EP256 - Johno, eSports, and YOUR CHURCH.

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

All right, hey everybody. Welcome to Twitch Digital Church Network. I'm Jeff Reed. I'm founder of Digital Church Network, work with Church Digital and a lot of really awesome organizations. And ultimately you're listening to my podcast for doing a live podcast recording here for the Church Digital Podcast. Through the Church Digital season four here of the podcast, we're doing an introspective look on gaming churches and so different perspectives, different ideas. Mark Lutz—excuse me, once you get mispronounced that guy's name. I've mispronounced it for years, so I'm going to try it again here. Mark Lutz, lead pastor of Lux Digital Church, has been on the podcast with us and he's running tech in the background here with the vMix. So we'll bring him on in a second. We've got a great guest today. We're diving in talking about esports and maybe some of the ministry opportunities that exist within esports. And I've said this publicly many times: I don't understand gaming culture. I am not the expert by any stretch. The last game that I was relevant in that was actually relevant with was probably GoldenEye on N64. Yes, it's coming back. Yes, my wife can still beat me up in the game. It's a fact. She's an incredible sniper rifle. Beautiful stuff. But hey, this is like all this stuff with Call of Duty where we are now with gaming—like this is way out of my league. But I have loved being a student in this season and starting to learn more about the culture, but also how we, the church, can engage in that culture, maybe a little different. I don't—it probably doesn't look like what your typical church and how it engages with the culture in their neighborhood. It's some of these things are done a little different in gaming churches compared to what physical churches are. I'm being a little facetious. It looks very different. But the fact is that we can reach people in these spaces in different ways, and it is awesome to see God moving even amongst gaming culture and nerd culture as we learned last week with Bubba talking about "Love Thy Nerds." You go check out the Church Digital Podcast at thechurchdigital.it. It's last podcast to get caught up into that and all the awesomeness that's there. But hey, let me thank you those that are watching this live, by the way. We're doing this stream every Thursday live here on Twitch. So if you're listening to the podcast, come into it live, come dive in, be part of what's happening here, get your questions answered on Twitch. And pastor, if you don't have a Twitch account, now's the time. Swing over to Twitch.tv, create that account, follow the Digital Church Network, get caught up with what we're doing here, and maybe start to explore some of the other things and start to explore maybe what engaging and impacting in this gaming culture actually looks like. So hey, I see we've got some people in the chat: Chino Mage, Digital Hexagon, Flat Cap. It's great to see you all. And so we'll be engaging in some questions, working through this. But hey, uh, wizard behind the curtain—I guess it's Mark. Pusher magic button and let's bring their other guest on. This is going to be fun.

There you go. So tell me, like, before we get into Jono and start to really unpack this—because Mark, this is a different software than what I had last week. Last week Andy Mage, Chino Mage, ran ecam, right? That's what he runs. And you're running vMix. Why do you all hate each other so much? Why can't you like choose one software? What does it have to be different softwares? Do you know if ecam's Mac only? I think it's Mac, isn't it? Or is it not? I have no idea. All this is new to me. I heard there's one called like VOD Ninja or something like that as well.

VOD Ninja. I just want to point out that Ninja—uh, Jeff—did not mispronounce my name once today. He mispronounced it twice. Yes. Uh, which is because it's not Luts or Loots. It's Lutz. But uh, call me here. Let's do it right now. Let's you got it. Looks, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, well, I just came out of your neck of the woods, Jeff. I was just in Orlando for a week and glad to be back on the show. And yes, today we are using a live streaming software called vMix. Um, it is probably professionally wise, it's like a step above OBS, which is Open Broadcasting Software, uh, which is free to download. You could use it anytime you want. Cowboy Morgan, thank you for the follow. Appreciate you being here. Um, and yeah, so it's a really great piece of software. Once you learn how to use it, it runs entirely off of your GPU. And so we've been using it since I got problems with OBS in the early stages of Lux. So that's what we're on today.

Okay, so evidently Andy, Chino Mage, is saying that he uses vMix as well. Last week was just a throwaway. So who knew? Anyway, this is a new world to me. Uh, by the way, it's great to see you, Cowboy Morgan, and uh, Mother Goose. Mother Goose, awesome throwback to last week. Enjoyed it. Jono, am I mispronouncing that?

No, you're perfectly fine. We don't have to do a countdown to pronounce it or anything either. You got that right.

