FollowThe Super Bowl is this Sunday. (My son and I will be at the Chicago Ohare airport waiting for our flight home- we’ll only catch the first half of the big game. DOH!!)
For years churches in the U.S. have loved to use the “Big Game” as a tool for connecting with people. Whether youth ministries, men’s ministries or church-wide events… we’ve seen them… Super Bowl parties.
A few things you should know about these parties.
Years ago some churches got into some trouble with the NFL. The short of it was this– the NFL wasn’t allowing live showings of the game on anything over a 55 inch screen. People threw a tizzy fit. So in 2009, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell changed that.
Some people are still confused about the rules and restrictions. No worries! Here’s a law abiding Texan with a mullet who will make things crystal clear for you:
CLICK HERE IF YOU CAN’T SEE THE IMBEDDED YOUTUBE VIDEO.
For those of you looking for some fun resources for the “Big Game” (see… I listened!), we provide a quiz with some fun “Big Game” party ideas every year (Here’s last year’s BIG GAME QUIZ and ideas).
This year we’ll be sending out the BIG GAME QUIZ to our EZINE LIST Tuesday morning (if you aren’t a subscriber to our free youth ministry EZINE, you can jump on TheSource4YM.com and easily subscribe at the top of any page). We’ll probably also post a link for the quiz on the WHAT’S NEW section on the front page of our site as well.
Enjoy the “Big Game!”
Posted in Church, Entertainment Media, Humor, TV | | Leave A Comment
Jonathan you forgot one thing…GO STEELERS!!
These are helpful tips, and I applaud the effort to toe the copyright line.
But I’m more interested in the theological pitfalls than the legal ones. Should churches be so quick to tacitly condone–even endorse–the Superbowl’s blatant celebration of materialistic excess? And how do we justify our official sanction of such a gladiatorial game? In other words, is it a problem to center our Christian fellowship around a sport that pays its players to destroy their bodies and brains?
Thank you Matt for touching on the issue that we so often tiptoe around in our Christian churches. Calling it a gladiatorial game is just right… I was at a hockey game a couple of years back and there was a guy beside me SCREAMING at one of the players. “Come on, lets see a blood bath! Hurt him, hurt him good!” You can’t go to a sporting event, except maybe golf and bowling and not see something like this. It seems to me that us Christians sometimes ignore Jesus’ call to love by simply being excited to see it and maybe even encouraging our athletes to beat the other guy up.
I personally think that maybe the church is the right place for us to watch the Super Bowl… at least we won’t be tempted to call for a “blood bath”…