EP252: Mark Lutz, Season 4: Jesus, Gamers, & Church

I have very deep and meaningful connections with the physical church that I ministered in for years but I will say that the ones that I have here at Lux are just as deep and meaningful for me. I mean, I love the people just as deeply and many of them I will never meet in person. So exactly why is it that we can find these connections and that they seem to work, maybe even faster? Or I'm not going to say better, but as good in terms of like the depth of relationship as we do in the physical church? I think there's a lot of things that have to go into that, but ultimately I think most people in the physical church just really underestimate digital space.

Welcome to the Church Digital podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than tech for tech's sake, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciple making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? Oh, and where does the metaverse fit into all this? Whether you're a big or small church, an established church or a startup church plant, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. Our heart is that churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, hey, episode 252 of the Church Digital podcast. Super excited about this conversation. As a matter of fact, I'm so excited about this conversation we went ahead and made a season out of it. We're launching season four effective today because we want to explore more of this idea of church in gaming culture. That's right. I just, I'm going to be honest right now. I've been so humbled within the past three or four months, really getting more exposure, deeper exposure to the gaming culture, and I'm realizing a lot's changed since, oh, I don't know, James Bond Goldeneye on Nintendo 64.

That's actually probably the last video game I was relevant on, and let's be honest, I'm very happy it came back out on Switch Online. But you play me up, find me online, it's dear fetch. But that's a whole other conversation. What I really want to take into is how the church can operate and how the church can reach a different type of person in this gaming culture and in this nerd culture. And so over the coming weeks and even in the months, we're going to start to bring in people that will be able to unpack and start to help us realize the opportunities and how we physical churches, how we digital expressions of church, we individual digital missionaries, we people that play games, how we can start to connect with people and be the light of Jesus in gaming space.

This is one of many conversations coming. By the way, part of this whole thing, before we get to the guest part of this whole thing, is even starting to get exposure to some of these gaming communities. And so to that end, we, the Church Digital, we Digital Church Network, we are launching a Twitch account. That's right. If you go to twitch.tv/digitalchurchnetwork, twitch.tv/digitalchurchnetwork, put the link in the show notes as well, you will see our new channel. I don't know that I'm gonna be playing, you know, my eight-bit Nintendo all the time. I've literally got the controller right here at my desk though. Probably not going to be doing that 24/7. I wish. But what we will be doing instead is we're actually going to stream these podcast interviews live on air. That's right. We will be interviewing the podcast guests early, and so if you want the sneak peek of what we're reviewing, revealing on the podcast Monday, come to previous Thursday. Every Thursday, 3 PM Eastern. Thursday, 3 PM Eastern, we will be interviewing people on the Digital Church Network's Twitch channel. And so next week coming up, we're going to be interviewing a guy named Bubba. It's gonna be a great interview. Bubba gaming. That sounds weird because when I look at Bubba, I don't think of as a Bubba. You have to jump on on Twitch with us next week and discover it. But we'll get more into what Bubba's gonna do with the show later. But create that Twitch account, jump on board with us, and start to get exposed to some of these gaming ideas and how our churches can be effective in really starting to understand and reach this gaming culture.

And I'm gonna be honest here, the first person that I have really ever seen do that effectively is Mark Lutz. Excuse me, I butchered his name. I've never said it correctly. I'm gonna say it correct right here on air for the first time: Mark Lutz. So Mark, thanks for jumping on the show with us here today.

Ah, so glad to be here. Really excited about the new season. Super excited to see the Church Digital. I mean, it's always talked to gamers right from the very beginning when I first met Jeff and I started listening to episodes. You know, we would be talking to Jate and you would be, you know, talking to other people who were in either gaming space or adjacent. And so super pumped that we're really sort of focusing in on that world because that's the one that I live and breathe every day of my life now.

Awesome. And so really gonna get into this and excited about some of the stuff and even doing a check-in with Lux Digital Church, church that operates entirely on Twitch and Discord. So gonna have that conversation. And then we're also bringing as well in Andy Mage. Andy is the on-demand director for Lux Digital Church. He's a digital faster at Bay Hope in Tampa. He works with Digital Church Network as the resourcing director. That guy's got as many jobs as I do, and that makes them awesome. So really excited to have Andy in the conversation and excited to dig in here a little bit with what's going on with Lux. But it maybe even start to open the conversation and introduce this idea of what's going on in gaming.

So cool. Well, hey Mark, it's been a minute since I've had you on the podcast. Actually, I'm flashing back, Andy. You were on four years ago, like very early on, weren't you? With, um...

Yeah, so it was probably about four years ago. We had myself and Tom, founder, and you. We were doing a cohort, and a lot of faces on there that have just kind of been in the scene for a while now. Mark, I haven't had you on in a while. Give me an update. Like, talk to me a little bit. What's going on with Lux Digital Church?

