Drawing on the readings, the documentary, and the videos and podcasts it’s easy to see just how influential sports have become in trying to witness to people about Jesus Christ. Looking at the mission statements from both the AIA and FCA their role is to use sports as a platform for spreading the word of Jesus. They also want to challenge and influence everyone they meet about receiving Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. FCA wanted to create new heroes who were influenced by what they thought, what they said, and the way they lived their lives. The founder of FCA, Don McClanen, had a vision where he thought that if athletes used their celebrity in influence to sell common everyday products why couldn’t they in a positive way witness for Jesus Christ. The key to FCA’s whole program is influence and how the key to influence is relationships. After listening to some of the podcasts and looking at these websites and comparing this information to WFJ I don’t personally see how WFJ was trying to witness to their audience about Jesus, other than when they gave altar calls.
The main character in the Wrestling for Jesus film that they followed a lot was T-Money. In the ring T-Money always seemed to do the right thing, it was outside of the ring where he seemed to struggle. After the matches they would have the audience listen to them preach about Jesus Christ and they would try and have people change their lives and give themselves to the lord. I think it was a positive thing how they tried to do that, but T-Money seemed to struggle towards the end of the film when he started losing everything and eventually WFJ was completely gone. From the film I remember him talking about how could Christ give him all he had and lead him to WFJ and let everything happen and let his life fall apart. Overall I think that Christianity is a great way to try and influence others about Jesus. I definitely don’t see anything wrong with it and I think that this is a great way to witness to so many people. In Krattenmaker’s article I think it’s great that Herbert Lusk used to play football in the NFL and now he preaches at the Greater Exodus Baptist Church. Krattenmaker goes on to talk about how evangelical Christians assert themselves in the public square, to grab hold of the tools of culture-television, movies, technology, media, politics, sports-and us them to spread their message and their values (15). I also like how at the end of the reading he talks about how other religions have a stake in all of this too and how it’s not just the Christians role (26). He states it well when at the end he says that professional sports don’t just belong to one segment of the American public instead they belong to all of us (26).
The main character in the Wrestling for Jesus film that they followed a lot was T-Money. In the ring T-Money always seemed to do the right thing, it was outside of the ring where he seemed to struggle. After the matches they would have the audience listen to them preach about Jesus Christ and they would try and have people change their lives and give themselves to the lord. I think it was a positive thing how they tried to do that, but T-Money seemed to struggle towards the end of the film when he started losing everything and eventually WFJ was completely gone. From the film I remember him talking about how could Christ give him all he had and lead him to WFJ and let everything happen and let his life fall apart. Overall I think that Christianity is a great way to try and influence others about Jesus. I definitely don’t see anything wrong with it and I think that this is a great way to witness to so many people. In Krattenmaker’s article I think it’s great that Herbert Lusk used to play football in the NFL and now he preaches at the Greater Exodus Baptist Church. Krattenmaker goes on to talk about how evangelical Christians assert themselves in the public square, to grab hold of the tools of culture-television, movies, technology, media, politics, sports-and us them to spread their message and their values (15). I also like how at the end of the reading he talks about how other religions have a stake in all of this too and how it’s not just the Christians role (26). He states it well when at the end he says that professional sports don’t just belong to one segment of the American public instead they belong to all of us (26).
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