Like thousands of people in Maine, I recently found out that John Wolfgram died.

Like no one else in the world, I am the priest who prayed last rites with him in his home.

John Wolfgram is a beloved figure all over Maine, known widely for his extraordinary high school football coaching career and the uncommon way he connected with his players and students through the decades. The paper ran excellent articles about this man on Aug. 6, which I read with great appreciation.

After reading, I realized there was an important part of John missing in these local reports, and that I should speak up: John Wolfgram was a man of deep religious conviction. I am the rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Cape Elizabeth, where John Wolfgram faithfully attended the 8 a.m. service every Sunday, with few exceptions, for decades.

The reason it is important for this part of John’s story to be told is that I believe his faith was the quiet engine of his extraordinary character and consistency in coaching. His brand of success wasn’t an accident, it was the product of years of hearing Jesus command him to love his neighbor, every Sunday.

John was a man who really — like, actually — believed. His faith oozed out of him in the ways he clutched his hands and bowed his head in prayer, in the way he came forward for communion with open hands of humility and gratefulness, and the way he read scripture (I especially loved his accent and joked that I would schedule him to read whenever the lesson included the word “heart”). Real faith was evident in the way he supported countless members of our community with words of encouragement in difficult times. He had an uncanny hunch for when there was a tender opportunity to build others up, and he knew how to do it. He coached us in faith.

His coaching wasn’t complex. It was “faith like a child,” an idea extolled by Jesus as an ideal spirituality. That’s not naivety, it’s a flat acknowledgement that life requires all of us to decide just how we will face our uncertain futures; we can be stymied by fear and indecision, or we can send it like a toddler eating cake.

John knew the only way to face his future was to be all in on a God who made us with love for love.

I am talking about a man who married his high school sweetheart. A man who took his family touring the country to ride roller coasters. A man who ate ice cream almost every day. A man who prayed and encouraged and loved and served and taught and coached thousands like he believed it would change the world.

And he was right.

If there’s anyone reading this who wants to grow up to be like John Wolfgram, it’s important that you know about this quiet component of his success: his joy was in God’s love.

There’s a pew at St. Alban’s that will sit empty at 8 a.m. now. Perhaps it’s calling out for someone like you to come and pray like John did … and change the world.

All are welcome, no exceptions.