Yeah, Jeff. Honestly, I think the time that I was on the show, we were launching. I think we were launched, but we were very close to launch, maybe a couple months in. Yeah. So I mean, it's been a wild year. A wild two years now. So we are approaching our second birthday as Lux Digital Church, working towards financial stability. Our church has really grown in actually really substantial ways. We've crested over 500 people in our Discord server, which is kind of like our community and the place that we plug in and check in with people. We're pushing almost 40 people on our Dream Team now who are serving across our church in various capacities. We ran Megazord, which I'm sure we can talk about on the show at one point or another, even if it's not this episode. Just released the Megazord documentary a couple of days ago, which was really cool. We've had this really great ability to partner with a lot of really fantastic Christian content creators. Some of them are people who are going to be with us. They are our mission partners and are actually going to be part of this season, who are going to be on the show, which is really cool and exciting for me because I didn't know them really well and I can't wait to dive into a little bit more about what they do.

And yeah, man, we've seen salvations. Our first batch of baptisms in year two, seeing people baptized in a river in Oregon, in a bathtub in Missouri, and just honestly really incredible radical life change. I mean, people who were about to be divorced saving their marriages, people dealing with addiction finding freedom, like really radical life change of people across the board in our church. And so there has been a lot of really cool, really great things that have gone on at Lux. I can't even begin to detail it in a couple of minutes.

Well, that was a pretty good attempt at trying to cram it all in in a couple minutes. But I got you a couple of pieces right. Paint a pretty awesome picture. Just wait as we talk throughout this season, you'll get into the weeds with us, right?

So you started this thing. We met probably fall, summer, fall '22. You were part of the first digital church cohort that Stated Church Planting launched that I ran through Stadia. And so you and a couple others went through that. But you've had this passion, at least going back then, towards this idea of launching a church aimed at gamers or reaching, discipling gamers. And, um, tell a story here a little bit. Like, where'd that passion come from? Like, you were a physical church. You were doing physical church ministry. You were a discipleship guy. You're a student guy. And now all of a sudden you're on Twitch doing church. So like, how did you get to this point?

Sure. That's a great question, Jeff. Um, you know, I was a pastor outside of Pittsburgh for 11 years right before this. Recording, just met with their youth pastor and their family life pastor actually. Um, so still connected there, still love the folks of that church. And, uh, but God really moved in our hearts towards reaching people in this space. And there's a lot of things that added up to me and my wife taking the step in launching Lux. Um, but honestly, a lot of that was just our, my heartbreak for the lost that I saw in the gaming world and knowing that the church at large, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, just because of church subculture, had alienated itself from the growing gaming world.

And I was actually running some statistics the other day. We know that Facebook brags about, or brag is a strong word, has claimed they have more Facebook users than Christians on the planet. Um, but I don't know if you know this or not, there's somewhere around like a billion, half a billion more Facebook users than Christians currently. And by modest estimates, there's a billion more gamers than there are Facebook users. So there's a little over three billion gamers like they reach the status, or we would say these people consider themselves a gamer. Over three billion video gamers on the planet, which is roughly twice the number of Christians on the planet. Um, which is really crazy that we as a church have not really thought about like, hey, what do we think about reaching these people? Or why is it that there's no element of what we do as a church that even caters towards or tailors us towards this group of people?

And my heart really breaks for them because I am them. I am a gamer. I've been a gamer my whole life. Tabletop gamer, RPG player, video gamer. If it's gaming, if it's nerdy, if it's 3D printing, if it's LARPing, I've done it. And so I just, I love nerd culture and I love nerds and I love gamers. And so, and I just I want people to come to know Jesus. And so those things really all lined up to say I really think this community is worthy of a church. I think they deserve a church. And I think they deserve a good church. Um, not just a live stream. I think they deserve a robust full ecclesiology, life-changing, deep relationship, disciple-making church. And um, and that's what we set out to build with Lux. And it's been a really...

Wild adventure to try to figure out how to do that with the tools that are available to us and how to reach these digital natives that are by the billions in our world. So Andy, you were, I mean you were doing digital ministry pre-COVID. You and I know you came from a worship background. The transition, and you just, because I know some of your story, um, when and why, or why and when did you pivot over? Because you're still doing the physical church digital ministry through Bay Hope and you're helping out with Lux on the side. Like, what's your motive to double dipping?

Um, initially started as it was a job offer. Actually, that's not true entirely. Um, initially started as I have a weird background of worship and all those other things, but also I have a real passion for tech, for um, internet life, for all things digital. And when the job came up at Bay Hope, I jumped at the opportunity. We were living in Atlanta at the time. I was a worship pastor. We had owned a gym of all things, and we kind of gave the gym up and applied at Bay Hope and got the job and moved from Atlanta to Tampa. And I initially thought it was going to be just helping with production, and soon found out that my passion actually for people that were on the internet and passion for digital ministry ran very deep. And that actually took just kind of being in the job for six or seven months, getting my feet under the table, and then this weird little thing called COVID happened. And all of a sudden, the mishmash of everything that I love to do—talking to people on the internet, being in front of a camera, being behind a camera, doing production work, doing tech work, running cables, um, live television, live broadcasting, grouping people together, digital discipleship—all of those things kind of smacked in together. And we really found our footing at Bay Hope.