Okay, all right. So there's—I just want to make sure I don't offend multiple people within the first five minutes. One person's okay, but if it's two, that's probably going to be a problem. Hey, Jono, listen, it's great to have you on the podcast here. And so yeah, as a resident expert on esports, man, I'm excited to dig in here and learn a bunch of stuff that I don't know. What I do know is that my kid is very excited about esports. They've got esports in his middle school and starting to do some things. Like they want him to open a Discord account, and I'm like, I don't think you're actually old enough to legally have a Discord account. But evidently your school says it's okay. That's a whole other conversation, maybe for a different day. But start to unpack for me a little bit here. Well, let's talk about you, Jono. Who you are, what are you doing, how'd you get plugged into esports?

Yeah, so my name is John. Merit. Everybody calls me Jono. My mom started calling me that whenever I was a young kid, and even the president of our university calls me Jono. So I go by Jono. Uh, online, that's my gamertag, my username for probably like eight to ten years now. Uh, before then, oh, they were pretty cringe names, so I'm not actually going to name them. Um, but I got into gaming at a young age. I got into esports pretty early on. Um, I really just loved watching OpTic as a kid, one of the professional Call of Duty teams. Just I would get home from school and every day I would sit and I'd log on and I'd watch, whether it was one of the early live streams where I'd watch one of their old YouTube videos of them competing against another team. And it just created this desire in me that, like, as someone that was a part of traditional athletics with soccer, esports actually had a competitive side to it. Gaming had a competitive side to it where you could push the margin and you could figure out a way to master your craft. And so I've always been someone that's taking gaming probably a little bit too seriously. It's been something that I've channeled all my emotion and all my being into for many years and returned to it recently to start the esports program at Oklahoma Wesleyan University a little over three years ago. Actually, a little under three years ago. About two and a half now. And it's been interesting. It's been interesting to work in esports, be on the inside, work with a lot of different people of all different backgrounds, and just get connected to something that was once a childhood dream. God ended up opening so many doors to bring it to fruition. So I'm over Oklahoma Wesleyan University. I'm the director of esports there. Um, recently over the last semester, the last like four months, five months, I owned a LAN center. So I got to have that whole experience since then. I'm not with him anymore, but I'm still working in esports, focused primarily on the collegiate program and I'm back to creating content and reaching people in the digital space with a competitive player.

Very cool. So like, let's—okay, so here's the deal. The Twitch audience probably—well, not probably, I guarantee the Twitch audience is smarter than me in this space. But I need to ask a couple really stupid questions up front because, well, I've got this podcast audience and they're not as educated as on this gaming stuff as maybe some of the others here in the room. So give me some grace. People in the room, I'm going to appreciate this. Hey, define for me what actually esports is. Like, what you're doing this out of Oklahoma Wesleyan University—that's awesome. What is it?

Yeah, so you have your gaming, which there's about 3.2 billion gamers in the world is what the stats are showing us, and a fraction of that is the competitive side of gaming. So esports, think of it as the competitive branch to the casual just enjoyment of gaming. It's where players are going to come together and they're going to be competing, whether that's in 3v3 in Rocket League, 1v1 in Super Smash Brothers, or 5v5 in Valorant. There's a lot of different titles that we're seeing pop up just over the last 15 to 20 years. A lot of people are probably familiar with Halo, so think games like Halo or games like Call of Duty where a lot of players from all over are logging in and they're playing online, and then they're eventually coming to locations and they're competing in stadiums to play against each other in front of tens of thousands of people.

So you're literally running a—like, is this certified? Like, what level of recognition is this? NCAA? Like, what is this at Oklahoma?

The NCAA hasn't actually gotten into the space. Um, it's an interesting market right now, the collegiate esports market. And so what's taking place right now is there's a lot of grassroots movements that are starting that are starting to get official support from the developers for the games. And they're actually backing these leagues and putting in like an actual system where these different colleges are coming together and they're competing. But the NCAA hasn't gotten into it. We're seeing the NAIA get into it with the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference, KCAC. Um, and then we're also seeing the ECAC get into it. So there are some traditional governing bodies from traditional sports that are getting into esports, but the NCAA hasn't taken a crack at it yet. Um, from what I understand and what I've heard, they would have to buy out the developers and they would have to spend probably billions of dollars to actually get the rights to be able to broadcast and live stream these matches because there's going to be a ton of sponsorship dollars, small to eyeballs on it.

