The task of Christian media was associated with the nature of the presentation of the Gospel message of Jesus Christ and His Salvation offered to each and every person. Now, all these months later, we might check out, in the clear light of day, the effects of the Christian media at the London Olympics.
First, there was no lack of Christian media on the one hand during the London Olympics, and on the other, innumerable Christians involved in some way serving the Lord Jesus during the Olympics.
Christian media included print, radio, television and IPTV. Korean Christians had two television crews. Church based studios were sending radio and television reports to over 150 nations.
Assist News Service led by Dan Wooding was receiving reports for his world wide print distribution from three major sources which he spoke of in his thank you letter to all those on his international mailing list:
"I do hope you have been blessed by the many excellent reports we have been releasing from our three main sources at the Olympics www.assistnews.net
More Than Gold (www.morethangold.org.uk)
2K Plus International Sports Media (www.2kplus.org.uk) and
Press Service International Media Team (www.pressserviceinternational.org),
Christian Today Australia for example, published articles from all these three agencies above, and our Press Service International Olympic Media Team provided two to three articles a day. The articles were well patronised by readers. David Smethurst provided many of the first week's articles followed by his Paralympic ministry articles, while Jonathan and Jenny Mayne were superb writers in the second week of the London Olympics.
Literally hundreds
There were literally hundreds upon hundreds of scheduled outreach events during the London Olympics with Olympic and other sporting and ministry identities speaking or performing or providing music as methodologies to win the lost for Christ.
The streets of London had Christians from all sorts of organisations meeting and greeting people from around the world. Some were in official ministry roles, others were engaged in a less organised way, but they all contributed to the evangelism of this world gala occasion.
How, therefore, did the Christian media cover all of this. After one ministry group was criticised for a lack of public announcement evangelism, their media releases on evangelism on London's streets took a turn for the better. We now know a range of people expressed these same concerns, including a radio interview by a friend who is an international broadcaster. That was one tiny needle in a huge haystack of positiveness.
Evangelism was the focus and central issue for Christian media and to this we can witness several of the many many examples:
These were some of the media releases for your interest:
Australians rejoicing with Salley Pearson
London Olympics – Sporting nicknames $100,000 art prize
Love is at the heart of London Olympic ministry
Olympic art one of the most recognised images of Olympic history
When is winning losing and losing winning?
Finally in this very limited list, David Smethurst concludes his Paralympic London Ministry with telling conversations
And many many others. Since the London Olympics, the various ministries have further engaged in the spirit of evangelism with outreaches and evangelism campaigns seeing hundreds and hundreds of Britons become followers of Jesus.
It seems that London Christians in an Olympic city has capitalised far better post Olympics than previous Olympic city Christians. What a remarkable Christmas gift to the world as it was from Britain that many of the great mission movements were initiated. We in Australia are a direct beneficiary of such history of evangelism.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html