And uh, funny story actually, I was also kind of working on the side for a product called Ultra Live, which we've talked about a couple times. I've talked about a couple times. I was doing a bunch of video work for them, and we were doing a live show called the Ultra Live Show. And I got put into contact with Mark to interview Mark. And that was, I had kind of been stalking Lux for a little bit, um, because I also am a gamer. I also have done digital discipleship through gaming and through, you know, I was doing Bible studies on Halo 2 way back in the day. We were doing, we would sit in a lobby and run a Bible study and then go headshot each other for forty-five minutes in a custom room. It was awesome. And the idea that that could actually happen was something that was blowing my mind, watching Mark and Lux. This is right after they launched. And I interviewed Mark, and then I kind of reached back out, what, three or four weeks later? It's like, hey man, if you ever need any help or anything, let me know. And then I interviewed him again for another podcast I was doing. And then I think at that time, Mark and I both had, we had a conversation. Either I reached out or he reached out. And then it was kind of like, okay, just get in the community and do the thing. And we've kind of been running ever since.

You know, I always thought all this time I introduced you to it at Expo in twenty-two. Is that not true? Did I not do that?

I think, well, so you introduced us face to face. I never met Mark face to face, but I had interviewed him twice on a podcast, and I was diving into Lux right about that time actually, um, was over a year ago. Uh, so yeah, it's been interesting.

Yeah, you go to you go to Expo, you meet people. That's what we do, by the way. Selfish plug: exponential.org. The new conference is coming up. Uh, we've got twelve digital metaverse tracks. Um, Mark, are you speaking? Did I ask you to speak at Expo this year? This is awkward. It better be yes.

Yeah, yeah, you actually sent me an invite for it yesterday. No pressure.

Yeah, it just don't screw up. Uh, but you can use the coupon code, uh, was it digital twenty-twenty-three? It's good sixty bucks off. There you go. Look at me. I look at me helping you save money. You're doing the thing, man. You're a salesman, man. All about the commercials, man. I got a real podcaster. Yeah. Athletic Greens. Slow. No, slow your roll. Yeah, very good.

All right, um, Mark, so listen, um, my gosh, you know, you started mentioning things about board games and Legends Cast and video games and nerd culture, and and you know, Lord knows I understand the nerd culture. I could never do Halo 2. Uh, the last viable video game I was any good at was GoldenEye, which is actually making a return on Switch Online, and I'm excited about that. Uh, my wife destroys me in that game, which is actually a little scary when you think about it. Let her be Oddjob. Is that the thing? She's the small little one?

No, no, no, no, no. Like sheep, but one guy with a clear advantage.

Yeah, who cares about balance, right? She's sniper rifle, find the spot, and just stay there and wait for the one moment and just takes the shot, man. It's crazy. She's so good.

Anyway, um, you know, there's a lot of subculture centered around this, and I know we're going to be talking some about the subcultures and the different nuances of these different areas as we bring in some of these people that are really speaking into this genre and are trying to reach the three billion gamers on the planet. That number is scary to me. But let's talk a little bit, at least in your implementation in your context with Lux, what does church actually look like? What are you actually doing in that space?

Yeah, uh, that's a really great question. Um, and I think when we asked that question, most of us as pastors immediately think towards what does service look like? Um, but I think we have to ask a bigger question and say what does all of the embodiment of what it means to be at church look like? Because if you were to ask what my service looked like, I'd say go to Twitch.tv/Lux Digital Church and watch our VOD from this past week, and you'll get an idea. Do a lot of the things that church does. We do worship and we do prayer and we do preaching and teaching. And on top of that, we have a pre-show and post-show that is a lot more like me and my wife sitting on a couch and talking for fifteen minutes, or like last night, me breaking our fast by eating a ridiculous sloppy amount of pizza live on the internet. Um, and so if you think of like live streaming mixed with youth group mixed with your church service, you would actually see a lot of things that are similar.

We have really reverent moments. Like we had this week in post-service, really ending our fast with the Lord's Supper and taking the Lord's Supper together as a church family, which we do once a month. And then we have plenty of goofiness and celebration and things that are part of our services as well, which includes our question of the day. And you know, coming on stream with a really nice lightsaber at the beginning of service we did a couple weeks ago and swinging that around a little bit. And so there's been lots of really things that are very tailored to nerd culture, but there's a lot of things that we do that would be familiar to a church when it comes to thinking about a service. And uh, but it's very tailored um and positioned towards the gaming culture and specifically not just gaming culture, but Twitch culture, which has a couple hundred million people on it every single month.

And so like, that's what our service looks like. But when we talk about the more encompassing question of like, what does what makes up your church, I've been saying this for a long time, and it's actually truer now than it ever was, that eighty percent of what it means to be a church for us doesn't happen on Twitch. It happens on Discord. We say that Twitch is our sanctuary. Discord is all of the other parts of our building. Um, and so we have small groups that are happening throughout the week. They launch here in about another week, about when this episode will go out. We'll have launched small groups. We have, I think, nine or ten small groups that are launching um this spring. We have uh year-long Bible studies and monthly Bible studies that are going on all the time. Uh, every single day in our Discord server where people are coming and engaging. And we have Bible study leaders. We have welcome team or welcoming people into the community and helping direct them. We have an onboarding process which lets people get to know who we are, what our core values are, and what our mission statement is. We have a welcome room and we have a get-to-know-you section. And so all of the things that you might think of when it comes to the necessary pieces of the puzzle to build disciples, which we think are spiritual disciplines, which we do in community, which is for us four primary ones, although there's others, is living in community, fasting, prayer, and Bible reading. And those things are happening all throughout the week as we live that out as a family. And you know, we have the equivalent of church potlucks, which is we get together once a month and play games together and hang out for a couple hours. That's our church potluck, right?

