t: 0845 071 4390
Ambassadors in Sport (Registered Office)
Claremont House St. Georges Road, Bolton. BL1 2BY. England
Registered in England and Wales | Company Number 3172553 | Charity Number 1055422]
‘To empower the church to engage effectively with the football culture and community’.
Local churches are the centre of AIS long term tactics because local churches have the;
i) Strategic locations in virtually every UK community,
ii) Resource base as the biggest volunteer group in the UK
iii) Historical involvement with the development of football.
AIS will therefore seek to empower local churches both here in the UK and overseas for effective engagement with the football culture and community by;
a/ Envisioning – From the outset AIS alongside local churches have aimed to pioneer, develop and practice football models of transformational excellence around the world. Hence the vision is passed on through demonstration based models in order that people can come and see.
b/ Equipping – From the experience of developing global models, AIS seeks to provide teaching, training and resources for churches to effectively engage with football and community.
c/ Enabling – From the foundation of training workers, AIS seeks to provide appropriate UK and overseas opportunities for people to be agents of transformation in football and community.
The primary way in which people will be envisioned, equipped and enabled by AIS is through the concept of club. Football clubs are the heartbeat of the football world and often a focal centre within local communities. Therefore AIS wants to be intentional about tying in as much of its work (e.g. in schools, prisons, youth offenders, detached youth work, churches, youth clubs, teams, leagues, tours, tournaments, soccer schools, soccer weekends, football in the community and amongst the marginalised e.g. ‘Kids at Risk and homeless football projects) not into the AIS charity brand name but into local expressions of community i.e. football clubs.
The aim is to replicate what is happening in and through football clubs but with the hope of being agents of transformation by holding onto core vision, identity and values in the process. Thus AIS hopes to see renewed positive expressions of football clubs impacting all elements of a club i.e. adult teams (including coaching), junior teams (coaching, development and even academies), football in the community (social action and educational projects), a location that people can identify with, administration/development (background support to make the club function properly) and supporters (not just watching the games but upholding the whole club).
Whilst the setting up of church based football clubs has value, it is also limited in that there are over 125,000 football teams in existence within England alone who could potentially be influenced for good by the church. Therefore within this tactical emphasis of club, there needs to be a balance of encouraging the sending out of people to be agents of transformation into existing clubs as players, coaches, chaplains, administrators, supporters etc as well as the ingathering local community models of church based football clubs.
tactics
