Gaming Ministry is Bigger Than Anyone Realizes

Welcome in everyone to the Gaming Outpost podcast. I love hanging out with friends talking about what's going on in digital ministry and today I get the privilege of bringing in Chino Mage who works alongside of me over with the church digital and he's also at Lux Digital Church.

So we're going to be talking about online Twitch ministry and also conferences that we've got coming up. So Andy, welcome in.

Hey, it's good to see you. Cap, how are you doing, buddy?

I'm doing fantastic. Uh, doing so many things and well, I don't even want to know your schedule. I know how busy my schedule has been. I know the production side of what I've got to see with the conference last week. I was uber impressed with everything that happened and and then even things that were evolving the day of to get it to happen. So, just just appreciate you and all that you are doing and I can't wait until we start talking about the DMC con that has just a few days, couple of weeks and we're going to be launching that and I'm really excited about it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be uh eye opening, revoly, world changing, um life shaking, all of those things. I think I think those are words that we can use to describe that.

I think so. probably think so. For for some people absolutely the eye opening thing 100%. Life-changing depends on the person but uh yeah I I'm I am now going to be one of not just the host but uh giving one of the keynotes and I'm getting really excited about that. I I I wasn't sure if I wanted to step in and do that and since last Wednesday it's just really been formulating. I knew I I knew the outline. So, but before we I'm just teasing this because we're not going to talk about this yet. We're just teasing this. We're going to we're going to back up and uh and talk about how did you get on to Twitch to begin with? Because that's where I start my conversation with everybody is how did you end up on Twitch? Were you just watching people because you loved video games? Were you jumping on press and go to start with because you wanted to stream video games? What brought you over to Twitch to start with?

Yeah. Well, here. Let me give me give me one second here. I need to bring your audio up.

Oh, no problem. Um.

Oh, you know what? Let me I can do this for you on my side as well. I often have to adjust it for the guest. That helps a ton. And then let me turn off my audio monitor. And then I have.

Let's just see if that's a little bit better for our team. Could you uh could you go ahead and just test uh test something for me? Just let me know if that's working now.

Yeah. All right. So, do I just going to read what Nightbot said. Do you consider yourself a missionary in digital spaces? Have you thought maybe God is calling you to be one? Well, we are here to help equip people to become digital missionaries. Go to the church.digital/edm, fill out the form, and let us know what you'd like to explore in this calling. You like my voice there? I see you giggling at at me. Great. No, that that's you're you're doing you're doing such a great job there, Flackat. Thanks, man.

Okay. Uh, we good on your side now.

Hold on. We've got a mad mad echo here that I'm fixing. So, give me one second.

No problem.

Oh, I hate the echoes. Echoes are such a pain.

Yeah, I think I got it now. Okay, one more test. Read read one more thing for me and let's see.

Fill out the form and let us know you'd like to explore this calling. Fill out the form to let us know that you'd like Oh, wow. I have that in there twice. I'm going to have to fix that. Fill out the form. Why is this in there three times? That is super weird. It's It's like you put it in there and then you don't even end up reading it. Fill out the form to let us know you'd like to explore this calling and then it's in there again and then fill out the form to let us know you'd like to explore this more. It's like, okay, that's not three different things. It's the same thing three different times. Okay, I could shorten that for sure. All right, the echo god made.

Uh, we're gonna we're gonna see. It says they they're saying it's echoing big time, but I think we're good now. Um, Ze in the chat, could you tell me if that's better?

Oh, you know what? I did not uh Donna share. Let me start share chat. I should do that, too. Then I could see that.

Oh, I think you're good now on my end is what it says.

All right.

I didn't even realize we had share chat. Man, this This is the internet. This is pretty crazy, huh?

Oh, yeah. I I remember two years ago when people were trying to use Twitch's setup and they were telling it how bad it was to try to do it together and then people were using Discord instead to to work around stuff. Uh it is much improved. The other thing I like whoever my guest is, I I'm already set up. It doesn't matter. My it my link goes out, the new person comes in, it's all set. Uh, all I ever have to do is go, "Okay, where are you in your camera range? Let me adjust you on screen." Cuz some people are centered and some people are not. And uh, yeah, I'm awesome. I am super enjoying the streaming together feature here on Twitch.

Yeah, once once the once you get the the bugs worked out, like so I'm on a Mac. Uh, I'm streaming on a Mac right now. My PC is off. I've been My PC is usually used for gaming. We can talk about streaming here in a minute, but my PC is reserved mostly for gaming and other things. I have like a very souped up Mac that I use here for video editing and audio editing and all those other things. And Mac doesn't Mac is beautiful except it doesn't have built-in audio routing like the PC does. And it's a pain in the absolute to us. And so you have to install a third party app. Most of the other things on a Mac are great, but like on the Windows, Windows you can just go down to the mixer and you can like just route things wherever you want. You can install VB or you can install, you know, voice meter banana or voice meter itself to do virtual cables. Mac you have to circumvent that with a couple of things. Anyway, so I was just doing that on the fly and uh it looks like everybody in in um in Twitch land is good to go. So, hey Flycap, thanks for weathering the storm there with me.

Oh, you know what? I have had a couple of uh podcasts early on where it took us a half an hour before we could actually have the conversation because we thought we had it fixed, then we went live and then stream let us know, no, you guys are messed up and and so I I still have the problems regularly when I jump on and so yeah, I got lots of patience for that and man, that just shows off your skill level and I'm glad that you are in charge of conferences and not me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's uh sorry, you asked me a question and I was paying attention half and now I'm I'm back, baby.

That's all good. That's all good. So, I like to start with how did you end up on Twitch? And part of that is because people that might be listening to this might want to share it with someone they know in their church, in their in their real life that just take encouragement from how did you start? Because the stories are so vast and different of different people's exposure and draw to Twitch. Some people are drawn to it. They grow up with it. Other people find it later on. And oh, we got Drewzy Shop dropping in. Dude, welcome in. Um, you've been on here before. Now we got Chino Mage. And both of you are going to be at the conference. See, I'm just going to keep teasing this and then we're not going to talk about it. So, go ahead. Uh, how did you get connected with Twitch to start with?

Yeah. Um, I obviously gamer way way way back. Um, I remember Twitch when it was Justin TV. Um, I used to watch a lot of, um, illicit soccer streams on Justin TV, uh, where it would be people just kind of, uh, um, you know, they'd take an HDMI cable into like a converter box and then they would just point it point a phone at it sometimes. And uh, it's not Drewzy. And uh, yeah. Yeah. And so through there I um I w I watched it transition to Twitch and then I was always kind of in the background watching uh lurking um I mean my account has been around since 2015 or 2016 or whatever it is. Um it's been a while and so I was constantly watching um a couple of dudes play. I'm a I'm a I'm a gamer but I'm also kind of a strategy nerd gamer. Um, okay. I never really thought I was, you know, I like action games and I like RP I like RPGs as well. Let's put that out there. But strategy games in particular, games like um Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis and um Stellaris, you know, a lot of those like Paradot and then Football Manager as well. And um games like that for whatever reason organizations.

By football manager, you mean soccer for Americans?

Football. Yes.

Yes. I was just just clarifying because I you know I don't want anyone thinking you're playing Madden if uh you know that's not what you're playing.

No. And I actually I'm going to be honest like I don't even really like Madden. I like college football um the college football games. So NCAA up 14 and then college football 25 good games. Um but anyway, so I was I was kind of watching all that and then around about 2019 um we I was I was a pastor in I was a worship pastor up in the Atlanta area and we moved down um from Atlanta to Tampa where I currently live and I took a job as the digital pastor for um a large multi-sight church down here. And um going from worship to digital is interesting, but one of the things I started doing on digital was it was like, hey, there's this Twitch thing. I'm just going to just like I've been watching Twitch, but I've never really been engaging with it. Um and so I really started diving in and um really kind of didn't I'm not like a huge streamer. Um, most of the games that I want to play, most, you know, people aren't watching. Like, I'm going to stream. I think the most I've ever streamed to is maybe a hundred people, and that wasn't even on my channel. It's typically like 15 to 20 people. Um, but, you know, it's it's strategy games. It's just hanging out. I regularly run um a uh a live stream on um twitch.tv/luxdigital where you're currently live. Uh I regularly run a stream over there called Chillmachino, and it's just like we're rating things and doing all that. I'm more of a podcaster. I'm more of a um presenter that way. But I started getting involved with Twitch a little bit more. Um and actually back in 2021, it's Wednesday in New Zealand. Wow. It is Kiwi. Tall skinny Kiwi, that dine thing. Um in 2020 and 2021, I actually started streaming from my garage. Now, I got to back up a little bit because in 2015, no, 2016, 2017, and 2018, I was a worship pastor, but also I had uh opened a faith-based nonprofit gym. You can think kind of like a CrossFit gym, um except it was for faithbased things. And so, God literally wrote us a check for $20,000 and said, "Here you go. We found a space. We found a bunch of equipment. Um, and we opened this thing up and it was um, it was awesome. And and and I've always been a fitness guy. Um, I'm a personal I'm a certified personal trainer as well. You know, I kind of went to school for some of that stuff. And so I was like, you know, I I've been really involved in the intersection of faith and fitness and trying to figure all that out. And so we opened the gym and it was great. And we handed the gym over to one of our volunteer trainers in 2018 so I could go back full-time into worship ministry. And then um and that gym would have been going if kept co wouldn't have killed it. Like it was running for a good four and a half years which is awesome.