Um, and so there is all of the things that you might think of as a church if you funnel them through the lens of Twitch and game culture. Those things are all happening, but they're happening between two different platforms, just as they'd happen in two different sections of your building.

I was actually in a meeting today uh with a sixty-year-old individual, and very respectful of digital, but was very clear up front he didn't understand it, you know? And he's talking to me about like, when he was a kid, he would go to church at eight-thirty in the morning on Sunday. He would do church. He would do Sunday school. So he'd be there eight-thirty to noon, and then he would go back for youth choir and the evening service, six to eight-thirty that night. And so it was telling me the stories of that. Um, and then when I started talking about, well, you know, digitally, it's everyday believers and in the lives of people daily we're able to engage. And in some ways, you know, the digital ecclesiology, you know, I can make an argument that it actually is closer to a physical ecclesia or closer to the biblical ecclesiology than some of the ways that physical is today. And he was, that made him uncomfortable. Uh, but one of the things that he really like started to struggle with was short-term versus long-term. Like, and I just, I would love your takes. I actually, I don't know that I've had this conversation with you specifically. Is a digital church, like, is it? Are the people that you're doing ministry with in Twitch and Discord, like, is the goal for them to be connected to your church five years, ten years, beyond? Is the goal to minister them and help them get connected physically? Like, what? And I know we're gonna ask this question a lot because I know there's varying opinion. Uh, but I would love, you know, just maybe your take and the years as well.

That's a great question. I think when you talk to most people who don't live in a digital world, right, they don't really have any context for it. They don't have a single digital friendship. Um, they don't really understand it, right? Um, they're like, oh yeah, the internet is a good thing. And I'm not trying to be condescending. They're like, internet is a good thing. I think that we should do it. I am in support of it. I'm in support of it. But it kind of ends with the long-term, short-term question, right? That's where it kind of ends. And that's where the divide comes. Because most people who live with the physical mindset, who don't have really any experience or want to have any experience in the digital world, are perfectly okay and supportive of digital ministry as long as the end goal of digital ministry is to funnel people into physical churches.

If it's not to funnel people into physical churches, then they're kind of out, and that is not the goal with our church. Our goal is to be the full embodiment in ecclesiology of what it means to be a body of believers devoted to the things that the first century body of believers were devoted to. To be a disciple-making group that makes disciples that make disciples, and to lead people to Jesus and salvation in him with baptism, Lord's Supper, sacraments, the whole deal. Is to do that in digital space in such a way that this is your church experience. This is your spiritual family, more than just church experience. This is your home, right? This becomes your spiritual home. You are sent out on mission from here into both digital and physical relationships. And so you are impacted here, and we see this over and over again in our church where people are impacted dramatically here by their faith, and their physical relationships are transformed.

It's like one of our guys fasted this week with us, and he, last night in our pre-service huddle, he was saying one of the really cool things about fasting this week is he got to have a bunch of spiritual conversations with guys that he works with who aren't believers because they didn't understand why he was fasting. It's a perfect example of the fullness of the body of Christ that is existing in meeting and gathering and sharpening one another in digital space. This is a guy who was pretty done, like he was pretty done with church before Lux, and his faith was pretty idle, and now it's awake, and to the point that he's going a week without food, and he's using a week without food as a chance to engage with his physical life friends and coworkers in a conversation about Jesus in spiritual context.

And so no, our goal is not to channel people into physical churches. That does happen with some people, because I'm not—I think that people see a divide and they say there's a war between the digital and physical in some capacity, and I don't see that that way at all. I see that there are people in life who are going to be able to engage and really embrace a digital expression of church in a way that's transformative to their lives. And there are people who will come back to faith through a digital expression because it's newer, it's a little bit fresher, and it's a little less threatening, and then they're going to connect to a physical church. And we've seen that with several of our people. And some of those people, I've literally released, just said, "Hey, go, right?" One of our key members, Josh, who was a member for quite a long time, he's a key member in one of our teams. He got into a physical church that physical church had him starting to help with tech, and he departed. He hasn't really been back. And it's like, good, go. Like, you needed that. It was actually unhealthy for him to stay in our space for a long time. But that is not the case with Doc. It's not the case with Boots. It's not the case with Hood. It's not the case with Holden. It's not the case with JT. Like, these are people who are growing vibrantly inside of the space, and it's transforming their physical lives as well.

So the answer to that question is really a yes and no, but there's not an intentional strategy for channeling people into physical churches. It's just if that's what's right for them and that's where they need to go, we bless them on their way, you know?

I know, Andy, you live in a—I mean, you don't live in a physical—well, actually, you may—but you're very involved with the physical church in this, and you're working in the physical environment doing digital ministry. You're working in a digital environment with work, helping Mark, and even some of the stuff you're doing with us through Digital Church Network. Talk to me a little bit, maybe some of some other differences between physical and digital, maybe some of the tensions between the two, because you're in a unique spot where you are actually seeing both sides of the coin closely. So what insights do you have?

