Here’s what happened when Valley Church in Allendale became a Pokéstop when the game first launched.
ZACH MCNEES
Valley UMC, West Michigan
The Pokémon craze is sweeping the nation. Valley Church in Allendale, near the campus of Grand Valley State University.
We were fortunate enough to be a Pokéstop when the game first launched, so we decided to take advantage of that!
A Pokéstop is a physical location where someone can go and get free items that you need to play the game; if you don’t visit Pokéstops and you want to play, you would otherwise have to purchase these items. Every five minutes you can “use” the stop and then it will reset. You can also purchase and set something called a “lure”. A lure is used to help bait Pokémon to that area for 30 minutes.
So you can see the appeal to players, who go to a location, where there is a much higher chance of seeing Pokémon, and much needed items are available there every five minutes.
To that we just added hot dogs, soda, water, a Pokemon movie, and a charging station (big hit!), as well as a dozen friendly faces from our church family!
We had 320 people attend over a two-and-a-half hour period! It was huge and really helped to raise our “prestige” at Valley Church (that was a Pokemon Go joke…).
We would love to share this approach with anyone who could use it! For churches hungry to reach youth and millennials, this game is literally bringing them in droves to our churches! Contact me at [email protected].
Other Pokémon ministry ideas can be found at MinistryMatters.com.
Last Updated on December 15, 2023