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Editor’s note: The following interview was conducted before Ed Gomes changed positions at Liberty University. Dr. Gomes is now Liberty’s first director of faculty and staff care and counseling under the Office of Spiritual Development. He was director of spiritual development for the Liberty University Flames football team.
As director of spiritual development for the Liberty University Flames football team in Lynchburg, Virginia, New Bedford native Edmund “Ed” Gomes burns with a passion to develop young men into well-rounded Christians, scholar-athletes, and members of society.
As Gomes told the Liberty Journal, the university’s magazine: “My mission, my passion, the thing that wakes me up in the morning is I want to help our young men become intentional about their relationship with God and make an impact on our football team.”
Gomes knows what it is to balance athletics and education. The one-time New Bedford Vocational and Bishop Stang High School (Class of ’72) basketball star is one of six sons who followed the path of their father, standout athlete Tony “Geech” Gomes. Three of his five sisters were skilled players, too.
Gomes grew up in the South Central neighborhood of New Bedford, a couple of blocks from the police station where his father was an officer by night; by day, he worked a second job at the Berkshire Hathaway textile mill. His “amazing” mother, Lydia, was a homemaker for the family of 13.
After a year at the Newport Bible College, Gomes took his basketball skills and his deep faith to Virginia, enrolling at the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr.’s fledgling Lynchburg Baptist College in 1974.
When he arrived, the campus “was just trees,” he recalls in a YouTube video about his career. There were no athletic fields; the basketball team played on a borrowed high school court. To see what Falwell envisioned, a liberal arts university that now has 15 schools and colleges and a powerhouse athletic program, become reality is, Gomes says, “an absolute miracle.”
While playing as a star point guard, setting single-season and career records in assists (256 and 476 respectively) and a single-season record in steals (137), Gomes earned his bachelor’s degree in youth ministry. He traveled two years with Life Action Ministries of Buchanan, Michigan, before returning to the renamed Liberty Baptist College to study in its theological seminary. Gomes worked as resident director while pursuing his seminary degree, completing his studies in 1985.
(Gomes is not the only family member who found his vocation in serving God. His brother Martin was the first Cape Verdean American to be ordained into the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a Roman Catholic religious order.)
While a college student, Gomes met his wife-to-be, Ruth, who was the daughter of the Rev. Manuel Chavier, beloved pastor of the International Church of the Nazarene in New Bedford. Gomes later became associate pastor at the church, ministering from 1986 to ’95, and while in New Bedford, served as chaplain for the police and on the boards of the Kiwanis Club and the New Bedford YMCA.
After preaching at Liberty’s convocation in 1995, Gomes says he felt a call from God to return to Lynchburg, landing a position as dean of commuting students from 1996-2000. When the football coach observed how he mentored a player, he recruited Gomes to minister to the team in the same way and train “champions for Christ.” A number of players Gomes helped to shape became professional football players, including Samkon Gado, Mike Brown, Rashad Jennings, and Chris Summers.
Gomes completed his Doctor of Ministry degree at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in 2007 and he is a member of the pastoral staff at Thomas Road Baptist Church.
In 2023, he was honored along with a former coach by the naming of the Gomes and Redding Athletics Dining Hall at Liberty.
Gomes lives in Lynchburg with his wife of 47 years, Ruth, who retired three years ago as a professor in the university’s Family and Consumer Sciences Department. The couple shares two children, Priscilla Bramlett and Josh Gomes, both Liberty University alumni, and four grandchildren.
In this conversation with The Light, Gomes discusses his path to becoming chaplain of the Liberty Flames, his approach to shaping the character of student-athletes, and how the skills he learned as a team player have served him throughout his life.
New Bedford Light: You have been director of spiritual development for the Liberty Flames football team since 2001. How did you land in that position?
Ed Gomes: What happened is, I was actually serving as the dean of commuter students. I was responsible for the students who were living off campus, and I was dealing with a football player, and he had some issues. So, the football coach said, “This is what we need for our football team.” Of course, my first thought was, “You gotta be nuts, because if the head coach gets fired, there’s no job security.”
But I was reading a book by (Pastor) Rick Warren, and in that book, there’s a little section on your SHAPE of ministry: your spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and experiences. When I read that, it was a no-brainer. So that’s how I got involved with football, and I’ve been the football chaplain ever since.
NBL: Tell me about your Whole Person Development approach.
EG: It’s based on the Bible, Luke chapter two, verse 52, where it says that “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.” The wisdom has to do with the academic piece. The stature has to do with the athletic, the physical piece, and then favor with God, that’s the spiritual piece, and (favor with) man is the social piece.
