Four Easy Ways to Be Missional During the Super Bowl
There are several days on the calendar that I call “Culture Days.” A Culture Day is pretty self-explanatory; it’s a day marked on the cultural calendar (and often the actual calendar) that is highly regarded, has lots of participation, and is not distinctly religious in any way. It’s a Culture Day.
Good Examples of Culture Days are:
Most Holidays
- Halloween
- Christmas
- Thanksgiving
- Fourth of July
- MLK Day
Big Events
- National Championships
- Election Day
- Super Bowl
There are a great deal of them. The point of a Culture Day with mission and engaging is they provide amazing avenues for a community to build new relationships and serve as beautiful on-ramps for the Gospel. One of the most basic principles of biblical mission is a willingness to adopt someone else’s culture to reach them for Christ.
February 2nd is a great opportunity for a Gospel Community or your family to be on mission as it is one of the bigger Culture Days: The Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is a massive place for community, food, laughter (commercials alone are worth watching!), and building new relationships.
So, whether you enjoy football or not, here are 4 easy ways to demonstrate the gospel, and be on mission during the Super Bowl this year.
1. A Collective Effort
The first is to make it a collective effort. Have your Gospel Community join in the fun with you. If you’re hosting a Super Bowl party, invite your community to invite THEIR community. Don’t make it a closed off effort, have an open invte to anyone connected to your community to come join in.
2. Encourage Story
Encourage story with everyone! Walk around and lead in learning and inviting story. Be the story encourager at your Super Bowl Party. One of the best ways to encourage story is to ask meaningful and open ended questions.
- How did you and your spouse meet?
- Why did you choose the career your in?
- What do you like about living here?
There is no bait and switch here, either. We aren’t asking questions so we can get to the Jesus bit. We are building relationships. Nothing does that more than encourage a place for stories and life to be shared!
3. Have Great Food
One thing that is always a blessing, and can take a bad party and make it much better is really great food. Again, be inclusive of your community here and provide a killer potluck style feast for your guests.
It is an easy way to be a blessing, and open a space at your table and party for others to enjoy!
4. Give Stuff Away
One practice we have at our community’s Super Bowl party is a gift basket. We make an awesome basket of coffee, movie tickets, and a gift card and give it away to the person who guesses the score correctly. This simple practice tells the story of how God lavishes the gift of Jesus on us.
Mission and sharing the Gospel story with others does not have to be complicated, but it does require us to be present and intentional. This Sunday is a great time set aside by our culture for us to do both!
- Dakota Zook, Gospel Community Pastor