So fascinating. Okay, so you're running leagues, you know, step above intramural, unofficial NCAA, but you're running these grassroot leagues through Oklahoma Wesleyan. So you're working with college students. Um, yeah, like, are they—oh, this is cool. Let's go, you know, try out for this. Are these like ringers that you're recruiting? Like, what—

What is this? Actually, 200 students try out for us, and basically it takes on what soccer would look like. So we'll have these online tryouts where students will reach out to me through Discord. They're going to want to try out for one of our different teams, one of our esports that we offer, whether it's Rocket League, whether it's Halo, whether it's Valorant. And then we'll put them in scrimmages. They'll play against each other, and the best players we want to pick up will actually offer scholarship. It's on par with our traditional athletics, so we have students that are getting a huge portion of their college paid for just as if they came to our school for basketball. And so then on the weekends and even on the weeknights, we'll have anywhere from four to eight matches against other colleges and universities in the various esports that we offer.

I love this. You're actually like scholarshiping kids to play video games. When did this happen? Like, forgive me, like I want to be the old guy. I'm literally the old guy right now. Like, get off my lawn. But no, like, what point did college become scholarshiping to play video games? Like, how old is this, or how new is this concept?

Super new. So 2016 was the first year. There was about seven varsity programs. I believe it was 2018, and double check me on this, 2018 we saw close to 70 varsity programs, and now we're getting close to 100 to 150 plus varsity programs across the nation. That's not even accounting for the clubs that are there. They're trying to get official collegiate support from their institution.

Wow, this is amazing. So at the college level we're seeing a lot of this activity, but like I said, my kid's school in middle school, they're even starting to recruit and play on, and he's playing what's the soccer rocket game with the cars? What's it called?

Rocket League.

Yeah, like I see him doing that, and I am horrible at like my coordination. I cannot get the car fast hitting the ball, and like it's ugly when I play that game. But are we even seeing esports, you know, drip down to the high school and middle school level? Like, outside of my son doing this, or are there other places where they can connect? Does esports, are there places where that connects with middle and high school kids?

Not very many. So during my time at Rewind Esports and Broken Arrow, that was actually what we started to seek out to build was youth esports. And so bringing in different college students, I would hire out some of our college students and they would be on staff and they would be coaching one to two teams per week. And so the youth would come in and we'd have teams of different ages meeting in different esports. And so there's very few places outside of the traditional school institution that's doing it. So like there's about 100 schools like high schools in Oklahoma that do have esports programs. Middle schools are starting to get into it. I know I was talking with Pastor Savage, and his kids' middle school is looking at doing it, I think. It's a middle school. And so we're seeing a huge rise at the high school level because what are kids doing nowadays? They're like you said, they're playing video games. They're going home, they're playing Fortnite for six hours. And the beautiful thing is that we can meet them right there where they're at, and we can create these awesome systems, these awesome boundaries, and awesome opportunities that help streamline their path to success. And so no longer is your kid going to be playing Fortnite for eight hours and not doing anything with his life. Now he's going to get picked up by a college team, and he's probably going to get close to, you know, 30 to 100 percent of college paid for.

So I mean, it has such an interesting, so really I should let my son play eight to twelve hours a day on Fortnite? But by the way, it's funny. I actually, if you look up dear fetch on Fortnite, my son's actually created a pretty decent account for me because I created the account because I used to play it like once or twice a year and was very passive, and he wanted to play, so I just gave him my account. And he's, at least I'm told, he's done good. You guys can look me up and tell me yes, I suck. That's okay. By the way, hey, Ninja in the room, great to see you. Pastor Dez, it's good to see you as well. If there's questions, feel free to throw them in in the chat as we're hanging out here.

Is the end game of esports to get the professional scholarship? Like, is that why I want my kid playing these video games? Is there other connection points that are helpful? Like, as we're just really once again, I'm trying to get the basics of esports here.

