Coaches

We have a surprise for you. You may think you signed up to be a Sunday school teacher, but your job description has now changed to COACH! That is right, this year we will be studying the Bible with a boxing theme and we hope to have some fun with sports. Beloved teacher, start right now! Be a coach instead of a teacher, and it will help inspire you to care deeply about each student in your class, and their progress as they strive to become a champion.

Small groups

Create small groups of 3-7 children. Each small group needs a coach. The coaches do not need to attend class every week, but need to check in with their students or "athletes" each week. Assign one of your main leaders to be the head coach and to organize and inspire all the coaches.

Divide your class into small groups to help your students actually do the assignments during the week. Most Sunday school programs are at church, and do not require homework during the week. However, your students cannot "knockout" sin in their lives by learning about it. They must actually get "In the ring" and fight the actual sin that they face during the week. Honestly, without someone checking up on them, this will be almost impossible to do. Please do not "trust their word" and accept when students say they did an assignment. If you become lax about this program, you will be training your students to tell you lies. However, just imagine with me that if you can actually coach your students, and track that they are doing the homework, you will see real change in their lives. In just 1 year, you can turn their lives around! Your students will not be memorizing the fruit of the spirit, but will be actually learning to LIVE it!

To facilitate these small groups, we have created a handout for your coaches and a small book for your head coach. The coach's handouts are for each month and each fruit of the spirit. The head coach has a small book with the assignments for the full 3-month unit.

Head Coach Champions
Head Coach pamphlet 1

Only available as a download.

All the coaching information for unit 1 in one place. Give this to the "Head coach." - Unit 1

Coach Handouts Champions
Coach handouts 1

Only available as a download.

Give these to all the coaches for each month. Unit 1: Love, Joy, and Peace

Responsibilities for coaches

Coach:

  • Coach 3-5 children.
  • Meet with students for 5 minutes before and after class each week to discuss assignment and encourage them to become champions.
  • Call/text students weekly to remind them of the assignment. (Suggested=Tuesday)
  • Call/text students a second time weekly to get report of assignment done. (Suggested=Friday)
  • Keep track of assignments done for children in small group and report to head coach weekly.

Head Coach:

  • Meet with all the coaches for 5 minutes before class each week to discuss assignment and encourage them to coach faithfully their students.
  • Call/text coaches weekly to remind them of the assignment. (Suggested=Tuesday)
  • Call/text coaches a second time weekly to get report of assignments done. (Suggested=Friday)
  • Keep track of assignments done for all students.
  • Host monthly inspirational meetings for coaches and their families.

Recruiting

It may sound like a challenge to recruit more leaders so that you have enough coaches for small groups. However, this does not need to be that difficult. Here are some ideas to make finding coaches EASY:

  • Ask coaches to serve for only 1 month. Each month covers one fruit of the spirit. When asking adults for their commitment, if you only are asking for 1 month, many will be more willing to sign up. After the first month, if you make it easy and fun, they will want to sign up again!
  • Allow coaches to attend church as normal, but arrive at church 10 minutes early to meet with their students. Your coaches could attend your Sunday school class only once during the month, and the other weeks attend church as normal with the adults.
  • Text students instead of calling. Help your coaches set up automatic texts for the whole month, so that they can easily be in contact with their students. Do not forget that instead of traditional calling, you can also use Facebook accounts, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc.
  • Create a place at church for coaches to store a few items. In order to look "sporty" your coaches could wear sport caps or have whistles and water bottles. Instead of having to remember each week to bring these items, allow them to keep them at church. This way your coaches can wear their regular church clothes, and just pull on a few "sport" items to look like coaches.
  • Make the monthly meeting for coaches extra inspirational, so that they want to continue participating in the program as the year progresses.
  • Allow for larger groups if necessary. (With the help of group notifications on Facebook, it would not be that difficult for someone to coach 10 students.)

Inspirational meetings

The main job of the head coach is to keep the coaches motivated. One important way to do this is to host a monthly inspirational meeting. You can provide a meal, pray together, look at sports data and see how it can apply to our Christian lives. In addition, you can check out Olympic athletes or watch an inspirational sports movie together with popcorn or other yummy foods. Discuss with your coaches the idea that if it was worth it for the athletes to work hard, then isn’t it worth even more for us to work for spiritual and eternal gain?

 

Unit 2

Head Coach Champions 2
Head Coach pamphlet 2

Only available as a download.

All the coaching information for unit 2 in one place. Give this to the "Head coach." - Unit 1

Coach Handouts Champions 2
Coach handouts 2

Only available as a download.

Give these to all the coaches for each month. Unit 2: Patience, kindness and goodness

Head Coach Champions 3
Head Coach pamphlet 3

Only available as a download.

All the coaching information for unit 3 in one place. Give this to the "Head coach." - Unit 3

Coach Handouts Champions 3
Coach handouts 3

Only available as a download.

Give these to all the coaches for each month. Unit 3: Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control