Um but all that to say I've always had that inclination. And in 2021 I had a couple of really cheap cameras and God said, "Hey, go and start streaming." And so I would go out into my garage on, you know, two or three afternoons out of the week and I would just set my cameras up and I would work out and I would, you know, I would stream during the workouts. I'd answer questions. Uh, and then I would write fitness programming for people for free.

And it was just a it was a way just to connect and hang out. Um, never really got anywhere. Uh, you know, I had a couple a handful of subs. Um, and a you know, a a little number of followers and it was fine. But I I slowly started transitioning that into working a little bit more with games and gaming.

I remember the very first game that I streamed. It was a it was a game called Baldur's Gate Alliance. Okay. Um which is a really bad game. Uh but I just wanted to kind of I knew it was broken and I kind of wanted to laugh at it and I started laughing at it and then I was like all right that was fun. Had a number of people come in and laugh at I was like that was fun. So, I started the week after I started streaming Crusader Kings and actually um the week after I started streaming um I was doing work for a company um called Alter Live. I was doing some side work for them and a lot of their developers were in the Ukraine. Um the week before that the Ukraine had been invaded by Russia and we lost contact with a decent number of our developers and I was like hurting.

Um yeah because I had these are people that I had been working with and a couple of them had sent WhatsApp messages of their apartments that had literally been blown out um by bombs and rockets and all sorts of really scary stuff.

And so I started playing Crusader Kings and I started Crusader Kings if for those of you who don't know is this like how do I put it? It is a strategy game that you essentially are a king or a ruler of a thief, a dukedom, a duche, a kingdom, whatever. You can start as big or as small as you want.

And you essentially are making all of these decisions and you are uh waring with factions and you're marrying people and there's subterfuge and murder and love and it's just it's a lot of fun.

And I uh I decided, you know what? I'm angry at Russia. And so I started as this little Ukrainian duchy and I was streaming it and I was just streaming Ukraine takes it was called Ukraine in Turk. You can't I can't even talk. Ukraine can into Russia and um and so I started just streaming Ukraine taking over Russia and it was a lot of fun.

I had a lot of people join turned into a YouTube series. Um and it was just my little way of like punching back at Russia.

But through that, just kept kind of streaming and streaming and streaming and then um got hooked up with Luxil Digital Church and here we are today.

Yeah. I didn't know all of that. I mean, I knew about the the um going and and doing the gym and and moving in that direction. And I I love those pieces of things that seem like, well, that was not a success. But wait a minute, that was a stepping stone in ministry that either developed something in you or you learned something from that if you hadn't taken that step, you could not be effective where you currently are at. So, so I I love I love that. And yeah, on Twitch, the whole live streaming workout, I see people that are doing it and they they do get a small community. They are not going to blow up in the same way that other people are. What I love what you were doing in that was engaging with people that were watching you because hey, I could be doing it along with you the same way I could we can't do it right, I can't ask the video, what am I doing wrong? I could have asked you to help me like I'm struggling with this. How do I correct this? What are the things that I can do? The community aspect is is one of the most valuable things uh for me that that happens on Twitch. It doesn't happen on every place. So, that's cool. And then I didn't know about the uh the connections there with Ukraine. Have you been able to after things settle down get connected with everybody and find out that they're safe and and things are working or have you lost track of some and not had any answers?

There have been there was two of them. So there was okay how many there were eight developers in the Ukraine. Um six of them were guys, two of them were females. The two females reported in a couple of weeks later. Um, two of the guys reported in a couple of weeks later. I had ne I never heard from like three of them and then two of the other ones. Um, they actually volunteered for the army. Uh, and I didn't hear from them at that point. They volunteered to go to the front lines. Um, I just can't imagine, you know, I can't I can't imagine, right?

I mean, I can, you know, I'm I'm a red blooded American. if and if somebody attacked my soil, you know, I'm I would like to think that I would be ready to answer the call, but man, just having your having your literal apartment windows blown out.

Oh, yeah. It was It was a heavy Yeah. Like my heart was really hurting for them at that at that time. Yeah. I've I've been overseas at times where staying with insecured compounds because of some danger, not the level of war danger, but some danger. I that's the closest I could come to imagining what it's what it would be like to have your life overturned, upheaval, and all of that. It's so hard to grasp and imagine that.

Yeah. Yeah. And and the other the the weird thing like for me was I'm this at the time I was like 37 37 year old white American in living in suburbia, you know, north of Tampa and I'm going like I don't know how to help because my uh I've I've always had a huge heart. So I'm originally from Michigan um the great state of where you hail from. That's right. Go Blue. and uh but moved down here uh when I was 12, almost 13 because my dad got a um promotion, transfer, all that other stuff. We are still Michiganders. Uh Matthew got it. Go Blue. Um and so, you know, we we we moved here and so I'm essentially a Florida native. Like I'm 42 now. I've lived here all but 13 years of my life. I was in Jersey, South Jersey for three years and then I was in the Atlanta area for about seven years. So, I guess it's 10 years. And I don't know if you knew this, but in Florida, we have these things called hurricanes that happen pretty regularly.

Yes. I I I uh was in the Dallas area when Katrina hit, and we had 500,000 people in Dallas County that were displaced from Katrina. Oh, sorry. That was Collin County, north of Dallas County. I don't remember the number Dallas had. So, I was running uh with the church that I was at. Uh I stepped in like I just started an internship the month before it happened and a month later I am running a warehouse coordinating with uh Catholic uh services. I'm trying to remember the name of it. St. Vincent de Paul and other churches to coordinate shipments from around the country of of goods and services. Run a warehouse, get donations, purchase uh all the things that you would need in a house if you're starting over. So, you're getting apartments that FEMA will pay for with nothing in it. So, I'm getting room in a box. Here's the kitchen box, all your your stuff, appliances, pots and pans, utensils, bedroom, here's sheets, go down to the local place, hook up stuff with buying as many mattresses as we could to furnish. Like, that's what I was doing uh like a month into my internship was helping coordinate all of that stuff. So yeah, I and then going on mission trips to clean up in um Mississippi City where it was just devastated from Katrina. So yeah, I've I've been there and shortly after, but I've not lived through it. So that's that's going to be different.

Well, and that and that's you know, we've lived through a lot of them. Tampa has um Tampa is in such an area that we get a lot of it, but we don't ever get direct hits. um which is like a total interesting God thing that we could talk about. But the the long and short of it is I I have developed a heart for hurricane rescue and hurricane all that. And actually, funny story, um when I was living in South Jersey, uh there was a little hurricane called Sandy. Superstorm Sandy is what it was. Oh, yeah. It was it was it was a it was a combination of a nor'easter and uh a major like category 4 hurricane. and they met and they turned into like a Captain Planet sort of situation where they just exploded and that explosion happened uh right like the the eye came right over uh Atlantic City. I was living about 10 minutes away from Atlantic City there and um it's funny it was I was evacuated for two hurricanes in South Jersey. both of them. Well, one of them I never I didn't leave because I was like, I'm riding this out. But Superstorm Sandy, um I was um we were getting evacuated and our entire area was getting evacuated cuz we were we were near the coast and they evacuated me from South Jersey to Florida. I was like, nowhere nowhere do you ever go to Florida to get away from a hurricane. Uh but it was it was crazy. I was the last flight out of the Atlantic City airport flying to I could only get a flight to Fort Lauderdale which is about 4 hours from Tampa. So my dad was going to drive down and meet me and then um kind of pick me up and bring me to their place.

Um and as we were the literally the last plane out and then the like all everything was shutting down, everybody was leaving and so the plane and I'm I'm a I I was a fine flyer up until this point. Um, but the plane starts, you know, it starts its its thing and even when it turns onto the runway, you can feel it starting to shake and I was like, "Oh crap." And so it it lifts and it got it both, you know, the front wheel got up and it was fine. The back two wheels got up and then slammed into the ground. Uh, and like just slammed right back down and got up and the whole time we were just like all over the place like getting up through the clouds and all this other stuff. And we get up and we finally crest the clouds and we finally crest up over the storm and I look out to the left. So we're flying south. I look out to the left which is west and we get we're over about DC finally and I look out and I can see that freaking hurricane. Like I saw the eye like we were flying over this hurricane. There's an eye. There's a clearly it was the most surreal thing I've ever seen. So got went down to Florida, came back a couple of days later, uh, and the entire area was wiped out. I mean, just it was one of the worst things that And so I me having this like, oh gosh, I need to help. I got to figure out how to help. I was organiz I was helping to organize, you know, like kind of like you were doing in in Mississippi City, like like cleanup efforts and mucking out houses and trying to find shelters and just all of that cuz I I was fortunate. I was in a really crappy second story apartment, so nothing happened to me. I lost power for a couple days and lost all the food in my fridge, but that was it. Like there was no flooding or anything there. It was bad. Anyway, I say all that to say, you had asked about Ukraine like 18 minutes ago. Um part of like where our makeup and our family is is we want to be able to help and we just couldn't help the Ukrainians, you know, we just we just couldn't I couldn't I couldn't rescue them. And that's that's why I streamed uh video games killing Russia. Well, it is it is interesting too like I I think this is a piece of it as well that we'll talk about at the conference of who is the one that you're called to reach because I think part of it comes from

Your life experiences in some way will break your heart for certain groups of people or certain circumstances that people go through. I have very often been in response to disasters. I've gone in after tornadoes. I've gone in after hurricanes. I've gone in after hail storms. I've done a lot of things like that. So my heart goes in that direction. But I also have had experience where you go to places where you know what, this is a different world and they don't have the opportunities that you do.

