You have probably heard by now about a new game that has taken over smart phones over the past week; Pokémon-Go. It’s a game that uses a technology called augmented reality (AR). AR is a live direct or indirect view of the real world where certain elements are changed or supplemented. Think about the lines on the ground in your car’s backup camera or the 1st down lines that you see when watching a live pro-football game on TV. Board yet? So, as with most new video games, most of you reading this article are about to move to a new article to read, but give me one more paragraph.

Walk around the Denton Square, or sit outside of fire station 2, or even sit in the Singing Oaks Parking lot for a while and you will see people walk up, drive up, or ride up on their bicycle and pull out their phone and begin to play Pokémon-Go. This AR game requires users to move about their town/city/country to find places where Pokémon are hidden. Here is the catch. Almost every single church building, fire station, Town Square, or City Park is a destination in the game. That’s right! An anime game on a cell phone is getting people to go to a church building!!!

Talk about an answer to prayer that we almost missed. For those people who said if you build it they will come, I guess you were right. In a little less than a week, church buildings all over the country have become hot spots for teens and young adults to engage in an augmented reality game. People are walking up to our building, hanging out and playing a game. It’s a great time to start up a conversation and share our faith.

I spent about an hour today learning about the game from some teens, playing the game, and discovering our church’s sign inside the game. Talk about cool. Check out this article by some very creative Christian’s on what this can mean for us as we seek to save the lost. Oh, and download the app and find a teen to teach you how to play it. They’ll love it!