When Pokemon Go was launched last July, it quickly became the most popular game in the App store.

Christian pastors were particularly excited because many pokestops and gyms were sited at churches and Christian centres, via the popular Ingress portals.

Welcome signs were put up offering tea and spiritual sustenance to gamers trying to battle, or spin those pokestops to collect eggs, berries and other items.

But Pokemon Go never became  the passport to mission that it had been hoped it would.

Instead, it turned into something of a disappointment, for many players as well as owners of premises where gyms and pokestops are sited.

Even though an estimated 65 million players worldwide are still playing the game, there are a number of reasoons why in spite of all the promising indications at the launch, it never became at all significant in church outreach.

Niantic and Nintendo  wanted the game to  be a group playing exercise that got people outside, meeting new friends and engaging in virtual battles via their mobile phones against members  of other  teams, Valor , Mystic  and Instinct.

This happened only in a few locations. Some popular parks and beaches became, and still are, magnets for players, particularly  places that spawn Magikarp (jokingly nicknamed Polycarp by some Christians) which is to date the only pokemon that has a 'shiny'  or rare, differently-coloured manifestation. Even in these places, however, it is common to see players wandering around glued to their phones, and rarely  interacting with each other in  the real world.

Pokemon Go became a  relatively solitary experience.

And too many gyms became dominated by players who never even left their living rooms, playing on laptops with 'bots' or spoofing with their phones to convince the app they were in a different location to reality. Gyms got overtaken by as many as 10 level-40 almost unbeatable Blisseys.

Children and other genuine players dropped out, and certainly few can have been enticed to go into a church by the experience of battling its gym, unless it was to pray for release from addiction to a game that had become increasingly  frustrating as little was done against cheaters who seemed only to benefit from their ability to play the system.

That could be about to change.

Coinciding  with the game's imminent first birthday, Niantic is launching its biggest update ever. 

According to posts on the Silph Road Reddit community., it seems that pokemon that have been played illicitly,  outside the game's  terms of service, might be flagged up in some way and refuse to obey  their trainers. 

More significantly, the entire gym system is being  reset. All the pokemon that were in the gyms have been returned to their trainers.  And when they re-open soon, they will allow a maximum of one of each pokemon, meaning an end to the rule of Blissey.

And most exciting of all, Niantiic and Nintendo are launching 'raids' when a number of players must  come together, in person and in real life, at the location of the gym to have a chance to battle and catch a super pokemon such as aTyranitar wiith max-IVs, or even perhaps a legendary.

Niantic's dream of people meeting up in real life  to play this virtual game is about to become reality. And many, many of  these meet-ups will be at churches. Players will be there for as long as an hour.

There will then be plenty of opportunities for pastors  to  offer coffee and water to gamers, and to console  those who  fail to catch the legendary pokemon of  their dreams.

Early in the game, there  was a rumour that the greatest legendarie of all, Mew, would be released at Westminster Abbey. It never  happened them, but perhaps it will now. There are gyms also  at St Paul's Cathedral and outside Lambeth Palace, where the Archbishop of Canterbury has his office.

If this Pokemon Go reset lives up to the hype on Reddit, Twitter and other online communities, let's hope that this time, players, churches and others might not be disappointed.

Ruth Gledhill is on Twitter @ruthiegledhill. She  has reached level 37 in Pokemon Go.