And so I've always felt like I had the opportunity in seminary to probably go on my first mission trip. And I am going to get training that other people will never have access to. And I really felt a responsibility from that moment on that I've been given the gift of knowing how to and spending time learning studying the Bible. I need to do more than just preach because that's what I'm called to do. But I'm a steward of the education that I've received. So I need to give that to others who will never have an opportunity like I do. So there's just some of those moments in life that just put you on a course on some level that your heart just either responds out of compassion or it jumps to be able to take action when you see opportunities.

Yeah. Absolutely. By the way, Boots, yes, they let anybody on these shows. Thanks, buddy. I appreciate that.

I haven't had Bootstraps on here, so I don't know. We'll have to find out if they'll let anybody on here.

Yeah, that seems like an interesting invitation there to Mr. Bootstrap's boots, Mr. Campfire himself.

So that's awesome. So you talked a little bit about what you were doing and then getting connected with Lux Digital Church. How did you get connected with the church digital? Was it because I know there was around about that same time in some circles getting connected with the church digital?

Yeah. So in 2019 when I started as a rookie digital pastor, I'd already been a pastor for about ten years at that point, but it was all in worship and gym and all that other stuff. And so I had reached out to a couple of guys that I knew that were kind of doing some stuff. Aaron Magnus was a big guy. He was out in California and he and I started talking and he introduced me to Jeff Reed, and I jumped into some sort of Facebook group with Jeff and Tom Pounder and Jason Morris and is kind of this legendary old school, the OGs of Digital Ministry Group. Jay Crando was in there, all those guys. And I guess Jeff had put out a call for like, "Hey, I'm starting a Bible study. Does anybody else want to join us?" And I was like, "Yeah, sure, whatever." It was all digital pastors, you know, or digitally minded pastors.

And so I was in a Bible study in I don't know, August, September of 2019 all the way up through February of 2020. And then a little, you know, the pandemic decided to rear its ugly head and shut everything down and turn our worlds completely upside down.

And so as a digital pastor, it was that was the most stressful time I had in ministry.

Yeah. But it was absolutely go time. Bay Hope, the church I was at at the time was just so cool. It allowed us to just experiment and we turned into a television studio and it was a lot. But and so in that kind of interim, Jeff had reached out and said, "Hey, I'm starting to put content out there. Would you be willing to be a content partner for the Church Digital?" And I said, "Yeah, sure. Whatever." And so I started writing blogs and I started doing videos and you know providing podcasts and content and things like that. Doing a sort of different podcasts about some of the unique things we were doing and just kind of started, you know, I was just there all the time. I was just kind of a fixture in the content. Not never really like working with the church digital until about 2022, right around there.

Jeff came to me and said, "Hey, we, I would love for you to be part of leadership. We're taking a couple of new steps here." And I said, "Yeah, sure. Cool. Let's do it." Oh, prayed through it first and then said, "Yeah, sure. Let's do it." And so I came in as like the, I don't know, title. You know those flag cap titles are kind of fluid in the church digital.

Martin, just follow.

Hey Martin, thank you for the follow.

Love that. Thanks Martin. So anyway, so it started as like doing content and then operations and then all sorts of stuff. And then eventually I've just been around. I've just kind of survived whatever else has happened and been around, been shooting, doing a lot of video and a lot of content and a lot of operations again, operations and financial decisions. And you know, I'm I guess technically the COO maybe.

I never could keep the letter straight. They'd see something, you know, chief. Chief, Andy's gonna do it, officer. Chief, we can't do it because Andy doesn't think we can do it, officer. I'm just throwing shade at you, buddy.

I'm the no guy. I am the guy that says no. When somebody says, "Man, that would be really cool." It's like, "Yeah, yeah, that's great. Where are you gonna get that money from?"

Yeah. How are we gonna do that? Um yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. But actually with Lux, I actually got tied into Lux before that and so well kind of right at the same time. I was like running with both of these digital digital streams of thought at the same time.

Yeah, I it is great to get to the point where we can just joke around because we know each other well enough and we've hung around with each other well enough because when you're when it's like, okay, you've been over here but I haven't. Am I stepping on your toes if I say or do whatever?

Toes.

And there's no toes.

There's no toes anymore. We'll just stomp on them if we want to.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Okay. So like normally I would keep going with all of that, but we are here to talk about the conferences that we have. So why don't we quickly touch on the ones that aren't gaming and then we'll spend the bulk of our time on gaming.

Yeah buddy.

So we did our first conference back in April and made our foray into that. I was hosting over on the VR side which oh my goodness I was so out of my element over there and then we had Altter Live which we broke, or sorry it wasn't Altive, was it was the platform? Okay broke it. So we had over a thousand people show up for the digital conference there which was fantastic and amazing, proved that hey there is a hunger for this, there is a need for this, and we had eighty-five countries, I can't remember if it was eighty-five, some eighties something countries that showed up which is like this is a global thing that God is on the move. And so I got, I was super excited about all of that and then we began on the heels of that to say okay what do we do next and as we both know Jeff kind of runs way ahead with ideas and then we try to figure out if we can do them and so it was let's do a couple of conferences and then that couple of conferences grew to let's do four weeks in a row of conferences.

So we had the first one, reaching your digital neighborhood, which was fantastic. I loved it. I was learning so much from people that are doing things and getting connected with some of the sponsors and the stuff that they're bringing alongside of to help digital missionaries be able to do things. So I'll let you go from there. So we've got one that is tomorrow which is Control Alt Recover. So why don't you just highlight that a minute?

Yeah, Control Alt Recover. So the kind of core of all four of these conferences has been we want to see people really lean into digital in a way that is holistic. And so digital neighborhoods first of all was really identifying, by the way, what's up DJ Craig? Good to see you. We wanted to lean into the idea of digital can be everywhere and identifying your neighborhood is where you need to start. And so talking about evangelism in your neighborhood, talking about how to reach your neighbor, talking about how to invite people into the space, things like that. And so that was kind of the big one. But then the other thing that happens, yeah, Mark is on the church's account. Yeah. Way to Mark, he's a boomer. So he's commenting as Lux Digital Church in chat. And I don't know, Mark's a boomer. Mark is younger than me and yet he's older than me at the same time. But the so tomorrow Control Alt Recover is actually all about soul care.

And so usually what happens with pastors, with ministers, with people that are doing digital is that they keep running and keep running and keep running and then they burn out.

Well it's also the digital community does that. Like that's one of the things if I'm going to make it I have to grind. I have to put twelve-hour days in. Twelve hours aren't getting it. I got to put sixteen-hour days in. And like ministry is always tempting to do that regardless. And I think digital ministry is really easy to give into that thought process of I have to do more and then shaving every space that will give you rest out of it. So trying to do more work.

Yeah. Yeah. And the problem with that is that we don't know how to recover. We don't know how to come back from that. And so that leads into addiction, you know, pornography, drugs, lust, all sorts of, you know, sin, whatever. You go to sin is innocent. We end up falling into those things.

Yeah. Boot says this digital is bad with rest. Digital is so fast-paced. And yet it is bad with rest, but it's fast-paced. And so it is a double-edged sword. And so what we want to do as Control Alt Recover is really give you the steps and the practical things, the practical tools for walking away and being able to be refreshed and being able to rest and being able to really step into recovery.

And a lot of times when people hear recover and I'm actually doing a keynote on this tomorrow. A lot of times when people hear recover they think a gosh I have to go through AA or I have to have some big drug problem or whatever. And I am a former addict. I'm a recovering addict. You're never a former. I'm a recovering addict. And one of the things that we will always have to do, the idea is that we have to have some sort of big overriding sin. And if we don't have that, then we're disqualified from recovery. And it's like a lot of times when you're talking to a pastor or a pastor is talking to a congregant and they say like, "Oh, how'd you come to Jesus?" And a lot sometimes that congregant will say I've just grown up in the church my whole life and you know I kind of feel bad that I don't have any big bombastic stories and what we're here to say is like first of all every story matters to Jesus like as long as we're following him there the word of our testimony is that we are testifying that Jesus is Lord and Savior.

Easy. But with recovery we all need some form of recovery. We all need some form of rest and recovery and in that and we all have something that is chasing us. We all have some sort of sin that has been chasing us. We all have some sort of foil or fault. This is just how unfortunately how we are in a fallen nature.

And so what Control Alt Recover is designed to do is to show you a that everybody needs recovery and b that the tools are just incredibly close. So that's that's really that's tomorrow. That's free. You can sign up over at missionary.digital right now or the church.digital. You can continue to sign up.

Like I said, that's free. You'll get all of the things. That's from 9 or 11 a.m. Eastern until 3:30 Eastern.

I don't know the time. I just show up and I stay until it's over, so it's all good.

Yeah, I'm just pushing buttons in the background. It's okay.

So yeah, so don't—it is CR is for everybody, not just addicts, says Boots. Absolutely 100%. And that's—we are partnered with a an organization called Project Exodus. Project Exodus is amazing. They're from South Africa. But they are really adopting a decent amount of what Celebrate Recovery talks about and they're turning it digital. And they're really, really good at that. And so I highly recommend signing up. It's free. You can hang out all day. And so that is—

Yeah. The other thing with Boots was Boots was saying earlier, "Wish I could make it." If you sign up, you will get the content later if you cannot make it. So if you're like, "Oh, I can't make it on Wednesday because I'm at work. I'm not able to do it." Yes, you're going to miss the conversations. And for me, that's the best part is processing with other people about what we're learning, but you'll still be able to get it later. And you could do a watch party with other people and be able to dialogue that way with people who've been there. So if you are able to in any capacity be able to take and sign up so that you can watch it later, you're going to benefit from it.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, that's tomorrow. Sign up. It's going to be fun.

