Lives Changed at Kansas City’s Victory Beyond the Cup Watch Party
by Mike Chapman
Longtime Cru® staff member LeighAnn Dull, national director of Transform, Cru’s arts ministry, owns a renovated old fire station in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. After converting it into a combination art gallery and event space, she’s hosted art shows for students from the Kansas City Arts Institute. When she first heard about Cru’s Victory Beyond the Cup (VBTC) outreach strategy during the 2026 global soccer tournament, she thought, “I love art AND sports! I want to be a part of this! What a great opportunity to partner with people in my neighborhood to host a community event.”
At the first citywide planning meeting last January, a sample of Cru’s VBTC watch party kit was unpacked for the various churches and nonprofits represented there. It included a deck of Cru’s Soularium® conversation-starter photo cards, which LeighAnn first created 20 years ago. The local YWAM® (Youth With A Mission) representative, a huge Soularium fan, offered to host a watch party with her, showing the quarterfinal match live right there in Kansas City. LeighAnn purchased a large flat-screen TV for one of the old firetruck bays on the ground floor.
Other partners soon followed, including a college friend’s athletic apparel company, RESTO Athletic, and Central Baptist Church down the street, which does ongoing outreach to the large Somali refugee population in town. A new Somali restaurant provided trays of food to go along with 100 hot dogs and hamburgers, baked beans, and brownies. Twenty volunteers, including friends from Colonial Presbyterian Church, set up soccer goals in LeighAnn’s field next door for kids, along with an arts table and a Soularium table.
Nearly 90 people showed up, enjoying not only the abundant food but also half-time activities like hip-hop singing and dancing, testimonies, and a skateboarder jumping over 4 people. After the YWAM staff shared how people could come to faith in Christ, two young people responded: one, a formerly homeless young woman who lived down the street, and the other, an 18-year-old man.
LeighAnn and the other volunteers were so encouraged by both the responses and the partnerships that they hope to continue hosting similar neighborhood events there, from movie nights to art classes.
