{"id":3764,"date":"2012-08-08T00:06:01","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T06:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marccardaronella.com\/?p=3764"},"modified":"2012-08-08T00:08:32","modified_gmt":"2012-08-08T06:08:32","slug":"what-the-olympics-coverage-can-teach-you-about-evangelization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marccardaronella.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/08\/what-the-olympics-coverage-can-teach-you-about-evangelization\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Olympics Coverage Can Teach You About Evangelization"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’m not a big sports fan.<\/p>\n

But I love to watch the Olympics.<\/p>\n

Even the obscure sports are so much fun. I mean, who normally gets excited about rowing?<\/p>\n

But even with the more popular sports like swimming–I don’t normally sit up on a Saturday night wondering who’s going to win the 100m freestyle.<\/p>\n

But come Olympics time, I’m there! And I’m\u00a0thinking there’s a few of you out there that get Olympic fever too.<\/p>\n

So what makes the Olympics so cool?
\n<\/p>\n

How the Olympics create curiosity<\/h2>\n

Part of it is just because it’s the Olympics.<\/p>\n

For goodness sake, it’s only on every two years and it’s really huge.<\/p>\n

But the thing that really makes it is the stories. The commentators tell background stories about the athletes. Stories of sacrifice and emotion, of\u00a0journeys back from injury, of rivalries, and titles lost and won.<\/p>\n

Context–it sparks curiosity. And this is where we can all learn something about evangelization.<\/p>\n

Evangelizing college football fans<\/h2>\n

In 1960, ABC had a problem.\u00a0It had a contract to cover college football games but no viewers.<\/p>\n

People loved their local teams, but didn’t care about games on the other side of the country. How do you get LSU fans interested in an Ohio State game?<\/p>\n

Roone Arledge had\u00a0the answer. He proposed\u00a0providing enough of the missing background information so people would care.<\/p>\n

Arledge instinctively used George\u00a0Loewenstein’s Information Gap Theory<\/a>.\u00a0People are naturally curious. When they see a gap in what they know, they want to fill it.<\/p>\n

How do you get\u00a0people interested in something? Point out a gap in their knowledge. However, when there’s too much of a gap, people won’t make the leap. If it takes too much effort to fill the gap, most people will just drop it.<\/p>\n

That was Arledge’s problem. He had an information chasm. So, he decided to give just enough information to make it a gap. Then\u00a0people were interested.<\/p>\n

Arledge set the stage. He showed the local fans, filled in the history of the two teams,\u00a0talked about the rivalries,\u00a0and played up the emotions. Viewers were riveted.<\/p>\n

Arledge later used the same strategies for ABC’s Wide World of Sports<\/em>. He got\u00a0people to care\u00a0about little known sports and athletes by giving the backstory–just enough so people would care. Then, they wanted to fill in their knowledge gap. They wanted to know who was going to win.<\/p>\n

The Olympics coverage does\u00a0the same thing. They give you the background of the athletes and their history competing against one another. You get glimpses into their lives and emotions–their struggles, failures, and victories.<\/p>\n

They set the stage. And once we\u00a0understand the context, we get hooked.<\/p>\n

The Olympics and evangelization<\/h2>\n

Some things naturally lend themselves to knowledge gaps.<\/p>\n

With the Olympics, we wonder who will win. With movies we wonder what will happen. With mystery novels, we have to know, “Who dunnit?” Can this work to evangelize\u00a0people in\u00a0the Catholic Faith?<\/p>\n

Evangelization is about grabbing attention. Often through emotional appeal. Then once you get them curious, you back it up\u00a0with the facts.<\/p>\n

Too often,\u00a0we want to lead with the facts. The problem is no one cares. An evangelizing catechist knows the real trick is first convincing people they need what we’re teaching.<\/p>\n

We have to set the context so students become interested:<\/p>\n