Yeah, I would say that's the most stable in-game right now. We're actually seeing a lot of layoffs and a lot of like hiring freezes in the pro scene. They're trying to figure out their model as to what's going to be effective for the business side of things. Right now they're running the traditional sponsorship model that you see like football and a lot of the different sports running, where you're slapping the logo on the billboard and just advertising as people are watching the matches. And that hasn't driven enough revenue to sustain paying for these expensive esports teams yet. And so what you're saying is you're seeing companies like 100 Thieves start to build out companies that are sub-companies of the actual entertainment organization. Like they're building out a keyboard company right now, and that's what's going to be funding the future of esports. And so I would say the collegiate scene, if there's a, there needs to be a massive connection point between traditional boards of administration at universities and healthy leaders in the esports industry that are able to meet halfway to create successful programs. I would say we're probably five to ten years out from proper staffing and proper structure being put into the collegiate space before it really starts to see some traction and where things start to just get to the level of football and basketball and the other sports at UC. And the major disconnection point right now, I think, is just a lack of understanding. But there's a lot of people that are bridging that gap right now. We're seeing a lot of awesome business owners, and obviously at my university we're seeing boards that are starting to see the value in it. And so over the next couple of years as more and more students get to it, and then I think as more of the kids and grandkids that's their primary thing, that grandparents and parents are seeing their kids interested in, you know, the world that we create is the backyard that our kids are going to play in, the backyard that our kids are going to grow up in. And so now we're creating these boundaries and these institutions, and we're supporting these. And I think we're about five to ten years out from a healthy industry.

So wow, so Christian Ninja, exchange Ninja, forgive me, I have no idea how to pronounce that, but hey, it's good to see. I'm used to seeing you on Twitch or Twitter. Esports in chat right now, esports is far more popular to watch than NFL, NHL, NBA among young men and women seventeen to twenty-five. Is there, Christian Ninja, hey, we're all good with that. Thanks for that. I didn't want to be like, hey, I got Ninja, because that would be a completely different guy. So talk to me, like, are we seeing that? Is there legitimacy? And that I don't want to call out Christian Ninja here publicly, but yeah, I mean, that's some big shoes to fill. The NFL, NBA, NHL, who cares about NHL, but the other two are kind of big, right? And so esports is bigger than that?

Yeah, esports is bigger than. I mean, it's global, and football's only here in North America where it's super duper popular. And so the amount of eyes that are getting on these tournaments is insane. And I think it's because of the low cost to entry, whether it's like monetarily or even physically. And so you're going to see so many more people playing video games as opposed to engaging with the content there because they're closer to being able to enjoy that lifestyle as opposed to being in the NFL and maybe not meeting the physical requirements to be in the NFL. And so it's a lot easier to get into the pro scene, to get into gaming. And it's kind of like a gold rush that we're seeing right now. And so I think a lot of what drives the popularity of esports is one, it's an escape a lot of people will go to on the casual gaming side. And so they want to learn how to do stuff. But two, it's also something that's not far off. It's something that's potentially possible for anybody to blow up as you see on social media. It's anybody can really just win the luck of the draw just because they're entertaining and they're funny. I see a lot of like TikTok channels of, there's this one that keeps popping up, and it's like this like Call of Duty grandma, and she just logs on and has a couple hundred people that are watching her, and she's playing Call of Duty. She's a student full time. So anybody can get into this space with gaming, and it's not too far off from esports. And so people want to see what the top, the cream of the crop is doing and what they're competing in. And it's nowhere near as popular over here in the west as it is in the east. It's blowing up over there in the east. I mean, it's been insanely popular. It's not even blowing up. It's crazy.

So Mark Jeff, I just did a really super quick search just to get an idea of how legitimate this is or not, but one of the first statistics that came up doing a quick search is that at the end of 2021 they projected that esports was the second most popular sport in the country, second only to the NFL at about 84 million fans versus the NFL at 141 million, and the MLB being at 79 million. And that is just here in the United States. That's not counting your global audience. One of the sort of claims of aims of esports in general for quite a while was that it was actually substantially larger than in viewership and fans than several of the largest professional sports organizations and tournaments or whatever, combined them, and they weren't equaling what esports was doing. So this isn't something that's like brand new or a flash in the pan. Like it's not just growing, but it's growing steadily. It's expanding steadily, and it's gaining not only the traction for the church's world to look at this, it's gaining the attention and the traction with the next generation in a way that professional sports, traditional professional sports, is not. Where you're seeing younger and younger people who are consistently less and less interested not only with playing but also with viewing professional sports, traditional professional sports, and we're seeing an increase in the desire for watching professional esports. And not only that, but you're seeing them want to do both. I was literally sitting with a man in Florida this past week. I think his stepson is going into high school right now, and he's kind of deciding what sports he wants to play. And his dad said, yeah, but he also really loves gaming. And so he's kind of, it's not just either or. There's a lot of people who are sort of into both because they have the competitive edge in esports and competing digitally.

