| FIFA World Cup 2002 - The Ultimate Goal |
 |
 |
 |
|
Introduction: The Ultimate Goal is a cooperative partnership of organisations committed to Christ providing resources for Christ-centred witness and outreach around major football (soccer) events. In the past videos and booklets have been produced for the World Cup of Football and European Football Championships. For the 2002 FIFA World Cup™ Athletes in Action in conjunction with Christians in Sport produced a 28 minute video called "The Ultimate Goal" which was available in up to 40 languages. Christian Publicity Organisation produced "The Ultimate Goal Pocket Guide" which was available in several languages. 2K Plus is the radio wing of The Ultimate Goal media partnership. In 2002 we produced material for the World Cup for the first time. We set an ambitious target to produce 10 minutes of material for each of the 31 days of the World Cup finals amounting to over five hours of material. Radio stations around the world were be able to access three features of 3-4 minutes each every day via our ftp internet site. The features included serialised stories of footballers who have a faith in Christ, reviews and previews of matches and comment reflecting a faith in Christ on issues such as drugs, cheating, sportsmanship and gamesmanship. Diego Maradona's "hand of God" incident in 1986 is an example of gamesmanship which still stirred the emotions sixteen years on. At the start of 2002 2K Plus began producing one-minute "World Cup Countdowns" featuring interviews with top footballers reflecting a faith in Christ. These were broadcast by 15 stations in the UK as well as many others worldwide in countries such as Australia, South Africa and Kenya. This has been a very worthwhile and effective project. Feedback from radio stations and mission partners has been very encouraging. The time and effort invested has produced dividends. We produced audio CDs and radio material which were used and appreciated around the world. CDs: Following discussions at the Major Sports Event Partnership (MSEP) conference in April, we offered CDs of footballers' testimonies which could be duplicated onto cassette and used in outreach projects. Twelve CDs featuring four short testimonies were sent to contacts in Africa and Asia. We received several encouraging responses including one report from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here the CD was copied to ten cassettes and the testimonies played at big screen showings at the University in Kinshasa as part of a major outreach project. Philippe Tembeya reports: "The first day 34 students among 2000 students who attended decided for Christ, and 6 of the 24 were football first division players. Each of them received a copy of the cassette. The last day 5000 students attended first "The Ultimate Goal" video on the big screen and then watched the final between Brazil and Germany. The Brazilian athletes prayer at the end challenged many athlete students. 253 prayed to receive Christ as Lord and Saviour." Radio: Radio material was provided in the weeks running up to the finals and on each of the 31 days of the finals themselves. Through our partnership with MSEP, Christians in Sport and Athletes in Action provided broadcast quality audio copies of their interviews with top Christian football players which they had recorded for the video "The Ultimate Goal". This provided us with much of the material offered to stations during the finals. a) World Cup Countdowns Twelve 1-minute testimonies were produced from the beginning of the year. These were made available through an internet resource for UK radio stations called Audiopot and Sport Spectrum's ftp site for stations in other parts of the world. There were 60 downloads from Audiopot from 16 UK producers and 1 in Spain. Downloads from the ftp site are more difficult to gauge but we have received news of Countdowns being downloaded and broadcast in USA, Australia, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. b) Daily Material Through Finals The aim was to provide ten minutes of radio material for each of the 31 days of the finals, amounting to 310 minutes or just over 5 hours. In the event we produced a total of 110 items amounting to 302 minutes 22 seconds and were on target until the final two days when we simply ran out of material. Material supplied included the following: Testimonies * 13 top players from ten countries serialised into 54 episodes; Phone reports * 21 reports from our partners Stuart Weir (Christians in Sport) and David Willson (Global Events Group) in Japan; Comment * 9 comments on World Cup issues, eg cheating, drugs etc. Phone reports and comment often included Christian comment and news of outreach projects in Japan and Korea. Radio stations, Christian and otherwise, from national broadcasters to hospital radio networks used our material. Christian Voice International used all our material in their programmes broadcast by shortwave and satellite across Africa. Other stations included:
Overall, listeners to over 100 radio stations in four continents heard Christian testimony and comment as a result of our World Cup ministry. Spin-off benefits included reinforced relationships with Christians in Sport and other MSEP agencies providing a stronger foundation for future activities. |