Tampa Bay Lightning Signs are Getting a Lot of Attention

You may or may not be aware, but Our Savior Lutheran Church and School has been getting quite a bit of media attention lately…. national attention. In honor of the Lightning’s continued success in the NHL playoffs, Pastor Tyler Moore has been composing creative spiritual signs on the marquee at Our Savior East Bay. The sign, which is prominently placed on the well-traveled East Bay Drive got the attention of several Lightning fans, several who came to our Annual Food Truck Rally and Car Show after the sign got their attention.

What started as a light-hearted message to show community spirit became a trending topic after Pastor Tyler posted a picture of that first sign on his Twitter account, @TheRevTy. Since that first sign, there have been 7 more. And they have gone viral; each receiving thousands of views shortly after being are posted.

Pastor Tyler has done several interviews and the signs at Our Savior Lutheran Church and School have been featured through the following media outlets:

• Tampa Bay Times twice with one article on the front page
• ABC Action News, The NOW Tampa Bay twice
• Yahoo! Sports for their national NHL blog, Puck Daddy
• Fox Sports
• The Washington Post
• Bay News 9

Overall, social media interest has been phenomenal.  One twitter follower compared the anticipation of these signs to that of Charlotte and her web.  But instead of Charlotte’s Web, this is the World Wide Web and on Twitter alone, over 80,000 people have viewed the images. Facebook has had more than 6,000 views. Our website, oursaviorfl.org has received 46,617 hits.

In addition, Steve Griggs, President of the Tampa Bay Lightning organization, personally called Pastor Tyler to thank Our Savior for their support of the team, and Our Savior’s role in bringing the community together.

While this may seem absurd that a church would seemingly be endorsing a local sports team, it has created an amazing opportunity to share Our Savior’s ministries and glorify God. Everyday we strive to fulfill Our Mission: Living Love: Love God. Love people. Serve the world.  Through these articles, we have been able to give a lot of non-church going people a different perspective of who we are and show that we are a down-to-earth, loving organization.
Our attendance at Our Savior East Bay is up over the past month and our website traffic has sky-rocketed, giving so many people access to our online sermons and ministries.

Pastor Tyler thanks Our Savior for tremendous support and encouragement. Our Savior School has especially shown a lot of enthusiasm, with the students excited to celebrate Our Savior Lightning Day on Monday, May 11th, where students are allowed to break dress code to wear their favorite Bolts gear. This has been an amazing chance to become an integral part of this community, giving us a much stronger voice to share our message of Living Love. May we always remember that we glorify God in all we do and that we strive to Love God, Love people, and Serve the world.