First Christian Reformed Partners with Soccer Chaplains United

Thanks to Board Member Jan van Vliet and his work to engage the local church, First Christian Reformed Church in Sioux Center, IA has provided a grant to Soccer Chaplains United for 2025. The grant will specifically go toward our efforts to raise and train up new chaplains in the soccer space. The cost of discovering and developing new, volunteer chaplains continues to increase as soccer continues to grow in popularity and the number of professional teams is experiencing explosive growth throughout North America. The grant goes a long way in helping us grow the chaplaincy.

We recently conducted some research to uncover how much a typical chaplain placement costs Soccer Chaplains United. While there are many things that cause variations in a placement, the average cost is right around $2850 for a first year placement. The ongoing costs for supporting a chaplain are around $750/year. Some of these costs are offset by membership fees that we ask of our chaplains, but that usually only covers a fraction of the cost.

I’ve started to liken the work of raising up volunteer chaplains with soccer teams as a type of “church-planting” kind of work. It’s very entrepreneurial. It’s very difficult — sometimes we have to do a lot of work to educate a secular soccer club as to what chaplaincy is and isn’t. Sometimes, the people with these teams have had very negative experiences of sports ministry or the church. Sometimes, people are very skeptical about religion “in the locker room,” so to speak.

Regardless, we continue to work to do this education and prove ourselves worthy of the trust and confidence of the clubs to connect them into local pastors and ministers who have no agenda other than offering really good spiritual and emotional care and support for the people at a soccer club. Whether it’s the athletes on the pitch, the coaches on the sidelines, or the fans in the stands— our work is to love and serve people as Jesus taught us to.

Soccer Chaplains United depends a lot on our individual supporters and church partners to continue advancing the work of placing volunteer chaplains with the soccer teams that we serve. A lot of time goes into the discovery aspect. Pictured above (Rev Justin Noseworthy, Pastor Martin Lewis, and Pastor Amy Miller) are the past few chaplains that we’ve been able to place. It’s such a blessing to work with these men and women!

Soccer Chaplains United is non-profit, 501(c)3 and depends upon the financial support of individuals and partners to carry out our work of discovering, developing, and deploying chaplains across all levels of soccer. Please consider making a contribution today. Click the PushPay link below to make a gift or check out our Donate page for different giving options.