ARLINGTON – On Feb. 6, two teams will fight for professional football’s highest honor when they meet in Arlington for the 45th annual Super Bowl. Leading up to the event, a diverse group of Christians will try to point people to an even higher calling.
Dubbed Reach 45, evangelical Christian groups—including the Baptist General Convention of Texas, I am Second, Dallas Baptist Association, Tarrant Baptist Association, Texas Baptist Men and the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention—have come together to seek to share the hope of Christ with the more than 200,000 people who come to the area to experience Super Bowl week.
“We’re just trying to reach as many people as we can,” said Jana Jackson, director of Dallas Baptist Association family and community ministries.
Christians will use a variety of methods to reach people who descend upon the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex for the game. They hope to distribute 1 million tracts directing people to testimonies of National Football League players filmed and posted online by I am Second.
In addition to using tracts, Christians will attempt to couple ministry with evangelism. In a community service blitz the day before the Super Bowl, volunteers will serve through Cornerstone Baptist Church in Dallas and Mission Arlington. First Baptist Church in Arlington will sponsor a community-wide watch party in the park near the church’s facilities, aimed primarily at serving the economically disadvantaged. Churches also are participating in Souper Bowl of Caring, an annual emphasis on donating food to local hunger ministries.
A group of churches and organizations also has come together to focus on fighting human trafficking. Large events typically also are accompanied with increased prostitution, which also means an increase in trafficked girls—many of them children.
Led by Traffick911 out of Southside City Church in Fort Worth, volunteers will work in cooperation with authorities to combat trafficking through its “I’m not buying it” campaign.
The group will sponsor an anti-trafficking tailgate party in Mansfield Feb. 5 that will feature Jay Ratliff of the Dallas Cowboys as program personality, several Christian bands and personal testimonies by survivors of trafficking.
For information about how to be involved in Reach 45, visit www.reach45.com.
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