by Ryan McAdams

* You probably know the sport as “soccer.”

Visit a youth soccer (football, from now on) match of your choosing on any given Saturday, and you’ll likely hear coaches barking instructions like stay back, Tanner, you’re a defender! or kick it up front! Once they’ve moved beyond the all-bunch-around-the-ball stage, you’ll see the kids find a certain sense of comfort in the position to which the coaches assign them, to the point that a kid will rarely leave the general zone of his position. (Many in and outside of the United States have pointed to this as a major flaw in the United States’s youth soccer development system.) In fact, the early development of the sport of football would also look this way, too, with two or three defenders, and up to eight forwards on one side of the pitch (field), and the same match-up in reverse on the other side, with the defenders desperately trying to kick the ball to the other side of the field, and nobody running in between.

But, in the early 1970s, while football had advanced to include midfielders, the Netherlands, under visionary coach Rinus Michaels began to introduce a concept in their play, which they named “Total Football.” They thought that every member of the team should have the ability to play in any position on the pitch. For the old positionally rigid teams, this would pose a problem when one of the Dutch defenders decided that he saw an opportunity and took off down the field to join the other attackers. Additionally, nobody expected defenders to have any skill in dribbling or passing, but opposing teams found that with these skills, the Dutch could keep the ball almost indefinitely. Indeed, this philosophy reached its zenith in the 1974 World Cup Final, where the Dutch scored their first goal after about a minute of play, and the Germans hadn’t touched the ball once. You may think, I don’t remember the Dutch winning a World Cup, and you’d be right – they actually lost that match 2-1, with most observers claiming that the Dutch simply had more interest in passing and playing with the ball than scoring after that first goal.

But, the reality is that certain players do have certain strengths and weaknesses, and so you have many present-day teams which have adopted part of the philosophy of Total Football without completely abandoning the idea of distinct roles. One of the major tenets of Total Football which helped to cement its legacy was the way in which the teams adjusted and viewed space. In the scenario I previously described, a defender who saw an opening would join the attackers, but this only initiated a chain reaction of sorts. Ideally, the other ten players on his team would understand his intention, know where he was and where he was going, and adjust to cover the space he vacated in the defense. The entire team would adapt to the situation and support each other in the common goal of scoring and preventing scoring from their opponents. Forwards would run back to help in defense if an opposing player began to break away, or wide defenders would run forward along the sidelines into open space to give their attacking players another passing option.

And this brings us to Children’s Ministry. Like football, Children’s Ministry (or any ministry, really) can crystallize into a specific routine, like the message and post-message discussions happen first hour, and singing and activity happen second hour. (Coincidentally, this approximates our Sonlight elementary school ministry schedule.) This schedule has nothing inherently wrong in it, but we can focus so much on our position/routine that we neglect the goal of our ministry. Those of us who serve in the Children’s Ministry and the children’s parents work on a team to instill God’s Word in the children’s hearts. Just like most modern-day clubs take ideas from Total Football, yet still retain the sense of positions, God has very clearly given the parents the primary role of shepherding their children, and the children’s ministries must work to support the parents in their shepherding.

To this end, as the Sonlight ministry, we must have the flexibility to adapt to the changing needs of our parents and abilities of our staff. So, if the first-hour message and second-hour singing and crafts helps the parents teach God’s word to their children best, then we keep it. But, if not, we must have the humility to move into other space and try different things. We facilitate communication lines between the parents and staff so that we can work together for their children’s edification, and so that we as the staff can understand the parents’ intentions and situations and fit ourselves to the current state of the playing field. This may lead to Sonlight looking radically different from one year to the next while always instructing the children in God’s word. But if Sonlight is simply responding to the new set of children and changing needs of the parents, then that difference should not cause concern. Rather, show concern if Sonlight never changes.