Unfortunately, the conversation you were having with the sixty-year-old gentleman is a little bit more than norm. I did a podcast with my brother yesterday. We do for BayHub, and we were discussing globalization and we were discussing, you know, some of the things that are happening politically around the world, and it got kind of heady and all that. But the one thing that I kept coming back to was we have these different generations of people. It used to be your generations were long, so you had your baby boomers, your Gen X, all those other things. They were fairly large chunks. You had your golden generation that came out of World War II. They're still around with us. They're getting older and older and older. Very stoic, very set in their ways, very resilient, which led into the baby boomers again. Very resilient, very stoic. The baby boomers are the ones that are still kind of in control of mainstream church right now, physical church, and they have been doing church their way for thirty, forty years. That's how church is done. You can never have a relationship online. That person doesn't exist. Digital that wasn't around when I was younger. So if I can't hug you, then you don't exist to me.

And what we're now seeing is the push against that, almost like an anti-globalization, almost like a normalization of the fact that no, I can do everything I need to do from my phone. I can do everything I need to do from my computer. I can have all of these relationships with people all across the world. And so there's these—it feels a little bit like the worship wars, except it's a little more volatile than that, because now it's not just generational differences. It's not just "get your gosh darn guitars off of my stage." Now it's "well, you need to—you can't do church on the internet." But hey, I need to call you on my phone that I could theoretically be connecting with people. And so there's a weird shift that's happening there.

And the interesting thing about churches like BayHope or even some of the other churches that are exploring—I was talking with Tyler Sansum. He and I are going to be kind of doing some stuff as well. And one of the things both he and I were kind of commiserating about was that ninety-five percent of the people in your church are ready to go digital. They're like, "Yes, let's go, come on, let's do it." But that five percent of your traditionalists, the five percent of the ones that want to kind of stay with the status quo, are usually the vocal minority that are really showing up poorly for the physical church.

And so when you experience something like Lux—and I have to say, like, I've experienced in the last year being with Lux, obviously I've been on staff for six or seven months now, ish—I've experienced more in that last year through Lux in terms of actual connection with people, and that's been through my camera in my studio, than I have in almost a year at BayHope Church. And that's saying something.

So I think there's very differences there. I think there's going to come a point when the traditionalists are just going to be retiring, and we're going to have the new norm be this kind of hybrid digital and physical. You know, let's get into some nuts and bolts because that's a really—I mean, I didn't want to put words in your mouth, but I was curious if you were going to go there. You're getting more relational equity out of a digital-only expression of a church compared to a physical expression of a church that's doing digital ministry. Now, I'm not looking for a gotcha journalism. I'm not, you know, that smoking gun. That's not where I'm going. But you know, I've always talked about how churches that lean into digital community and take advantage of that have far more relationship potential compared to broadcasting church services in small groups. Like, do you think that's the reason why you're able to be more relational?

I know, Mark, you've played both sides of the coin as well. What are your guys' takes? As you're really looking in here, I know you both have talked about how you've been so relational, what are the wins that you're seeing? Like, well, how—what's the why behind that, do you think?

I should say, I mean, I can answer almost immediately, and I'm going to answer kind of in the form of an illustration. Every week, or every year, every month, we do what's called the Dream Team Meetup at Lux. The Dream Team is kind of the leadership team of Lux. It's really the heartbeat of the volunteers. They're the leaders, and Mark kind of has been pouring into them for over a year, almost two years now, and is really developing this leadership curriculum for them this year. Not to be draconian or anything, but just to kind of help them up their game in terms of being volunteers in the space.

Every month we do Dream Team meetup. It's on a Thursday evening. Thursdays I'm usually drained. It's been a long week. I'm working a million different ways. I've got a wife and three kids, you know, I'm doing lacrosse and we're doing track and we're doing soccer, and then there's work and Bible studies and you know, leading all these other things. But that time—the last time, especially, we spent about what, half an hour in our own separate rooms praying with one another. We just had groups of five and six of us praying, and I felt a deeper connection with those other four dudes in that room than I have had in any room in any prayer team in any prayer thing that I have in a year and a half, maybe even since COVID at my physical church.

And I think there's two reasons for that. Number one is that there is no pretense when you're on a camera in front of people. You're going to hear kids running around the background. You're going to hear dogs. You're gonna—it's just there's sloppy life happening all around you. You don't get that when you're at in a church building. You don't get the real life happening around you. Number one. Number two, especially in the gamer world, gamers are so used to immediately getting to the heart of who you are as a person. Normally that's a thirteen-year-old yelling at you in Call of Duty, like really just getting to the heart of why you're a terrible person and exposing your biggest and deepest regrets and fears with one comment because that happens. But the core of it is we are so used to just getting right to the deepest part of who we are. And I think that's very unique, and I think that's something that the physical church can learn from.

