Friday, August 5, 2016

Why I would never go to a church that removes its Pokestop



We all know that when Pokemon Go came out, a lot of the pokestops were at local churches.  The point of Pokemon Go is to get out in your community and visit places you have not visited before.  Some churches have embraced Pokemon Go and even allow people playing to come sit inside and quietly play their game while others have filled out the forms and had their pokestops removed.

A local church here had 2 pokestops.  One for the church itself and one for their graveyard.  While sitting in the sanctuary, you had access to both pokestops, but they had them removed.  This church struggles to get people.  It is a small, old church surrounded by new subdivisions full of young people with kids, yet it is dying and the members are clueless as to why.   This church could have had an outreach and offered pokestop bible games for kids, or had Pokestop hours, but instead, they chose to shut down the most popular game in the country.   Instead, they chose to be an old people's church full of hard benches and rules.  I am sure that will go over well with the local mom with four kids.

This is the problem with most churches.  They are so far into, "we are holier than that" that they cannot see that the people in the actual bible had real lives and real families and they had real interests that were outside of the four walls of the church.  Today is the same.  We are real people with real lives, and sometimes some of us just want to play a little online game.  I would have visited that church and sat there before and after service spinning the stop.

In a way, I feel bad for this church, because by removing their pokestops, they labeled themselves as the old people church.  Meanwhile, half a mile up the road, the church with a gym has embraced the game and welcomed anyone who wants to play.

Which church do you think is being more effective?

1 comment:

  1. Ahhh this is such an interesting post! I posted about pokemon go the other day myself... it's such a fascinating phenomenon, isn't it? I completely agree with you, I think the church who keeps its pokestop is 100% showing itself more open and welcoming... and I think your ideas of how to make the most of it are so smart too. It's a pity they had it shut down. =/

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