The fact that a church has become a landmark in the form of a Gym for Pokemon Go players is just “God working in mysterious ways”. This is according to the warden of the City Road Methodist Church in Birmingham, UK.

While you might expect religious institutions to ban the game, the overall result has been the complete opposite in some cases, all in an effort to embrace the opportunity of gaining the interest of the younger generation.

As if.

David Hallam, the church warden, has even invited Pokemon Go players to come in, using the slogan “Jesus Cares About Pokemon Gamers” on an A4 poster.

This after their Sunday service was bombarded with Pokemon Go players. The congregation was left baffled with the sudden rise in attendance, and had to ask one gamer to get up and give a brief explanation of just what the game was about.

Attending the service, Alexandra Quinn happened to go along with a friend to get in some training, after she got wind the church was a gym:

My friend messaged me saying the church near me was a Pokemon gym, so we thought we’d come down and have a look.

The church goers absolutely love it – they find the whole thing really interesting, and think it’s great publicity for the church.

Why would a church location become a Gym? Pokemon Go‘s geolocations are based on data used in Niantic’s original game, Ingress. Players added portals to Ingress based on historical landmarks in their area, and other portals were added through geo-tagged photos on Google.

Using this data, Niantic placed those portals onto the Pokemon Go map, making the most popular portals, like churches, Gyms and the less active portals PokeStops.

Now you know.

[source:metro&gamesradar]