You know, I love that answer, Andy, and I think it's true. Um, people are generally less guarded online than they are in person. There is so much that is in that question, Jeff, because there is the difference between physical and digital, but that's not the only difference, right? Some of that difference is that Lux is intentionally not programmatic. And so we devote ourselves to a handful of rhythms, and we just keep doing those things, right? And so because of that, we don't have a ton of programs that we're running and things that we're doing, which allows us to be really intentional about relationships that we develop and the spiritual disciplines that we participate in. And that doesn't really have as much to do with online to offline as it much as it does to do the fact that physical church has largely been program-driven for a lot of years, and it's not working. And it's working less and less. Like, I know it's working for some churches, and you run because it works for my church, and that's fine. But nationally it's working less and less, and it's exhausting. And so that's not what we wanted to do. So there's some of it.

That has to do with church structure that creates the space and the room for those relationships. There also is something because of how young our church is—not just how new it is, but how physically young many of our members are. Most of us are in our 20s and 30s. There's a generational thing there because 20 and 30 year olds are a lot more comfortable with approaching difficult subjects and being open about mental health issues. There's less stigma around that than there are with older generations, so we don't have some of that stuff to overcome that perhaps another physical church might have to overcome.

I have very deep and meaningful connections with the physical church that I ministered in for years, but I will say that the ones that I have here at Lux are just as deep and meaningful for me. I mean, I love the people just as deeply, and many of them I will never meet in person. So exactly, why is it that we can find these connections and that they seem to work—maybe even faster? I'm not going to say better, but as good in terms of like the depth of relationship—as we do in the physical church?

I think there's a lot of things that have to go into that, but ultimately I think most people in the physical church just really underestimate digital space. They just have no comprehension of it because they've never built a relationship there, and so their understanding is just like Facebook posts and Facebook arguments and, you know, keyboard warriors. And at best—or at worst—it's just, "Hey, yeah, we use Instagram to promote our church," and there's somebody on my staff that does these things called reels. And that's like your understanding is just shipping your story out to everybody and never giving an opportunity to hear people's—there's not a person on our Dream Team who I haven't heard their story, who haven't sat in a one-on-one call with them, haven't had them share their hurt and their spiritual journey with me. I know their stories intimately at this point.

I baptized one of the members of our team because she was in the area and came to a service, and I baptized her. And so like, I have a deep—even in two years—I have a very deep relationship with these people. And part of it is honestly because we genuinely do life together every day. It's, and that's very different than a physical church. Like, we are conversating every single day. Like, someone is always online. Like, when I wake up in the morning, I'm in church. When I go to bed at night, I'm turning off as I'm just done being in church, right? We're never not in church—not always in church service, but we're always in the church building because it's right there at our fingertips all the time. And we are living life together all the time there and gathering together all the time there.

And so I think that does make a difference too, because you do feel closer to these people when it's people that have prayed for you daily, that have talked to you daily, that you're in Bible study with every day. Um, that there's this daily connection that helps you break down some walls and feel close to people.

What's the spiritual direction of the average spiritual temperature? You know, zero, nowhere, or negative ten? No awareness of Christ—zero. New Christian—ten. Um, you know, full devoted disciple? Like, the average gamer, the average person that you're working with, that you're doing ministry with, that you're discipling—do they know who Jesus is? Is there—is it negative ten where they're fully agnostic and atheists? Like, what are you seeing and feeling in gaming space?

I would be curious to hear Andy's response to this. I would say that most of our people went to church at one point and left the church at one point, and most of them have not had an intention of coming back. There are some people which God has richly blessed us with who are strong believers and who came to us because they wanted to help us, and that's amazing, and they make up a decent portion of our core team—like our Dream Team. Um, and then it's kind of a mixed bag from there.

Uh, you have really two things in the gaming world. You have Christians who are gamers who are looking for a safe haven, right, in a world that is largely volatile and hostile towards them and what they believe—extremely liberal and oftentimes openly, openly vicious to Christians. They're looking for a safe space. So we do have some people who come into our community because they're searching for that, right? They're looking for a space of like-minded people to play games with, to get connected with, and to grow with. And then we have people who are genuine explorers, kind of spiritual pilgrims—people who are from the EU or something like, "I'm not really sure what I believe. I've never really been to church before, but I'm kind of exploring." And they have a very strange view of who a God could be. They believe in a God, but it's like a mishmash of a bunch of different gods that they've sort of, you know, cut apart and pasted together.

Um, but I would say it's not common for us to have openly hostile, like militant atheistic individuals who are like coming into our church wanting to engage. That does not happen often. You know, uh, I think maybe the closest to that is Flying Blind, um, who was a Wiccan—a Wiccan church leader—who, uh, was returning. But even he grew up in the church and left. And so um, it varies. It definitely varies just like a physical church would. The people—I mean, people are people, no matter where they are. It does vary.

I mean, VR guys talk to me about trolls all the time coming in trying to disrupt, trying to—I mean, literally crash the VR world—just to be a problem. You—that trolls really isn't an issue in gaming? Oh no, it is. It is. Uh, we routinely have to bring out—it's a band hammer. Uh, we routinely have to mod them out of the chat. Um, but it's different because they—in Discord—and I just jumped all over this, Mark, sorry about that—but in Discord you have to go through a series of steps before you can even post or before you can even, you know, put links in or anything like that. So it weeds out some of that stuff. And then by the time they actually start posting, you can almost tell immediately there is no long con there.