And then the following Wednesday, if anybody is not in the US, this will be a good place to hang out. If you can't make these ones, I don't know what time it is in my time zone. I want to say it's 4 in the morning for a European conference. It's 3 in the morning.

It's 3 a.m. Man, I'm trying to give myself an extra hour of sleep.

Nah, but that one—a lot of people in the US aren't going to make it to sign up anyway.

Yes.

Because that one, my understanding, and you can correct me if it's evolved since then, is going to be like a series of TED talks with people coming in. And you're like, to me, it just sounds like I'm going to be drinking from the fire hose of people who are boots on the ground doing a lot of stuff and sharing what they're doing in ministry. I'm so excited to learn because I love to get outside of the American context because it's so easy for me to judge other Americans and what they're doing because I think I might know better than them. But when it comes to people that are outside of my cultural experience, it's like I know that you see something I don't. And so I can learn something even if you say it the same way that I've always heard but never listened to. I'm going to be able to see something that I did. So I'm super excited about that one. And yeah, I'm planning on getting up and being online and hanging out with a bunch of people and learning what God's got going on there because, you know what? Our friends like Tall Skinny Kiwi show up when we have our conference so we can do that for others.

It's true. I might be sleeping for half of that one. It's fine.

Yeah, you're—

I told Jeff any time before 5:00 a.m. I'm no good.

Yeah, you are pixelating a little bit on my side with your video feed. It keeps coming and going. So I'm not sure what that is.

Yeah, I'm just—I'm trying to—I'm working on upload. I have like three or four things unfortunately in the background. I have part of my—I have a homebuilt server and the server has been uploading a bunch of data to somewhere in Google. So I hit pause. We'll see if it kills the—if not—

It hasn't been awful. Like I said, it just pixelates a little bit, goes out. I was just letting you know that.

Yeah.

So those are the two that are coming up and now we'll get to the gaming podcast or the gaming—sorry, not gaming podcast—the gaming summit. The DMC Con. And it's like, how many names can we come up for the same event? I mean, let's keep going. But unlike the other ones at which we are on a platform where we're going to go in, we are just going to go straight into Discord with the gaming summit with DMC Con. That's where it's going to be. And it's—I—we haven't built it yet. So Andy and I will have to figure out building that. But, you know, because we're not busy enough. We're here on a podcast instead of spending time building it. But it'll happen. It's going to be cool and exciting. And I don't know—Jeff, when he was saying, "What should we do conferences in the fall? Where do we have the greatest number of people in our community that we can lean into and gather them together?" And gaming was one of those. And we have a growing community on Discord. Not everybody on Discord is in gaming, but it was—yeah, we've got this intersection with gaming, so let's lean into that. And you and I got together to talk about what could it be. And I just kind of said, "Here's some thoughts I have." And then we just kind of leaned in that direction of—so little preview here: "I don't know who I'm called to reach. Okay, so let's help you figure out who you're called to reach. Who is the one that is there that you need to take the point on that nobody else can reach but you are the one that God has uniquely gifted to be able to reach?" And then it was like, "Well, then how do we know if we're reaching them?" So that'll be the next phase of it. So we'll go from "Who are we called to reach?" to "How do we know we're reaching them?" And then you and Drewzy are going to be focused on—which I'm super excited about the two of you doing this and tag teaming—"How do we set the table for being able to do that in community? How do we set the table in Discord, in Twitch, where you are reaching them?" And then we're going to have experimenting: "How do we learn and grow and do new things?" And so that's kind of like a quick snapshot of the whole thing. And your video is totally cut out on me now.

That's crazy because I'm watching it right now. It just looks like a big potato. I'm—let me see what I can do on my end here. You keep talking.

So anyway, the whole point of it—and I want—yeah, you're feeling the 8-bit Chino Mage Whitebeard. That's hilarious. The 8-bit—

Which old man bias here. I don't play Minecraft because it looks 8-bit and I grew up and 8-bit was the best we could do. And I'm like, I'm not going back. I don't care if it's a great game. It looks 8-bit. I have no interest in it because we can do so much better than that. Anyway, you can send all the hate mail to Andy on that one.

Oh, please. Yeah, please do. But anyway, part of what I really want with this conference is not just to come and have a whole bunch of intellectual knowledge shared with you and you go home really excited and rah and then you go back to life and you haven't taken any steps towards really identifying who that person is that God's calling you to uniquely reach. You don't know how to reach them. You don't know how to measure that. So part of my idea for this conference is that there will be a worksheet that you will be able to have. Each guest will have the questions for you to be able to fill out. And we're not just going to say, "Oh, we'll go to a break." The speaker will speak for—and it'll depend on the speaker—5, 10 minutes about a topic and then ask you to go spend time answering those questions. And so you will be working on the process of doing this throughout the conference. So if you really are thinking, "I want to figure out who God's called me to," but I haven't had time to start the process. I don't know the right questions to ask. That's what I hope we're able to accomplish in this is helping you go from the idea, "I think God's calling me into this space. How do I figure it out?" Or "I've been in this space and I now know God's calling me to something, but I need more help of being able to figure out who I'm truly reaching and how God's gifted me." So that's kind of like the big picture of what I hope is accomplished. And your picture is back. I see your smiley face now.

Yeah, it's funny. There's Twitch says there's a little thing that in the performance area that says, "Um, hey, you've got performance issues. Automatically optimize my settings." And I went, "No, I don't want you to do that, Twitch. You're traditionally very bad at optimizing. I have fiber. I don't need you to optimize my upload." And so I flipped that off. And guess what? I'm back to like normal. This is—thanks, Twitch. Thanks for trying to accomplish what you were doing, but I'll take it from here. I know what I'm doing.

Oh, yeah. The auto settings don't usually treat me right either.

Nope, nope. I understand they're trying to save money, but hey, I'm trying to send a 900p camera at you, Twitch. Deal with it. Deal with my almost 1080p camera being sent to you. So yeah, that was a great description of what's happening with DMC Con. And I know DM—everybody thinks, "Oh, DM, Dungeon Master," and the little bait and switch—there is no. It's Digital Missionary.

Digital Missionary. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And plus DMC Con—when you write it out, it's DMC on, which kind of looks like Call of Duty. And you know, we're just tricksters. That's all. That's what we're doing.

Yeah, it's—we're just pulling a con is what we're—no, we're not trying to pull a con.

No, we're not doing that. No, please don't.

So what are your thoughts? What are you excited about with pulling this together?

Yeah, so it's interesting. You were clickbait for the win, says DJ Courageous. So the interesting thing about this one is that we're trying to be very interactive with it, right? Like we're trying to be—um, that's why we're doing it in Discord. Most of us know how to use Discord. If you don't, then you can sign up over at—um, what are we at? The church.digitalisord, I think, or fam.

Yeah, uh, I think you have to go to fam. And then it's got both of them under fam.

So it's got WhatsApp and Discord. And so if Discord scares you off, sorry, there's two other conferences there that are for you. This is really going to be the most hardcore nerdy of them. There it is right there. Um, in chat, by the way. This is going to be kind of the most hardcore nerdy of all four conferences. We're not expecting the super big, you know, thousands of people numbers.

It's going to be small and intimate.

Yes, yeah. This is very much a summit. And what I'm looking forward to is the overall topic. So the thing that um that had come out of Flat Cap's brain when we were initially talking about this was he was commenting on the fact that we needed to find R1. And that's been something that's been pervasive, I think, in a lot of the things that I've been talking or that we've been talking about in things like Nerd Culture Ministry Summit and even Reach, to a certain extent. Um, definitely in Megazord, you know, things that we've been doing outside of the our actual digital day-to-day digital ministries. Finding your one, finding the person, finding the crafting your message, finding the ultimate goal of what you're saying. Look, you know, making your look and your feel of your stream or your ministry around your one because if we're trying to aim at everything, we're going to hit nothing.

I think there's an old Japanese proverb that says, uh, man who try to chase two rabbits gets none. And it's which true like if you're hungry and you're trying to chase two two rabbits, you're not going to get any of them. You need to chase one rabbit. And so, um, we need to find our one. And so that's literally what we're talking about with all four of our uh our breakouts or our our sessions, excuse me. We're talking about finding our one.

Yeah. And and part of it and so this is like to kind of say, well, what I came from when I was in seminary thinking that God was going to use me to plant churches. And so I spent tons of time studying church planting and that direction. And then it didn't end up being that's where God led me. But I learned a lot. And it's really around uh and and I best the best one to describe this I think is is people know Saddleback. And so Rick Warren talked about Saddleback Sam. I mean it became part of the culture. Now I don't know that anybody in the church was actually that Sam that he had in mind but it didn't matter because everything they did within the church was crafted to reach Sam. So when you were crafting something you would then ask the question what would Sam think of this? How would Sam react? Would this connect? Would it resonate with Sam? And so that was the the kind of like, okay, so let's take it from there. Let's walk it through step by step. Once you know you have Saddleback Sam, how do you know you're actually reaching? Because I might think that Sam would react to this in a certain way. But I don't know Sam well enough to really do it. So I got to keep evaluating what I'm doing. Does it connect with Sam on on what I'm doing? Because if I'm reaching someone that's a different generation than I am, if I'm reaching someone with different cultural experiences than I am, but I'm called to them, I can't just rely on my gut feeling or my own assumptions about things.

