World Cup 2026 Gives Christians an Opportunity for Love, Hospitality and Witness
The World Cup can bring out joyful rooting, national pride, and friendly competition. Christians do not need to pretend those things are wrong, but we do need to keep them under the lordship of Christ. For churches, this global sporting moment is also an opportunity to practice hospitality, welcome neighbors, and speak naturally about the better kingdom we belong to.
- The World Cup shows how deeply human beings long to belong, celebrate, and cheer together.
- New Testament Christianity gives clear limits for competition: love, self-control, humility, and honor.
- Churches can use World Cup enthusiasm to build relationships with neighbors, immigrants, students, and families.
by Jerry Harris
Every four years, much of the world stops what it is doing to watch a game.
That sentence may sound exaggerated to some Americans, especially those who grew up with football, baseball, or basketball as the center of the sports calendar. But for much of the world, soccer is not merely a sport. It is memory, family, neighborhood, national identity, childhood, heartbreak, and joy wrapped into 90 minutes.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup engaged five billion people globally, according to FIFA. The 2026 World Cup includes 48 teams and 104 matches across Canada, Mexico, and the United States. It is hard to overstate the scale. Stadiums will be filled. Restaurants will be loud. Living rooms will be crowded. Flags will come out of closets. People who rarely talk to their neighbors may suddenly have plenty to say.
Christians should not be embarrassed by the joy of a game. We should not flatten every human celebration into a sermon illustration or act as if rooting for a team is beneath serious discipleship. God made human beings with bodies, communities, cultures, loyalties, laughter, and the capacity to cheer. A good game can be received as a good gift.
But good gifts must remain gifts. They must not become gods.
Rooting for Your Team Can Be a Good Thing
There is nothing unchristian about hoping your team wins. There is nothing inherently wrong with wearing the jersey, waving the flag, learning the songs, making the food, or caring about the match.
Love of place is not the same thing as idolatry. Gratitude for one’s nation is not the same thing as nationalism. Enjoying competition is not the same thing as hostility. Christians should be careful not to confuse healthy affection with sinful excess.
The apostle Paul seemed to understand the moral usefulness of athletic competition. He wrote about runners, boxers, discipline, crowns, and training. He saw in the arena an image of focus and perseverance. “Run in such a way as to get the prize,” he told the Corinthians, while making clear that the Christian race aims at an imperishable crown (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).
That distinction matters. The World Cup trophy is temporary. The kingdom of Christ is not. But the temporary joy of sport can still remind us that humans were made to give themselves to something larger than private comfort.
A Christian can root hard and still love well. A Christian can cheer loudly and still speak graciously. A Christian can be disappointed after a loss and still be controlled by the Spirit. A Christian can love his nation without despising another.
New Testament Christianity Sets the Boundaries of Competition
The question is not whether Christians may compete, cheer, or care. The question is whether our competition stays inside the limits of New Testament Christianity.
The New Testament does not allow us to suspend the fruit of the Spirit because our team is playing. “Love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” are not Sunday-morning qualities only (Galatians 5:22-23). They belong in the stadium, the sports bar, the group chat, and the living room.
That means Christians should reject the kind of fandom that makes contempt feel normal. We should not mock other nations as if people made in the image of God are punchlines. We should not excuse rage, drunkenness, gambling obsession, racist insults, or online cruelty because “it’s just sports.”
Competition can reveal character. It can also train character. A child watching his parents during a tense match may learn more about discipleship than he learns from a family devotional later that evening. He will see whether self-control is real. He will hear whether the other team is spoken of with honor. He will notice whether disappointment turns into anger.
For church leaders, this is worth saying plainly: recreation is never outside discipleship. The way Christians play, watch, win, lose, spend, speak, and celebrate belongs to Jesus.
The World Cup Shows the Power of Shared Enthusiasm
The scale of the World Cup should make Christians think. When FIFA reports that five billion people engaged with the 2022 tournament, we are seeing something more than entertainment. We are seeing the human hunger for shared story.
People want to belong. They want to sing together. They want colors to wear, heroes to remember, and moments to pass down to their children. They want to be part of something that was happening before they arrived and will continue after they are gone.
That longing is not wrong. It is a clue.
According to Pew Research Center, Christians numbered about 2.3 billion globally in 2020, representing 29 percent of the world’s population. In the United States, Gallup has reported that about three in ten adults regularly attend religious services, including 21 percent who attend every week and 9 percent who attend almost every week. Those numbers are not directly comparable to World Cup engagement. Watching one match is not the same thing as belonging to a church, and religious identity is not the same thing as active discipleship. Still, the contrast should make us pause.
The world can become visibly passionate about a ball crossing a line. Are Christians visibly joyful about the resurrection of Jesus Christ?
