Goal Posts of Life : Super Bowl: Christian athletes to be featured in a video offered to churches for halftime presentation.

At Super Bowl parties this year, one option for halftime entertainment will be a video featuring religious testimonies from Christian athletes on both teams.

The 12-minute video was prepared by a consortium of denominations and sports outreach ministries so that churches and individuals could use the Jan. 31 game as a venue for evangelistic outreach.

The testimonies will be interspersed with commentary by Tom Landry, former coach of the Dallas Cowboys.

“Most churches historically have seen Super Bowl Sunday as a tremendous competitor, and this kit makes it a potential ally,� said Ralph Drollinger, the former UCLA basketball player who heads up the consortium, known as Sports Outreach America.

Based in Pasadena, the joint venture is a combined effort of 80 sports ministries such as Athletes in Action and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and 40 denominations and church agencies. The denominations include Assemblies of God and Evangelical Free Church; the agencies include the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

To avoid what Drollinger called “clotheslining people with the Gospel,� using the football metaphor for hitting a runner across the neck, the video comes with a kit containing printed invitations. They invite prospective viewers to a Super Bowl presentation featuring Landry discussing “his personal success and his faith in God.�

“We foreshadow what it’s all about so that people do not feel they are suckers,� Drollinger said. “People in America are very sophisticated and won’t stand for that.�

The two Super Bowl teams won’t be known until Sunday, but Sports Outreach America already has contacts with Christian Athletes on all the playoff teams.

Camera crews will be dispatched to the home cities of the Big Two as soon as they are known. Duplication of the tapes will begin Jan. 19.

The videos will be shipped to churches and individuals who have ordered them in advance by calling (800) 866-6464. Videos are $19.95 each for quantities fewer than 10; less for higher quantities.

The video was inspired in part by a campaign last year in Minnesota in which one of 300 churches distributed a Christian magazine called Sports Spectrum, held Super Bowl parties throughout the state and organized rallies for high school students.

Drollinger, who attends Calvary Chapel, an evangelical congregation in Lake Arrowhead, won’t appear on this year’s video. But he is an example of an athlete who isn’t reticent about describing his Christian faith.

After playing at UCLA on a basketball scholarship under famed coach John Wooden in the early 1970s, Drollinger turned down bids by such teams as the Boston Celtics and New Jersey Nets to retain his amateur status and travel around the world with a Christian team affiliated with Athletes in Action.

He was one of the first players to sign up with the Dallas Mavericks when that franchise was started in 1980, but a knee injury took him out of action after one season.

This year’s outreach is the first Super Bowl program tried by the consortium on a national basis and has already signed up 1,500 congregations. So far, the interest has been limited mainly to evangelical congregations, but Drollinger hopes eventually to attract mainline denominations.

Sports Outreach America is planning major campaigns in connection with two mega-sports events in 1994: the World Cup Soccer Finals in Los Angeles and Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

“We’ve reached millions of people with the Gospel through the whole medium of sport,� Drollinger said. “It’s something that appeals to young and old, rich and poor.