I mean, even for to give you an example of the school that I grew up in is not the same school that my brother grew up in. I grew up in open campus, leave for lunch, go drive my car, park in the on the road, and walk into campus. And oh, by the way, growing up in Michigan, I had my uh shotgun in the back of the car so I could go hunting before or after school. I can't remember if it was five or six years later, my brother is on campus. It is shut down campus, locked security, security guards go through metal detectors. We grew up in the same town. He's just a half a decade behind me and he grew up in a different culture. So the two of us talking about our high school experience have totally different high school experiences. I have to know his experience and not assume, well, you went to the same high school I did, so you must have the same life experience. It's not true, even for my brother. So that's that's part of why I really want us to help think through that and say, "No, it's I have to look at everything I'm doing through the lens of the person I'm trying to reach."

Yeah. Yeah. And the the in in it's it's incredibly um interesting to watch influencer culture that has taken over in such a way that we don't even realize it. So for example, you go on Tik Tok or Instagram or YouTube or whatever and you see an algorithm that is highly targeted to you. Uh and that's you know the magic of Tik Tok is that you get the al algorithm that is is um is targeted to you. But there are hundreds of thousands of other creators out there that you're not seeing because they're not targeted towards you. And that is, you know, again, that's the persona that Whitebeard was talking about in chat. That is it's the it's marketing 101, right? Like you you try to find your market fit.

Y when you go on the internet and some people on Twitch and some people, you know, ministers ministries and churches in particular, they're terrible for this. They are they are we're going to be we're going to give everything to everybody. We're going to have a kids service and then we're going to have uh our amazing grays thing for 65 year olds and up. We're going to have our singles ministry. We're going to have our couples ministry. We're going to have our youth ministry. We're going to have our student ministry. We're going to have our K through 5 ministry. We're going to have all these other things. And like it's all well that's all well and good, but your church that those are just programs designed around what who's the what is the what is the family that you are serving? What is the community that you are serving? Is it because if you if if I walk into a church and I say, "Okay, you got a kids program, but you've also got an elderly program, but you've also got like a hospice care program, but like what what is this church? Is this just kind of a community church or is this a church that is targeted towards reaching me and my specific needs? They're both fine, but what we want to train people to do online is that uh you have to target things or else people are just a click away. They are an X away from leaving your stream if they don't feel like it's for them. That is what Tik Tok and Instagram and YouTube have done to us. I routinely will find myself uh clicking into something and then 30 seconds in making a snap judgement and being like, I don't I don't need this. Like this is not for me. This is not for me.

Often make that snap judgment of am I in am I out on like even like this this is going to sound bad but even the person that comes on and they are slow and telling me what they are going to deliver to me. I'm sorry you spent 3 seconds and I don't know what it is and I'm already scrolling because you didn't engage me. You didn't you didn't pull me in. You didn't hook me. Uh it's like I know how to judge that side but I don't know how to create always what I want. And so

but I but you were touching on something and since I'm teaching EDM and we just covered this this morning and this might end up in my talk. I'm going to give a little sneak here. You were talking about the needs that people have, you know, reaching the need. So Barbara talks about this. I'm not going to give all of the the needs that people have, but one of them is a need for belonging that people might have. One of them might be a thing that people might need acceptance. They might need hope. They might need freedom. So, and there's I think 12 of them. I'm not going to give you them all. You'll have to come to the conference or you'll have to do EDM. But if what I produce meets your need, you will keep coming back. And so, as a physical church, what I want to do in my community is find out what is the need of the community. And one way I might do that is to realize we have a lot of homeless people. We need to put a homeless shelter up. We have a lot of people that are struggling to meet uh the ends of putting food on the table and they're they're really struggling for their kids to get food on the table. Let's have a backpack program and let's put food in kids backpacks and every Friday the kids pick up a backpack full of food so they got food all weekend long. These are things that I've actually participated in when I've been in in local churches. So, it's like you identify a need and then you go and you meet the need and you reach out to the need. But there's more needs than just physical needs that people have. And so while I'm online with people, I can't always be meeting their physical needs, but they have other needs that are going to be emotional needs. They're going to be spiritual needs. And so what am I providing for them is is a part of I think who you figure out your one is is what need are you meeting? What does that person have for a need? How do you how do you reach them?

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. The the cool thing about what we're trying to do with DMC Con is that we're trying to show people that it's not super difficult to create

Oh, yeah.

year one either. Um it is not

I think a lot I think a lot of people walk into the into strategy sessions and they're just like, man, I don't know. I just like to stream. I just like to hit go live. And if you do, then there's your one right there. Your one is just the casual that's just coming in and saying, hey, I just like to stream. And that's fine. Um, but usually when God has called you to something, God has called you to an actual community, an actual corner of the ministry. I look at, you got Peter and Paul, right? Like the original two dudes that were doing it. And Peter was called to the Jews and Paul was called to the Gentiles. And yes, way different. You know, there's subsects and sections and all those other things, but and so it's tough to compare us, you and I, mortal people with the immortal Peter and Paul, right? But at the same time, it's it's the basis of where ministry starts, where actual Christ following ministry starts is knowing who you are called to. Uh it's why we talked about an hour and a half ago, it feels like we were talking about hurricane rescue for you and Ukrainian rescue for me and hurricane relief and things like that. Those are the people that break that's that's the communities that break our hearts is we can provide real tangible service to those that have lost their homes that need to have things mucked out. Well, when you're called online, you need to have your one. Even if it's your game, if it's your community, if it's the table you're setting, if even if you're called to switch communities, which Boots asked that question a little bit ago. He said, "What are your thoughts on the fact that God calls from one table to another and how to recognize that?" Like, that's a huge

that's a huge thing.

That's a good That's a good question. You want to you want to spend a little time on that? We can do that.

I would love to.

I miss I miss that question. It's a great question.

Yeah. And I I he might have been asking it rhetorically, but um he then he he followed himself up by saying, "How to know the switch before burning out, forcing something." And I think that's the key right there. So, I'll be completely honest with you, like I'm running real close. I'm I'm crispy. I had a long conversation with Mark, our our lead pastor this morning. Um and it was just it was a friendly conversation, but in there in that conversation, he he said, "Hey, man, you're a little crispy right now." And crispy means I'm not fully burnt out, but I'm running on that edge. And there's a whole lot of reasons for that we don't need to get into on this stream. But what happens is is that when you are running in places that and you're trying to pour out and you're trying to con consistently uh give and it's not the community that you've been called to. It's not the one that you've been called to. You're putting a lot more energy in into that flywheel and you're not getting the response. And so you're having to consider put more and more and more and more energy in. pretty soon you don't have any energy left to give and you burn out. Well, the problem with that is that we have so many pastors that are walking away from ministry because the the idea of well, I just got to keep sacrificing this. It's a Messiah complex, right? Like we're I'm a pastor. I save people. I This is Notice I said I save people, not Jesus.

Yeah. Yeah. I noticed that.

Yeah. Yeah. I I save people. I

It's exactly Yeah. you you become the persona that you want people to say about you is the temptation is I

and boy I I I'll I'll I'll get in a little bit of of of thinking through this of stuff that boy I have I'm so blessed with my wife. I couldn't be doing what I'm doing without her. I would not be where I am.

I often say, uh, I probably would not be anywhere where anybody would want to know me if it wasn't for her. But there is a level at which, if—well, I say early on as a pastor I wanted my phone next to the bed so that anybody could call me when there was a crisis at 3:00 a.m.

Because I want to be on call for everybody. Well, what began to happen was we'd be on vacation, but it would just be visiting family. It wouldn't be like we're going to Disney World or we're doing something that people think of as vacation. And we're just visiting family over Christmas or summer and somebody would pass away.

Well, okay, we'll go back a couple of days early. We weren't doing anything. We were just spending time with family. So I got to go back for the funeral. I got to go be with the family. So then my family would have to take that a couple of times. It would be like, I'm going to go back. You guys all stay. I'll come back and get you later. We'll figure that out. It would be stuff like that. But my wife at one point was like, you know, it'd be great to go on vacation and have you on vacation with us.

And so it's kind of been that thing that is why, like, if people watch and I talk about vacations, I'm going to an all-inclusive resort out of country or I'm going on a cruise. It's not because I think those are the most fantastic things in the world. Uh, it's because I can give my wife what she wants on vacation, which is me putting the phone down, locking it in the safe, and nobody gets a hold of me for the entire time we're gone.

Because otherwise, the temptation to be needed and to be there for everyone is so easy to fall into that here's the steps I have to do to protect myself from it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, Boots says, "The question comes from me leaving the two-year league table community that was set." So we have, and Lux, um, Pastor Dalton, Pastor Drewzy. Um, I don't know if he's still hanging out. It's Drewie, but—yeah—he has done a tremendous job with our community. Um, setting a table and actually he and I are going to be hosting a talk. Um, and it's going to be me interviewing him on how he did that essentially. Uh, because it's been fascinating. Uh, we routinely have tables after our Wednesday evening services and we'll have anywhere from 30 to 50 people hanging out, playing games, doing puzzles, listening to music, just chilling, um, talking.

It's one of like the coolest times of the week where we've just gotten done with this hour and a half service of worshiping and learning and doing all those things and praying together and then we go and just hang. And I think a lot of churches, physical churches, want that. They want that lobby thing, you know, right? They—that's what they crave and they miss it.

And yet here at Lux, we get people to go from Twitch over to a Discord server and people just hang, and it's great, but that's been in large part because of what Pastor Dalton has done with tables. And uh, when you set a table, you are essentially doing just like it says, you are setting that table. You are um, crafting a message.

