’s just a good dude.”

Williams added that the Suns players who frequently attend such as Cam Johnson, Mikal Bridges, Damion Lee, and Bismack Biyombo, connect with Hearn because he “shoots it straight” and challenges them.

Hearn is a self-proclaimed sneakerhead who likes to wear rap superstar Travis Scott's Cactus Jack edition Nike shoes, a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and a baseball hat during his ministries. He believes his "come as you are" attire reduces the barrier between himself and the people he preaches to, not a suit and tie in his Sunday services at his Scottsdale-based Impact Church and at the Suns chapel.

“I could care less about what a chaplain wears. My concern is when I go to chapel is if he’s preaching God’s word and that’s it," Williams said. "I could care less about him being relatable, him being hip, the tennis shoes, that doesn’t bother me at all, and I don’t think it should even come into the equation. The bottom line is Pastor Travis sold out for Jesus. Every day he comes into the chapel, he preaches God’s word, we pray and he loves on people. I think that’s what the guys connect to.”

Sports ministry included baseball

Hearn's Scottsdale church office is adorned with framed jerseys of retired and active pro athletes who have attended his ministries. That includes Jones from his time as a player with Cleveland, Devin Booker’s 2020 All-Star Game jersey, Booker’s teammates Johnson and Bridges, along with James Harden, Tim Tebow, Shawn Marion, and former Arizona Cardinals’ Larry Fitzgerald, David Johnson, Patrick Peterson, and Andre Wadsworth.

“I’ve had (Shaquille O’Neal) in my ministry,” Hearn said about O’Neal’s time with the Suns from 2008 until the next year. “Shaq would always want to be right next to me for the team prayer. He’d always put his palm on my head, and I’d feel these fingers coming down my forehead because he’s so big. I’ve had great moments with the guys.”

Hearn started his path into sports ministries for the Kansas City Royals’ chapels during their spring training in Surprise when he lived in the West Valley during his early 20s. Then was asked to fill in for the Suns' chapels soon after in 2002. In 2010, he began to work at the Oakland Athletics’ chapels when their spring training operations were located near the Phoenix Zoo.

That same year is when he helped start Impact Church in Scottsdale, which began as a Bible study for the Cardinals and was coordinated by Wadsworth in 2009. The church’s first Sunday was in July 2010, which 240 people attended, and his wife Natalie helmed the Cardinals' wives' Bible study.

His growing church congregation forced him to focus his ministries with the Suns and his church, which Hearn said had about 6,000 people attend both virtually and in their 1700-capacity sanctuary, during the last two Sundays in January.

“The church just got so big that I had to let baseball go,” Hearn said. “We’ve seen marriages restored. We’ve seen drug addicts set free by the hundreds. There’s nothing like that feeling to be like, ‘Man, our ministry was a vessel to help that dude get off heroin, helping that woman get her marriage back. Whatever mental help, that’s been my sole purpose, sole intent for ministry.”

Health scare brings its own challenge

But his life came to a halt on Nov. 14 last year when he suffered a stroke within his brain’s basal ganglia area.

That contains a group of structures near the center that forms vital connections to allow different areas of the brain to work together, which manages signals the brain sends to help move muscles.

Two weeks after being in the hospital, Hearn’s cardiologist told his wife that strokes in that area are mostly irreversible, and he escaped “being dead or a vegetable.”

When he awoke from his coma, Hearn said he didn’t know his birth date, the names of his three children or the day of the week. He couldn't speak.

“When I had my stroke, I see the world differently. I’m probably a little radical but I just don’t think things happen accidentally. I think there’s a purpose behind the people we meet, the places we go, the interactions that we have,'' he said.

He recovered over the next month, regaining memory and other functions. He returned to preaching via a video recording on Christmas Eve, then returned to the sanctuary on Jan. 16.

Hearn lauded the doctors and therapists he met during his medical emergency, and called his return to the pulpit a miracle. He also noted that Monty Williams was one of the first people who called him while he was recovering.

He's still recovering, with the right side of his body still numb, but that hasn't stopped him from returning to his church and resuming his duties holding chapel services for the Suns.

"Having a stroke in some sort of weird way, I just think there’s purpose in it. There’s people who I’ve never would’ve met without it.”

Have tips for us? Reach the reporter at dana.scott@azcentral.com or at 480-486-4721. Follow his Twitter @iam_DanaScott.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix Suns chaplain returns to preach, minister to team after health scare