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EDITORIAL

MVP League

During a leadership transition in sports ministry, you may ask how your church can continue in sports ministry? Is there a way to conduct a season during a change of leadership that allows for a new leader to learn on a smaller scale and offers a great experience to families? The answer is YES!
Please rely on the Upward Sports team as we are always ready to guide and support you as you decide the best way to conduct your sports ministry, for your situation, in your community.

Knowing your goal is to share the gospel, focus on the fundamentals of conducting a league with the following five ideas.

  1. Make sure when setting up your league in MyUpward.org, you have selected the option for participants to register online. This step saves you from having to shuffle paperwork, collect money, and participant sizing information. Instead, all of that information will be handled within the Upward systems for you when participants are registered online.
  2. Consider limiting the number of participants and teams you will have in each division. Limiting the number of participants and teams can be accomplished during league setup in MyUpward. You will then know exactly how many coaches you will need to recruit before you begin to take registrations.
  3. Move from the suggested eight-game season to a six-week season. Reducing the number of games means fewer weeks of volunteers and may make it easier to find volunteers for your game days because of a shorter time commitment.
  4. Remove non-essentials from the league experience. You will need to decide what these “nice to have,” but not essential things are for the experience you desire to provide. Things to leave out for this year may be concessions, elaborate season celebrations, or prize giveaways during the season.
  5. You can also adjust your ministry strategy with printed halftime messages rather than a live devotion each week. You can share the gospel in various ways, and maybe it is a combination of a live speaker for three weeks and handouts for three weeks. The goal is to spread the gospel.

While you may scale back in some areas, always keep it fun for the participants and their families. Make sure your coaches and other volunteers understand the goals of your ministry so that you are all supportive of each other during this time of transition.

If you show participants and families that you care about them, that they are learning, and the experience is fun, you may get to reimagine how you conduct sports ministry for years to come.