Um, during a live service, we've got anywhere between four and seven moderators in the chat at any time, so they'll just swoop in and excise the demon out of there. I'm not sure if you're being literal or figurative with the word demon, but that's—take it as you will. I—some of them may not even know either. So that's interesting.

Um, would you agree, um, what Mark was saying about the spiritual temperature? Like, Andy, does that resonate with what you're saying?

Yeah, I, uh—a lot of it is. The only thing I would say that would run as kind of an additive to that is that they—most people had been to church, but I don't think it was their own faith. Like, they didn't go of their own accord. Most of them were dragged by their parents or grandparents or, you know, some other friend or something, and had either rebelled or had just had spiritual apathy and had no care in the world about exploring who Jesus was. I don't think most of them—there was no real—there was no real curiosity.

We have a lot of people too, um, who for whatever reason just do not fit in well in subchurch subculture. Um, and whether that's because, you know, they listen to a lot—they really like death metal, right, or they love Dungeons and Dragons, or, um, for some of them we have some people with learning disabilities, right, or anxiety. A lot of people who struggle with, you know, diagnosable anxiety disorders or, you know, ADHD. And so, and we do have some people who are sort of like on the spectrum in a variety of different conditions. And so it's hard for them to connect. We have some people with disabilities. They can't go to a physical church because of physical limitations as well. And so there are some people like that, which—like, the reason they are in our church is sometimes looks a little bit different than maybe the reason why, you know—which my point is this, Jeff: it's everyone. Like, it runs the gamut. And our church is specifically geared towards reaching de-churched people. That's who we're trying to reach. And so people who left the church ten years ago and have no intentions of going through the doors for church again—rather roll the dice with hell—and so that's the type of person that we're going after, and largely that's the type of person that we get.

So is there any—you know, in marketing and normally in digital church I talk about like a persona, have a target audience. Um, are you reaching sixteen year old men? Are you—is it forties? Like, what is there a persona? Like, what do you—how do you manage that?

Yeah, our goal is to reach a twenty-seven year old man who's, uh, working a dead-end job, um, not really sure what he's supposed to do with his life. Comes home from work each day, um, tries to escape from that feeling by playing video games, gets off too late at night, drives to fall asleep, and struggles to—isn't really involved in a whole lot in terms of like things that are bigger than himself. Um, LGBTQ rights, and that's largely not because he believes in it or really cares much for it. It just feels culturally like that's what he's supposed to be in favor of. And so that's kind of a feeling and vibe of the person that we're trying to reach. And you can see that through the equipment that we use, the language that we use, the way that we preach and teach, the way our Discord is designed—everything is funneled through that one. But you've told me—I mean, I remember you telling me there's like a grandma that's part of your church or something like, and so you're even stretching beyond the perceived personas as you're doing this.

Yeah, the smaller you aim, the bigger you hit, right? And I think that that's true, period. And you can see this in marketing all the time. That might even be a marketing thing that I should attribute to someone in a quote that I don't know who quoted it. But um, yeah, we've seen that, right? Like, my wife's Aunt Jenny is a member of our team. She's a prayer warrior for us, and she prays live on stream from her iPad. And it's a little fuzzy sometimes, but you know, my wife's aunt's like in her sixties. She's not a gamer. Um, but man, does she love our church. I don't think she's missed a week of Lux in two years, and she's awesome. Jenny's awesome. She's in a small group. She's plugged in. She said she has grown more in the last two years at Lux than she did spiritually than in her entire life growing up in a physical church. And we've seen it. We're seeing her life change radically. And this is somebody who's not a gamer, who's not in her age bracket, who isn't even the gender of the individual that we're targeting. And that's the case across the board, right?

Yeah, we—that's our aim, but you know, we have Mika who's seventeen, and we have Mika's mom, Lynn, who's, uh, you know, older than seventeen because Mika's seventeen. Um, and they're awesome. Like, Lynn—wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You have a mom and a daughter attending a digital, uh—are you kidding? A couple of them, yeah.

A couple of them? I've never heard that story. That's awesome.

Yeah, we have Zeph and homemade things. Uh, so Zeph is, uh, awesome. She's in our area. I won't give any personal information out because Zeph is, um, pretty private about that. But I mean, Zeph is the person—Zeph came into our community and Zeph had had problems in other communities with dishonesty and a lack of transparency, sort of posting images that weren't really her, um, that sort of thing, kind of creating a fake persona. And I know some of my friends' Discords where they had had some conversations as a product of that, right? Zeph came into our community very guarded. I've never—I'd never seen Zeph's space. She had never turned on.

A camera never shared anything. In times she shared her real name, she's posted real pictures of herself this year for our costume contest that we did in October and homemade things. Her mom is coming to our server. She's dealing with some medical issues right now. We're literally meeting every week with homemade things.