Basically, we have a game plan to help our guys win academically, athletically, socially, and spiritually. Everything we do focuses on one of those four areas. When I look at a player, he may be doing well academically, he may be doing well athletically, but maybe he’s not doing well socially or spiritually. So those are the areas that we’re going to talk about. How can we help him?
The illustration I use is an automobile. The automobile has four tires, and the key is the right amount of air pressure in each tire. So, if you’re driving from here to Fall River, and your left front tire is flat and your front right is half full and your back is three-quarters and your back right is fine, it’s not going to be a good ride. The key is the right amount of air pressure.
Through relationships, we encourage the kids to win in those four areas … the four basic areas of Whole Person Development.
NBL: Can you explain what discipleship is?
EG: Discipleship is helping younger men navigate through life with purpose. Yeah, I would say discipleship is helping young men figure out life from a biblical perspective. For example, for some it’s (dealing with) losing a family member. How do I process that? How do I walk through that? Maybe making bad choices. It’s taking life experiences and passing them on to others and helping them to maybe eliminate some pitfalls that you went through. So, discipleship is helping somebody get where they want to go. … helping them to find their destiny, what they want to do, and then how to get there.
NBL: You were a star basketball player in high school and college. How did the skills acquired on the basketball court impact how you have lived your life?
EG: What you learn through sports is, you learn it’s not just about you. You learn about teamwork, you learn about discipline, you learn about sacrifice, you learn about how to overcome adversity. (For example) you went to the foul line and you had a chance just by making one foul shot to win the ballgame, and you missed it. How do I respond to adversity? Life doesn’t always go the way you want it to go. So, there’s so many things that are applicable to life. …
Sometimes my mind and body don’t always want to do what they need to do, but because I learned in basketball that sometimes you have to do things that your mind and body don’t want to do, because you’re tired — now, in life, you have the same scenario. You take what you learned in basketball or in any other sport, and you practice it in life. …
I’ve always heard you can have the most talented team, but if it’s all about individuals, the team that is committed to each other, in the long run, it’s going to go further than the team that is focused on individuals, right? In life, you help others. You not only help others, but you need the help of others.
There’s so many life applications from athletics. … You’ve got to make a good read on the court. … So in life, you’ve got to make good reads. Is this really going to help me? Is this going to hurt me? Is this going to help me achieve my goal? Is this going to help me help someone else achieve their goal? There’s so many applications to life.
NBL: As a man of God yourself, what is your impression of the new pope, Leo XIV?
EG: One of the things I thought of, in just listening to where he’s been, he is a man of humility, one who looks for the best in others. He seems like someone who wants to be a peacemaker. You know, obviously spending the time that he spent in Peru helping others, he has a love for the poor. It seems like all the basic qualities that would be essential to be a spiritual leader are things that he has demonstrated.
NBL: Can you describe your “shoeshine ministry,” and tell me what you hope it achieves?
EG: You know, when I think of my shoeshine ministry, I think of a little boy, about 10 years old, building his own shoeshine box, and on Sunday afternoon, going to certain barrooms or certain locations in the downtown area, to shine shoes to make some money.
When I think of the shoeshine ministry, originally it was to make some money, but then later on in life, it was an opportunity to serve others with a gift that I have developed.
So today if you come to my office, I’ve got a shoeshine box, and I don’t know sign language, but if I see a pair of shoes that needs to be shined, I’m going to tell you to sit down and I’m going to shine your shoes. For me, it’s another way to be a blessing, to be a blessing to others like others were blessings to me.
NBL: Some day, when people look back on the life of the Rev. Dr. Edmund Gomes, how do you want them to remember what you’ve accomplished?
EG: That’s a great question.
I would want people to say that he genuinely loved people, wanted the best for others. (That) he helped me. …
There were people that gave me a second chance. There were people who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. So today, when I look at some of these players that I work with, they remind me of where I was, where they’re at. So how can I help him get where he wants to go?
Sometimes it’s sharing “Hey, there was a point where I didn’t listen to my parents. I didn’t listen to my coaches. I didn’t listen to my teachers. But when I accepted Christ as my personal savior, my junior year in high school, everything changed. From that point on, I never had a problem with my parents, never had a problem with the police, never had a problem with my teachers, and never had a problem with my coaches. Everything changed.”
It was like God gave me a new “want to”: I want to be respectful. I want to do the right thing. I want to make life more about others than myself. But that’s when everything changed.
The bottom line would be that I want to be known for helping others get where they would like to go. … I hear players say, “There was a time when I wasn’t making good choices, but you didn’t give up on me, and today I’m married, I have a master’s degree, I’m a CEO in a big company.”
Those are the opportunities to say “Hey, your coaches really want the best for you. Your parents really want the best for you.”
So that’s what I would say.
Joanna McQuillan Weeks is a freelance writer and frequent correspondent for The New Bedford Light.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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