Yeah, but you're choosing a game or choosing some sort of need in the community and saying, "Hey, I'm going to sacrifice a couple of hours out of my week to come and sit at this table and invite people to join me and I'm going to play games with them, sure, but I'm also going to—I'm going to be trained a little bit in how to be attentive to what the spirit is doing, how to listen to what that person is actually saying, and then how to actually just be the hands and the feet of Jesus uh, in those tables." And so Boots has for a long time been part of our League of Legends table. Um, and he's amazing at it. Like he's—Luke has just this amazing kind—oh yeah.

Just—he's one of my favorite dudes around and um, he—I know he was feeling a little crispy as well and so he can kind of chime in on this. Um, but I—from all the outside looks he kind of stepped away from the league table and that that was needed for him. Um, at least from outside, you know, he's changing jobs, he's doing all sorts of other stuff. And obviously, we're not losing him in the community. He's just kind of transitioning to a different part of the community. He's still part of our Vanguard, which is kind of our—our frontline volunteer coordination effort, which is awesome.

Um, but you know, it's healthy to really have the emotional intelligence uh, that he has that I think most of us pastors don't have because again, go back to the Messiah complex. We're real stupid. We run uh, on the edge of burnout all the time uh, because we want to be needed and we want to be validated and we miss where our validation is actually coming from which is Jesus and we we tread way too—we fly way too close to the sun in that and uh, and so you know with Boots stepping aside like that—is that's admirable and I think one of the things we need to talk about um, maybe going forward is okay, how do you know when your one is not—and I know Jake, he's going to be our last presenter. He's going to be talking about metrics for success. He's going to be talking about how to do some things because he's tried some things and he's experimented and it hasn't worked. Some of them have, some of them haven't. And he's going to be talking about that. And how do you know when it's working? How do you know when it's not working? How do you know when to step back? How do you know when to not feel like a failure when things don't go the way that you want them to?

Because spoiler, like most of the time things aren't going to go the way that you want them to. That's just—yeah. Well, and the other strange thing in ministry sometimes is—when things like numbers are the things you can measure, you know, you can measure offering, you can measure attendance, you can measure baptisms, you can measure, you know, profession of faith or convert, whatever, whatever thing you want like that, but that doesn't tell you the depth of anyone's life. And it doesn't tell you if life is changing. And so when you come across people, you may never know fully the impact that you have because you can't see it.

And now they don't always report and tell you what they've done or how life has changed. I like—this is unrelated to digital ministry, but it's not in the sense of—when I go live and stream, somebody might come in my chat, they might lurk in the chat the entire time, not say anything, hear something they needed to hear, and then disappear. So I don't know if I ever made an impact. I don't even know if they were there.

Uh, so I don't talk about it much on stream, but I have a prayer booth in my local artisan market. I just started that because God told me to, and that's a whole long story. But I'm down there and boy this year and I shared it with a few people. I said I am really reluctant to go. I'm dreading it on Friday to go down there on Saturday. I just feel like I'm so busy. I don't have time. I know this is meaningful, but I'm not excited and I'm not feeling it to go down there.

And I was really struggling in May, June, and then things turned around in July. Well, if I'd have thrown in the towel then, I would have missed what happened on Saturday, which is a gal who came in and said, "I don't know if you remember me. I had a miscarriage last year and you prayed for me and you really helped me through that struggle." And then about a month later, a friend of mine had a miscarriage and I was able to reach out to her and help her through that because I'd gotten helped through that. And then she said, "Oh, by the way, this is my three-month-old that uh, I got pregnant after all of that." Now, if she never came back, I don't know any of that, okay? So I got to get the joy of that on Saturday because she showed up and shared it with me. But what if our past never connected and I had that impact and I'm measuring everything by—I don't have uh, 10 people showing up and asking for prayer every Saturday, so I might as well fold the booth down and go home and quit paying rent there because it's not cheap and I don't have a bunch of donors saying I should be there. I just have God's calling. And so uh, you know, it's those things are true online as well.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh, I think also there's an interesting thing that happens um, when we—we again, this is part of the conversation I was having with Pastor Mark earlier—but the—my camera keeps glitching. This is Twitch is just being totally fun right now. Um, the—there's a—there's um, there's a fine line that we have to walk as ministry. I'm going to say professionals, but people that are in ministry. It doesn't matter what ministry we're doing, right? Whether that's being a full-time pastor, whether that's being a content creator, whether that's just like being a small group leader. We don't actually know. You said this—you don't know the impact you're making. Yeah, uh, seed planting is one of the least rewarding things that there is.

Oh yeah. Farmers—farmers get the opportunity to reap what they sow. Pastors do not. Ministers do not. Uh, most of the time God gives us little tastes every now and then. Um, just like the your story there, which is fantastic, but mostly most of the time we don't know.

Oh yeah, most of the time that's a rare exception that that—something I've had two of those this year from last year that have come in. That's it. Out of all of the prayer times, all the conversations last year, I've gotten two visits from people that said, "I was here last year. You prayed for me and and here's what happened." And the other one's just as cool as that one. It was a gal that was coming in monthly asking for prayer every time she was going to have a cancer treatment. And she came in and this was in July and she rubbed her head and said, "I have hair." And uh, I'm like, it was exciting because she had lost her hair. And so for her that was super exciting. And so uh, you know, it's like it was just like, ohh, God, you helped me. You gave me an opportunity to be a blessing in someone else's life. I got to be a part of that. Uh—one other aspect, like to go back to the question of leaving a group there, there's one thing that I don't think the church has done well and maybe it's not the church, maybe it's just North Americans don't do well, and it's celebrating when something has come to an end. It's time for me to move. It's time for—and I've done a lot of moving. So my average uh, time spent in a house before this house that I'm currently living in is three years. So that means I've spent one year and two years living in a place most of the time in my life.

And it—even though it's that's about moving physically, there's a lot about people will ask questions of—I'm at a job. Do I leave? Do I stay? Here's what I'm feeling. I'm in a ministry. Do I leave? Do I stay? And I spent a lot of time in prayer around that over the years because I was in seminary in Texas doing an internship with a church. Moved to South Dakota, was there for several years, moved to Iowa, was there for several years, moved back to Michigan where I grew up and have been here for the past nine years in the same house. So like I said, my average was three years and now I've been here nine. But I'm not serving at the church that I was at which is why I came back here.

So there is a whole bunch of—we don't do a good job. This is where my point is going—a good job celebrating that it's time to move on and celebrating when people move on.

So then it causes them to wonder if they should move on and it causes them to maybe feel guilt that isn't deserved for feeling of moving on because sometimes like look at Paul he goes and he starts a church and then he goes to the next town and he starts a church and he goes to the next town and he starts a church that was the journey that Paul was on was go and start a church and move. Go and start a church and move. Go and start a church and move. And if you don't fit into the mold that other people are doing because like what does Peter do? He stays in one place pretty much and he just helps the church there get established. He's not doing the go to every place. So if we don't celebrate when you do move on and you did a good job it then you what do you you stuck with? You're stuck with doubt and guilt and worry of was it the right time? Am I doing the right thing? One of the things that my pastor told me when I was um first talking to him. So I was when I was interviewing with churches and he said, "Let me let me share a story with you. I got interviewed before I came here at the church that we were at with a church in California, which would have been fantastic for my family, would have been fantastic for my career. I would have been able to be at this level. I would have been able to move into the possibility of being a television personality, a you know, a preacher on TV. I would have had all of that. And you know what? If I'd have said yes, I'm convinced God would have blessed it. But I said yes to coming here instead. And then look at what God has done through what we had done there, which I can name a handful of guys that he mentored and now we are in ministry doing magnificent things. So it's like it wasn't that one was right and one was wrong. Sometimes it's that God gives us opportunities and lets us make decisions about what's right for us for the moment. And if it turns out that it is a stepping stone, we'll figure it out and we'll move on to something else. If it was a wrong decision, we'll figure it out. We'll move we'll move back where we need to be. But I I I think we sometimes, like I said, I think it's we don't celebrate well when it's time to move on. So then then we leave people in the lurch about it.

Yeah. Yeah. The the leaving well thing is is fascinating. And I know Boots left. I mean, he didn't leave anywhere like he he drop in.

Yeah. The mind makes you think you failed. You gave up. You abandoned your people. Yeah. Really doesn't come to mind. Oh, God is just calling me to another table because the table is running and it's it's been set up. And yeah, and I'll tell you what that I want to share another story. So hopefully this is this is a helpful thing. I love this kind like this is what I love on my podcast. I don't know what we're going to talk about these little tid things that happened. And I I don't think I've shared this with any any of my streaming to date. I I don't think I have. So before I went to seminary, God had called me into doing uh drama ministry at the church I was at. So I my that's how my wife and I met in college was was doing drama. And I lost my job as a teacher and I'm struggling and going, what do I do? Uh I you know I'm delivery truck driver and I'm getting God feeling like he's moving in me but I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And so I was at a retreat and I come home from the weekend and I felt like God was telling me it's time to step up and do something. And the bulletin in there says we're looking for a drama director and I I just had this thought of what do you mean God? I can do something that I love and enjoy and do it as ministry. It was like a totally foreign concept to me. So I step in to do that and it's the it's the most joyous thing from thinking about that but it's also the most sad state when I recall ministry because I did not prepare to leave. I stepped in and I stepped in in such a big way that over the three to four years I was doing it, I I I started by taking Willow Creek scripts and then rewriting them because they're written for five people and we only had three microphones. So then I step in and I'm directing, I'm acting, and then I'm rewriting and then oh, you know what? It's just easier to write from scratch. So, I'm writing dramas. I'm directing dramas. I'm acting in them. And then I called to seminary. And the call happened so quickly. I'm I'm gone within three months to go to seminary. I didn't prepare the church for my absence. Everything that I had built disappeared overnight. And I don't mean I built like it was my legacy, but it was like it was blessing people and they couldn't replace me and they moved on from it. And I feel like I failed because I didn't prepare for the the it to continue to go on. So Boots, when you're saying it's still going on, you have done well, my friend. You have passed the baton instead of dropping it and leaving everyone in the lurch there. So, I'm just going to say that sounds to me like you did a fantastic job. If what you were a part of establishing is well enough established that the foundation is there that when God calls you to the next place to serve, it's still people being fed by what you established. So,

and he did it. Boots he did. Boots is awesome. Yeah. So, he didn't he didn't fail in anything. But I I understand when I went from worship pastor to gym owner back to worship pastor.