That question is not meant to shame sports fans. It is meant to awaken the church. If people can rearrange schedules, cross borders, spend money, invite friends, learn chants, and wear colors for a temporary tournament, then surely the people of God can recover a public, generous, hospitable enthusiasm for the gospel.
Hospitality Belongs Inside the Spirit of Competition
One of the best Christian responses to World Cup season is simple: open the door.
Hospitality does not require a perfect home, a big screen, or a gourmet meal. It requires room in the heart before it requires room in the house. During the World Cup, hospitality might look like inviting neighbors to watch a match, hosting international students, asking a coworker about his home country, or making space for immigrant families who are far from the places they love.
The New Testament repeatedly treats hospitality as a mark of Christian maturity. Paul told the Romans to “practice hospitality” (Romans 12:13). Peter told believers to “offer hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9). The writer of Hebrews warned that some have entertained angels without knowing it (Hebrews 13:2).
World Cup hospitality can be especially powerful because the event already creates natural openings. You do not have to force a conversation about culture, home, language, family, or national memory. The game brings those things to the surface.
A church might host a family-friendly watch party for a major match. A small group might invite international students from a nearby campus. A youth ministry might use the tournament to talk about sportsmanship, identity, and witness. A congregation in a diverse community might ask members from different nations to share food, memories, and prayer requests connected to their countries.
The point is not to trick people into a religious conversation. The point is to love people in a way that makes truthful conversation possible.
Faith Conversations Often Begin with Ordinary Questions
Many Christians imagine evangelism as a sudden speech. More often, it begins with attention.
Where did you grow up watching soccer?
Who taught you to love the game?
What does this team mean to your family?
Do you still have relatives there?
What has it been like to build a life here?
Those are not sales questions. They are neighbor questions. They communicate that a person is not merely a guest, a demographic, or a ministry target. He or she is a person with a story.
From there, conversations may open naturally. A guest may ask why your church is hosting. A neighbor may notice that your home feels different. A student may wonder why Christians from different backgrounds are eating and laughing together. Someone may ask why you care about people from other nations.
When that door opens, Christians should be ready to speak plainly and humbly. We practice hospitality because God welcomed us in Christ. We care about the nations because Jesus sends his church to make disciples of all nations. We can enjoy national differences because the kingdom of God gathers people from every tribe, language, people, and nation.
The World Cup gives the church a small preview of something Revelation describes in fullness: a redeemed multitude from every nation worshiping before the throne (Revelation 7:9-10). Soccer cannot create that unity. Politics cannot create it either. Only Christ can.
Churches Should Celebrate Without Losing Their Mission
A church can use the World Cup well, but only if it remembers what it is and what it is not.
A watch party is not a worship service. A themed event is not a substitute for evangelism. A crowd is not the same thing as discipleship. Churches should not baptize every cultural moment in religious language and assume they have done ministry.
But neither should churches miss obvious opportunities for connection. In many communities, people are lonely. Immigrants are far from home. International students are curious and isolated. Neighbors may live on the same street for years without sitting at the same table. Parents are looking for wholesome spaces for their children. Young adults are hungry for belonging, even if they do not yet know how to name it.
The World Cup can help churches take a modest step toward those people.
Keep the event simple. Make it welcoming. Avoid partisan symbols. Keep alcohol out of church-hosted gatherings. Be clear that families are welcome. Encourage members to invite people personally rather than merely posting an announcement. Include prayer, but do not make guests feel ambushed. Let hospitality be real hospitality.
And when competition gets intense, model the difference Christ makes. Cheer with joy. Lose with grace. Win without arrogance. Laugh without cruelty. Speak about other nations with honor. Remember that the person wearing the other jersey may be the person God has placed in front of you to love.
A Better Kingdom Than the One on the Scoreboard
The World Cup will end. Someone will lift the trophy. Someone else will walk off the field in tears. Nations will remember certain goals for decades. Children will imitate their heroes in backyards and alleyways. Then, slowly, the flags will come down and ordinary life will resume.
That is part of the beauty of sports. It matters, and then it passes.
The Christian life is different. We belong to a kingdom that cannot be shaken. We follow a King whose victory was not secured by humiliating enemies but by dying for sinners. We proclaim a resurrection that does not fade when the tournament ends.
So root for your team. Enjoy the match. Make the food. Invite the neighbors. Learn someone’s story. Cheer for your nation without despising another. Let your children see what joyful self-control looks like. Let your church see the nations not as abstractions but as people who can sit at your table.
And when the world gathers around a game, remember the larger invitation entrusted to the church: “Come.”
Come to the table. Come into fellowship. Come and see. Come to Christ.
Author: Jerry Harris
Jerry Harris is publisher of Christian Standard and former teaching pastor at The Crossing, a large, multisite church located in three states across the Midwest.