In video games, it's scratching the same part of the brain in many ways as the competitive aspect of the physical sports they're playing as well. And my question really for Jonna that I'd love to dive into a little bit is, you know, we're in a series right now: Jesus, Gamers, and Church, and all of the other aspects of what we're going to talk about—administering to nerd culture, digital church expressions, digital missionaries. We can see the immediate alignment between what the church wants to do and what we're seeing happening in this gaming space. But Esports, you know, sure, I understand maybe your church buys some Xboxes. That's what we did before. And, you know, yeah, churches really don't have anything to do with the NBA, but we have upwards basketball in my community and kids can sign up to go play intramural basketball. So I sort of get that. But how does this intersect with faith, spirituality, and the church you're working for a Christian school and running an Esports program? So how does the spiritual aspect, the lives of your players, and what you're doing intersect with, you know, professionally and competitively, the Esports stuff that you're doing?

Yeah, 100 percent. So that's actually something that I've been trying to figure out is how directly, at least at the pro level, can you intersect Christianity into it? Do we build a professional Christian Esports organization? I don't know. We don't really have a professional football team that's only for Christians to join. And so I've been trying to think through that over the last couple of years. At the collegiate level, it's great because it's easy to get people across the country from all sorts of different walks of life and gathered in one place because they're on scholarship, they're traveling here. Normally you can't just move a whole bunch of people to come together and play video games together every single day for a cheap dollar sign. And not that college is cheap, but it's probably the most societally accepted way to do that. And so I mean, we had every single Monday, 6:30 in the morning, at a coffee shop, all of my captains. We have a Bible study. We'd spend time in the word. He'd read through a Psalm and then we'd read through a proverb. Sorry, we'd read through a proverb and then we'd read through a parable. And we would just sit there and talk about that. We'd have like an hour and a half session, just an awesome Bible study.

And so I think that with traditional sports, what you see—it's so weird because like, it's something that takes place in Nashville. It's not something that I'm thinking like, how do I—like, I do think through like, how do I have these healthy conversations about Christ because he's my Lord and Savior with my players? But it's not something that I'm like, all right, I'm evangelizing my players. Like, I don't—it just sounds weird for me to like, I guess, say that out loud. But with my players, it really comes down to the relationship and just the conversations that are taking place. And you see that in the traditional sports world. I mean, you look at Tim Tebow in football. You look at college football players. There's always guys in Bible studies. There's FCA things like that that are going on. And I think that those are the best ways to intersect Christianity into the space.

It's like gaming and sports are the fun thing that people are coming to college for, but what's like the substance? What's actually going to make you a better person? What's going to transform your life and help you to develop these skills and these lifestyle patterns that are actually going to impact other people for the glory of God? And so that's the beautiful thing is that we are a Christian institution. We do have chapel. All the professors here are believers. And so for me, I see this as like an awesome opportunity to bring people here from all sorts of walks of life where they can ask questions. They can actually build authentic relationships with people and they can go deep. And then they are presented with a gospel in a way that's grace-filled and truth-filled that aligns with the scriptures. And then we can send them out into the world.

And so I kind of see this as like a training ground at the collegiate level or a discipleship place where authentic discipleship can happen. And not all my players are believers, you know. And so it's probably 50-50 on campus, I would say here, maybe even like 60-40. But the one thing that I do love about my university is that we give people a chance to ask questions. And like I said, it's not fire and brimstone, but it doesn't cheapen the hard truths of the gospel. But it's just about building relationships. And I think that's one thing that we tend to take for granted when it comes to the Great Commission. It's not like, "While you were going, make disciples." So like, whatever it is that you're doing, are you living in a way that you're presenting Christ to other people through your actions, through loving God and loving your neighbor? And so that's what I see Esports as. This is another avenue to do that. You could do that if you were a chef. You could do that if you were an owner of a restaurant.

So I would imagine though, and you know, I don't want to overspeak here, but in Esports, college student—like, yeah, that guy's got, or that girl, they got to be like a rock star. I mean, they're literally getting money from a university for playing a video game. Like, this is what everybody else is doing in their dorm rooms at a non-professional level, and these are people that are actually a step closer than everybody else towards being that like, are they a rockstar status? Or am I overselling here?