Um, who's, you know, older and not a gamer. Um, and we're praying with her every week as she goes through the medical stuff that she's going through right now. And we're caring for Zeph and who made things, mother daughter. Um, and and we're seeing that we're seeing a couple of specifically mother daughter combos. But part of it is too, it's just like I think with with me and Lynn. Lynn is seeing a place where her daughter's faith is being awakened and she's becoming excited about maybe being called into ministry and she's exploring that. And it's I think it's put some excitement there for Linda. Then come and say, okay, what is? And I know Lynn. I've met with her. I know their physical church. I've preached at their physical church before. Um, so I know that Lynn is still probably very involved there. And luck's the thing that she does with her daughter. But it's still really cool and powerful that maybe. I mean, one of the criticisms that I get around digital church is is the generational gap. Like our generation is able to go together. And and I've never, I mean, I've always, yeah, why not? But I, I, this may be the first story that I've ever heard. There may probably are others, but I just haven't heard it of of my wife's small group runs from sixties to seventeen. Wow. Um, that's her problem. There is such a generational gap in my wife's small group. It's a handful of mums of young kids, a teenager, and um, some people who are older, older than that, you know, like kids out of the house age, um, empty nesters. And that's one of the biggest obstacles she has with her small group is how big the age gap is there. And yeah, generational stuff happens. People ask me how do we do children's ministry? Um, well, like come by and check it out because Bougie read the Bible in one year with us. And now every day he reads in the New Testament. One year he read the Bible in one year. He never read the Bible before. Read the whole Bible with us, asking great questions the whole time. Gets to the New Testament here, says this is not enough Bible for me. So every day he reads the chapter before the chapter of the day and the chapter after. So he's reading the New Testament three times over the course of this year. And every day he reads it to his son. And now his son is going to him, "Daddy, we read that last time," or "Daddy, I like that part," or this or that. And his son, who Roman is, I don't know, about my daughter's age, a little bit younger, it's like four or five years old, is being discipled by his father. And his children are being discipled by their father because because Bougie is experiencing Christ through our church. And this is another couple, wife and husband, who attend our church faithfully, who would not be in church right now. But by the way, Bougie wants to be called Bougie. Mark is not insulting Bougie by calling, yeah, no, no, this is good. It's actually somebody wants that that name. So it's that that tolerable. That's his screen name. That's his screen name. Bougie. Hey, listen, we we can have this conversation literally all day. And that's why we're doing a season on this through the church digital. Um, in in the coming weeks, we're really going to start to to look at some of the nuances in digital and nerd culture and gaming culture. And um, you know, churches that are operating in Twitch and Discord, churches that are operating in in actual video games, churches that are physical churches that are doing things alongside uh gaming culture and and reaching in. Or really want to unpack the idea of of gaming culture here and how we, whatever expression of church you have, can be involved in in reaching into that. So Mark's going to be along for a lot of the ride for me. Andy, Andy will, I'm sure, we'll have a presence as we're going through this. So gentlemen, just right up here as we're closing, thanks for taking some time, kicking the season off, and and excited to hear what's going on with Lux and beyond. But as as we're landing the plane here, Andy, let you go first. Any closing thoughts?

No, looking forward to the season. I think there's a lot, especially with the guest list you got coming up, there's a lot of information. There's a wealth of knowledge out there. And you've got a lot of different models. But most importantly, you got a lot of hearts for Jesus that are just looking to do things to reach the community. And that is so so so cool.

Awesome. Yeah, so that sounds good. With that, uh, Mark, on your side, anything? Uh, any closing thoughts?

You know, there's this really cool thing over on the Church Digital's website that you can click now called Physical Church Consulting. And it either is launched or it'll be launched shortly after you listen to this episode. And you can hire me or Andy or Jeff to come hang out with your church and talk about how you can move from putting a live stream out there on the internet to building genuine relationships and deepening those with people online. And to see stories like some of the ones that you heard about right here. Um, because there's people looking for it on the internet. So that's my only plug is uh go check that out because the Church Digital is doing a ton of really cool stuff. And Jeff has put what seems to be an endless number of thankless hours uh into this beast and continues to do so. And so you should go click on that link and check it out.

Hey, Mark, Andy, thanks for jumping on the podcast with us as we've been kicking off this idea of season four, Jesus Gamers and Church. Really looking forward to more of these conversations moving forward. Mark is is going to be a regular uh guest, a regular host, a co-host, probably better word of co-host. Let's call it that. Officially, let's just say that right now on there. Mark's gonna be a co-host with this season uh with me as we start to explain and explore uh this new gaming culture and how we, the church, need to be operating in it.

Remember what we had talked about? We're going to be on Twitch, uh, twitch.tv slash digital Church Network. We're going to be on that platform every Thursday, three P.M. Eastern. We've got an interview coming up in just a couple days with Bubba from Love Thy Nerd. I hinted it earlier, but he is with Love Thy Nerd. They're doing an incredible job reaching the nerd culture for Christ and coming alongside churches that want to help reach the nerd culture. What is the nerd culture? How does a physical church reach that? Welcome. Listen to the interview Thursday on twitch.tv slash digital Church Network. Links in the show notes. Information's in the show notes as well. If you're not going to catch the live stream, it'll be on the podcast as well. We'll take the stream and turn into a podcast uh by the usual time Monday.

But hey, you know what? We're gonna land the plane. So for for Mark, for Andy, for myself, Jeff at the Church Digital, Digital Church Network, and lover of GoldenEye for Nintendo 64, thanks for jumping on the podcast here, and we'll see you next time. Literally Thursday on the show. You all have a good day.