Yeah.

Definitely the the feeling each time I transitioned into and then even as a as a digital pastor the feeling each time you transition into one of those things is ah you couldn't cut it. You couldn't hack it.

And that's not it. It's it's Jesus lit literally saying like hey book on that one's closed just like you were you were saying book on that one is closed. Let's open a new book. And that's that's how that's how it is. Hello Janie. Good to see you.

Yeah. So anyway, I I I just like encouraging, you know, it's one of the things I get most excited about is encouraging people, connecting people, doing that kind of stuff. So Boots, yeah, just,

you know, there's there like I I would get people in my church would say, "Why do you tell stories about yourself failing all the time?" And I'm like, because I've made a lot of mistakes

and I I want you to know I'm not perfect. And in digital ministry, I'm not perfect either. Uh I get my tech sound problems, echoes we were dealing with. I get other things. But I'm I'm going to be transparent because I don't want you to think I have it all together when I don't. And then you find out I don't. Well, then what does that do? Everybody erode trust. Uh the same way I will admit when I don't know things where a lot of people feel like that's a horrible thing to say you don't know something. Well,

what if I tell you the wrong thing and you find out I was incorrect. What does that do for trust? So,

Yep.

Hey, St. Bear, welcome in Street Bear. Not not being not perfect is so embarrassing. The problem is when you live like Street Bear, uh he lives a perfect life and so he just kind of looks down his nose at everybody. Uh that's that's how it is. It's okay. It's and it's it's perfectly fine. Uh we all we all u walk on eggshells around him because we know that he is one day uh going to be the perfect human. Love you St. Bear. This me smiling. Uh anyway, yeah. So come to the I think all that is to say come to the conference.

Yeah.

Come to the come to DMCon.

Yeah. Well, yeah. it. We could go into more details, but I want you to be there. So, yeah, we're we're trying to give you uh where you are at. If you're starting, you've got a foundation. We're going to help you build. If you've already done it, we want you to help refine it so that you better can assess if you're doing the things that you feel God has called you to do. And and then we're always learning and growing and experimenting and doing new things. I think that's one of the most fun things that feels open in digital space that I am an out of the box push against things very easily in the church and when I would throw things at my leadership they would often go I don't know if we can do that we've never done that I hate that I hate that problem like sorry just because we've never done it doesn't mean we can't and just because we never have doesn't mean we shouldn't let's find out if this will be a beneficial thing and the only way to do it is to try it. So, and I think that's kind of the way I ended up in uh working with the church digital was, hey, can you come in and and be our relationship director? Just give it a three to four month try and and if it doesn't work, no hard feelings. And and walk away. And and that was so freeing for me to say, "Okay, I want to commit, but I don't know if I'm the right person. I don't know if I can fully do what you're hoping I can do. I don't even know what I'm doing. But but okay, three to four months in, I was like, yeah, you feeling good? I am, but I still don't know what I'm doing. All right, you want to stick around? Yeah, I'll stick around. Where where am I going to go? I there's there's not enough other people that are crazy out of the box thinkers uh like we're putting together. So, I don't I don't like I I don't want to say this in the way that Jesus, you know, disciples said, "Where are we going to go? Where else are we going to go?" You know, for the words of life. I don't mean that. I mean, where else am I going to go with a bunch of people that are like, "Yeah, let's find out if God I mean, we know God is in this. So, let's find out if this is what God will bless by pursuing him where he's going." And so, I hope anybody that has those thoughts of, can I be in gaming and God bless it, the answer is yes. Can I do something that's fun and I enjoy and God bless it and be ministry? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. He He does. And I think God gets excited when we figure out that the thing that we love is the avenue for us to reach other people.

Yeah. And and I don't want think I don't I don't want anybody thinking, oh, I already know my one or my one is defined and this is not for me. Uh because we're actually going to dive a little bit into uh experimentation into refinement into uh again setting tables, creating community, creating uh a real bond and a real closeness for you and your community. Uh because that's the thing, you know, I I will give Jate a ton of credit. Um Jay doesn't really have like a he doesn't have a Discord server like like Lux or anything like that. He's got a small server, but but he he doesn't manage a Discord server. He he doesn't he interacts with his community solely on Twitch. I mean, for the most part, um and people know him and people love him and and that's the way he interacts with them. With TW, you know, with Lux, we have our Discord community. We know our one. Uh we very well, we sometimes reach our one. Uh, but you know, our our our community is a little more vast and varied. TCD same thing. It's a little more vast and varied. And the beauty of that is is that there's always time to refine. There's always time to, like you were saying, I don't really know like I'm screwing. I'm I'm just kind of screwing around here like I'm experimenting and let's just throw some things at the wall and see what sticks. And that's that's the beauty of what we get to talk about uh in a couple weeks is that we get to talk about, hey, the throwing things against the against the wall and making them stick. That's actually part of refining who your one is.

Uh that's part of refining your ministry. And so yeah, this might seem it might seem like some people like ah I don't need to I don't need to attend that because I already know who my one is.

And that's fine except you can always get better. You can always get better with your one. So that's good. My one is the kid that Chino bullied in the Tales of the Loop.

And what was his name? Um, what did we—his name? Patrick? No. Oh gosh. Ethan. No, I can't remember that kid's name. Anyway, um, we played a couple of—uh, Jame—was it James or something like that?

No, I wouldn't have been James. I wouldn't have bullied a kid named—okay, so context. Uh, we—like, we're going, we're going downhill fast.

We a little context might help.

I didn't—I didn't uh couldn't remember his name was just a stepping stone. Okay, so this is in a game.

Um, so uh, sad he was not a Russian orphan. Uh, the game is a—it's a tabletop RPG game. Uh, and it's uh called Tales from the Loop.

And what it is is it's a system. It's kind of like D and D. Uh, it's a system based on uh um you as a character except it's like back in the 80s and there's like some mechs and some robots and some other stuff.

And anyway, we played it um in a stream that we had set up over the summer called Staff Meeting. And it was the entire staff of Lux.

We'd get together once a month. We'd stream it for a couple hours. We'd play games together. Mark was our GM, our game master. And so he was the one setting the scene and all of our characters.

So it's I I played myself um just like a—when I was 15 and in an alternate version of the 80s and with all my you know created our characters.

We had our faults and our foibles and um all of those things right now. And uh so in my initial story I was there was a kid who I guess had been—we're gonna call him Ethan or something.

Uh, when Chino was 15 bully dressed—okay, this is just false, this is slander. Um, so this kid, he wanted to hang out with me and he wanted me to come hang out with him, but I was in a band and I wanted to be cool.

And so I role played me like telling the nerd kid, who which by the way is our one uh telling the nerd kid uh to go away and uh cuz I wanted to hang out with the cool kids.

And then there was some stuff with like Russia and there was a robot and all sorts of stuff. Anyway, St. Bear was there and it was like one of the funniest streams we've ever done.

It was one of the most fun we've had. And uh go watch it on VOD. It's pretty good. It's very good, actually. Yeah, it's fun.

Okay. I don't bully Russian kids. I like Russian kids. Uh, I like Russians overall. I like kids. Uh, just until they get in my way of being with the band and then I got to go hang out with the band because I'm a cool kid anymore.

Anymore.

There we go. On my stream, I'm putting up St. Bear's comments just in the middle of my screen. Uh, and I'm just I made them very large.

So anytime St. is commenting, I'm just uh commenting something good. I'm putting it in very large letters on my screen. It's nice.

There you go. There you go.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you post the VOD to YouTube somewhere? It was too good to lose. We might have saved it on Twitch.

I'll have to go back and see.

If not, I have a copy of it. We saved it all.

Yeah, that's an interesting thing to derail there.

No, no, no. It's okay. It's those are some of the things that like just in my mind prove community like people people doubt that you can have real community in digital spaces.

Those moments just proved it. There is community there. There is real relationship. There is ongoing because there's shared experiences and shared experiences lead to deepening trust lead to deepening friendship and and so that's just a great example of that happening right there of and then everybody that knows is sitting here laughing about the whole situation and and it's the reminiscing of that also brings the level of friendship deeper because you're you're reminiscing about the same thing that you you experienced and and now those of us who know feel closer as well.

Even though we weren't there, it's like, "Oh, I I know something new. I I have more information. I I am now deeper into the connection with the community."

Yeah.

Awesome.

Absolutely.

Uh, any anything that we have not talked about with the conference or digital ministry that you'd like to make sure we talk about?

No. Um, we we didn't really outline who's talking. So you are talking um North Hill Live streamer is also talking. Um, myself and Pastor Drewzy uh Dalton from Lux Digital Church and then our very own Jate Live is also going to be presenting.

Those are our four keynotes and it's going to be I think it's going to be a ton of fun. Uh, you're going to get to join in.

