Throughout this year’s World cup we showed all the England games on one of our big screens at church. We started with England v USA which we showed in our youth cafe with over 70 people turning out, the Friday evening game against Algeria saw over 180 people, and then for the last group game against Slovenia, during the day, we had about 30 people turn out.
With all of these games it was interesting to see that we didn’t just have lots of young people, but the full range of families, and some of our older people
The game against Germany on the Sunday was our lowest attendance this was surprising, although there could be a number of reasons to explain this: as it was a Sunday afternoon people were more likely to watch it together as a family; having had to wait until the group stage was over we’d had less chance to publicise the specific timings and this then coincided with me being on holiday so we didn’t catch as many fans as we expected.
Here’s a picture of the England v USA game:
Overall I’m really glad we showed the games, we created a place for people to come together and be community, and watch the game in a high quality environment (even if we missed the first goal because of ITV HD!). A number of non-Christians enjoyed the atmosphere and non-threatening context.
Did you show any of the games, and if so how did it go for you?
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