At The Gathering a couple of weeks ago we had a discussion on making teams during our Rapid Fire Q & A time. I think almost every sports minister struggles with this. I know as a sports minister, I routinely hear complaints about the composition of the teams from parents.
As we went around the room and each sports minister described their process, we realized that almost everyone there tended to drift to one extreme or another. The two extremes were:
1. Equal Competition
2. Relationships/Requests
There are strengths and weaknesses to both of these extremes. If you focus exclusively on equal competition, you miss the opportunity to leverage relationships for ministry. For example, if you have a believing family from your church who invites a non-believing neighbor to play on their soccer team–it would make sense to keep them together, right? Unfortunately, if equal competition is the only criteria considered for making teams, then chances are they won’t end up on the same team. Conversely, if you focus exclusively on relationships and requests, chances are your teams will have no competitive balance. Under this system, parents could abuse the grace shown and use the system to “stack” their teams.
So, what’s the right
answer? How should you compose your teams? What principles should you keep in mind and what are the right questions to ask?
Stay tuned for Part 2 where we will address these questions.