If you do join us, it's going to be kind of ramshackle. Not not in a bad way. It's just going to be kind of like, hey, we're going to open a bunch of Discord rooms and then we're going to close them and we're going to open them and we're going to kick some people and move some people around. Like, it's going to be, you know, it's going to be uh it's experimentation. And honestly, that's the most fun that I think we can have because it is going to be a little bit of experimentation.

Uh, it's uh all I got out of that was that Chino has issues. Yeah, I have major issues with beard. It's fine.

Well, the the other thing too is if you're not there present with us, I don't know how we can duplicate that.

I mean, I you know, I was saying earlier, we'll get the VODs, we'll send those out. You're going to miss so much if you're not in Discord hanging with us uh throughout all of that.

I mean, there'll be VODs, but it won't be the same at, you know, it's the same thing that I tell, you know, I mention when it's like, hey, if you're you're listening to this later and watching it, you missed half of the conversation that was happening in chat.

I'm not putting it on screen. You know, you need to be here for that. You're missing some stuff. It's it's just going to be a one-of-a-kind experience with doing that.

We haven't talked about this, but I don't know if the Church Digital is going to do another gaming conference. Maybe we will, maybe we won't.

Maybe it'll be a couple of years. Maybe, maybe we'll do more. I don't know. I'm not worried about that. I just want everyone that shows up for it to be exactly what they need in this time where they're at so that God can launch them into the next thing that that God has them called to do.

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, it's going to be a ton of fun. Come join us. Can't wait. Can't wait to see everybody.

Yeah. Uh, one last thing that I do usually ask everyone who's on here is do you have a story or two of impact where you've seen digital ministry happening and you've been spending a lot of time in gaming like I do.

So, have you have so just thinking stories of Twitch, they can be Lux related, that's fine. Just some stories of impact that you've seen in the community during your time of being an online streamer and online viewer in in digital spaces.

Uh, I mean I can we can talk about our very own Boots Bootstraps Boots in the chat. Um, actually uh joined Lux because of so Mark uh our lead pastor was streaming. Boots was it on our on his channel or was it on Lux's channel?

I can't remember. Um, this a couple years ago, a couple years back, um Boots was just kind of cruising around Twitch and had no idea about Lux.

Really didn't know a whole lot. I mean, he knew about church. He kind of had some church hurt stuff in the past. Um, had a lot of questions.

Boots is a intensely intelligent individual. Uh, and asked some uh really piercing questions. He does know how to get right to the heart of things very quickly.

Uh, it's one of the things I love about him. Um, and so he was there was a there was a stream happening and he um he uh the stream itself was um Mark was rolling D and D he was creating D and D characters.

Okay.

Um, and for whatever reason he was just creating D and D characters. I I actually I don't know the reason. Boots can probably chime in with the reason and started Boots popped into the stream saw D and D popped in the stream started hanging out.

One thing leads to another. Boots joins in to the community and then he starts joining us on Wednesday nights and he made a Chino He made Chino a soulmage.

That's right. So, he was making me um he was he was rolling a character and I don't know why. Again, I don't I don't I didn't know any of this until Boots told me I was like, "Wait a minute.

What is happening here? This and again, this is like this is a couple of years ago." Yeah. Uh, he he he was making me as a as a really buff like wizard and um Boots started hanging around the community.

So a wizard with a 180.

Essentially. Yeah. Yeah. Just just throwing it.

Um and so you know he he starts hanging around the community.

He starts investing three years ago. Geez. Uh, he starts investing a little bit more. Or he starts getting invested into. He starts kind of he's got some issues in his uh you know his personal life that um not bad issues just stuff that he starts coming to the church and saying hey I need prayer and um we really started pouring into him and investing in him as he starts investing into the community and over time Boots has become uh part of the furniture at in our Lux Discord and I mean that in the best way possible he is there he's present he's active in services he's part of our Twitch mods Um he so on Wednesday nights we have Twitch mods that hang out. Boots has joined us uh at NCMS last year.

He led prayer for us during one of our services. He is a um he is he is a he like I said he's part of the vanguard.

This all happened because of one stream. Uh, now this dude's life is a completely it's a it's a different path in terms of service and in terms of uh reaching into and like and it's his story to tell.

I'm not going to tell his entire story. Like I said, there was a little bit of church hurt there and um you know, some some things that were there.

Uh, but by and large, his relationship with the church is healing. His relationship with Jesus is growing. And it's all because Mark was creating a bald pastor with that could throw fireballs.

That's how it works. So, I just I love it when I love it when things work out like that. I can tell one quick story for my own streams.

So, a guy, this is way back in 2021, um there was a guy named Jordan. And Jordan was uh he was 17 and um he just popped into one of my streams.

He was in um he was so he was in the Seattle area and he uh question of the day. If you were furniture, what furniture would you be?

Oo, that's a good one. I'd be a sleeper sofa. Uh, because I'm I'm both a bed and a couch at the same time. Uh, so I'm like a transformer.

How about you? If you could be a if you could be a furniture, what would you be?

I I was trying to figure that out.

I think I would be a bar table so that everybody could sit around and have a fun time together.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one.

I I envy that. Maybe I'll switch mine to like a I'll switch mine to a bar stool or well, no, because I don't want people.

No, I don't want yeah, that's what I was going with.

Yeah. Um, so Jordan was the um he was graduating from high school that summer and he was going off to college on a basketball scholarship and for whatever reason he just popped into one of my streams and so he and I started talking um on stream and he kept showing up every week I would I would host a stream and he'd pop back in. Hey Andy, good to see you. Like and so I I created a little bit of a workout program like an offseason basketball program for him and sent it to him and and he and he used some of it.

He didn't use the whole thing because he also had a um he had a nutritionist that was helping him. He was on a basketball scholarship.

Well, I don't see him for about a year. He's there for a couple of months and then I don't see him. He goes back to school.

Here he goes to school. I don't see him for like a year or something like that. And then all of the sudden he, um, I'm in my Ukraine, can into Russia series and Jordan rocks up and it's like Christmas break or something.

He says, "Hey Andy." Uh, and I was like, "Jordan, man, good to see you." And he's like, "What's been going on?" He said, "Well, I just needed to tell you that, um, you know, all of our conversation, like thank you so much for the thing. Like basketball's been going well. Because of all of our conversation, this is the long and the short of it. Because of all our conversations, I really got interested in this whole Jesus thing and I got involved in a campus ministry." And, um, and so he was in a ministry on campus and he had met a girl through there and so now he's dating a girl from this campus ministry. And you know, it, this all be, this all started because some idiot dude was working out in his garage in 2021 and now it's 2023 and he's got a girlfriend, he's involved in a campus ministry, like all this other stuff. Like who knows how you just hitting, going live, finding your one, going live, doing the thing that God has empowered you to do.

Who knows what impact you can have down the road. And who knows like Jordan might turn into the next, like he's not going to be LeBron, but you know, he might, he might turn into the next like insert basketball player here that also is a believer that's carrying his faith in.

Who knows?

Yeah.

Yeah. That's cool, man. I, I, I love those, those stories. And like we were talking earlier, sometimes you don't know. Boy, is it so rewarding when you do find a little bit down, out down the road. And I think on some level we get a couple of those to be able to hold on to or we get to listen to other people and hold on to them in the hopes that maybe that is what's happening as we're doing ministry and connecting with people. So appreciate that.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, man. Let's, that it's this has been fun.

Yeah. I wish we had more time. We could keep talking for a long time. We could, we could swap stories about stuff going on. Um, normally I, I ask whoever the person is, who should we go raid? Is there somebody that is connected with Lux Church that we could go raid right now?

If you take a look, let's see, following, uh, Dustin is live.

Oh, negative CPU. Let's go right.

Negative CPU. Love it. Yeah, let's, let's raid negative. I'm going to head over there in just a second. Um, you let me know whenever you're ready for us to raid and I will raid over there.

Well, uh, we can, um, well, let's just do any last words that you want and I will play a promo for the, uh, the conferences. Uh, I got a promo. You're, I, I stole your video that you put on the web page. So I, I've got that to promo. So I'll do that. When it finishes, we'll, we'll hit the raid. Perfect. So I don't think you can hear it, but I'm going to play that for everybody on my side and then we'll rate out.

Sounds good. Thanks, man.

You know what it means to do ministry. You also know what it means to be a gamer and you know what it means to try to share Jesus in that space. I mean, you're doing it. You're in the lobbies. You're on Discord. You're in game chats. You're trying to be encouraging in your live stream chat. You're trying to bring hope into that stream. You're praying for the person behind the handle. Gaming might be the medium, but discipleship is the true mission, and you feel like you're doing this by yourself.

But imagine you weren't doing it alone. You've got backup. Imagine you were equipped and resourced and linked with others who know that discipleship can happen where you're at, where other players are gathering. Imagine that your passion is coordinated. You can have fun and be intentional on your streams. What if there was a summit built just for you, for digital missionaries in the gaming world?

What if you were not just playing together, but you are actually building the kingdom together? That is DMCON, a digital space for gamers who disciple and disciples who game.

If you've ever questioned whether games could be sacred ground, this is your confirmation. The digital spaces you inhabit can become communities of belonging, healing, and gospel transformation.

Jesus is already in the game. Let's discover where together. You're not alone. Come and see who else is with you right now. Register for DMCON today.

In three, two.

Starting raid.

Starting raid.

Bye everybody. Love you. Miss you. Thanks everybody.

With, uh, Mr. Negative.

Yeah, let's go have some fun. Bless other people. Have a great day everybody.

Oh, Kayman coming in. Welcome in, friend. Good to see you, Kayman. There we go. There's our raid.

Boom. Done. Cool.