So I have a player who is—I feel confident he has some buddies that he teams with. I feel confident saying that we have the best player in all of Latin America that's at our university. His name is Lenin Mateo. And he's, I think, he'll make it, bro, before he ends up graduating. What ended up happening was recently he played in a league for Valorant VCT Latin America, and they beat out—and this is something that like I'm still trying to grasp—they beat out all of the other teams in Latin America. And they're graduating into this league that's called the Ascension League. And so if they end up winning this league, then they end up going to the franchise level, which is the highest level against the highest teams. And so he won player of the match for that specific match and got interviewed in front of 1,500 people on stream. This was about two weeks ago. And so not only is he competing to go, bro, he's that good while he's in college. But he's, I would say, one of the best players, if not the best player, in all of collegiate Esports. So we're really blessed to have him on our Valorant team. He's an awesome guy. He's traveled all the way here from the Dominican Republic. And yeah, so that's the level of players that are getting into the collegiate space.

And so this may be crass, so forgive me, but that's a huge opportunity. I mean, you've got the Pelé of Esports at your school. And so the opportunity—yeah, I just dated myself. Pelé? Rock with it. Work with it. Make it work. Okay. But the fact of, hey, if we could figure out how to get these people to leverage their influence for the kingdom, to have this guy, the greatest Esports player in all of Latin America, to be able to connect—and I don't want to put this guy on a pedestal that's unattainable—but even just within his circle of influence, that's happening naturally as a result of what he's doing. I'm having the same conversation with bankers, with soccer moms, with everyday people like, do that discipleship, do that relationship, do that sharing of who Jesus is and what he's done in your life, regardless of that position. It just seems to me that an Esports player would have a larger circle of influence than maybe the average typical college student. Like, does that make sense? Or would that resonate with some of these kids that are Christians?

One hundred percent. And I think that what we've seen in the pro scene is there's a lot of people behind the scenes that are Christians that do have big platforms where thousands, ten thousands, 100,000 people see them on camera every day. And they aren't open about their faith on their broadcast or like in the public eye because, I'll be honest, there's just not enough connection between the capital C church and the Esports space yet. And so I think if there were more institutions that were behind these people, that would help them to know that they can go into these spaces and be a little bit more bold with the light that God's given them. And it's a learning experience too because some of these people do get saved while they're at the top in the Esports industry.

From my player Lenin, for example, he gives God credit for the opportunity that he's here. He's very, very humble. He's worked incredibly hard. He's just now graduating from high school. He was the salutatorian for his academy there in the Dominican Republic, 4.0 student, and almost a professional Valorant player. I believe he'll hit it here in the next year. So there are guys that are in your TSMs, your FaZes, that are behind the scenes. They're believers, and they're open. They're in fellowship. But coming together and meeting these people—and maybe it isn't even like we create a content team that has Christian professionals on it. Maybe it's just like they need guys in these spaces that are just pouring into them behind the scenes so that way they can go out in the public eye and be that Tim Tebow in the Christian Esports space.

But what a great parallel with the Tim Tebow. I mean, because that's—I mean, the guy that's that you know stands up in front of the press is like, "I will never do that again," and just in how he was able to leverage that and then leverage his Christian influence towards that. It's beautiful. Horrible professional football player, but man, could he figure out how to leverage his college influence for the kingdom. And he played baseball too, right? That didn't go very well, as I recall either.

So hey, there's a bootstrap. By the way, hey, Viola, thanks for the follow. Bootstrap's got a question. Do you see the presence of gaming in campus ministry useful to reach out to more students? And what he's talking about here is actually like, I think, across campuses. Like, the ability to connect from one campus to the other. I was actually thinking within the one university, but what are the relationships that look like within the leagues that you're operating among the multiple universities?

Yeah, I don't know the specific scenario in the specific university, bootstraps. I'll be 100 percent honest. There's—I saw a tweet and it was talking about just it was over a hundred coaches and directors that are in the same position that I'm in that their working 90 hours a week, even at some of these Christian institutions, and they're burnt out. They're quitting after two years. And a lot of it's because the lack of understanding of the space. I think that there's a lot of connection points that need to happen between not even just Christian university boards, but also boards on, you know, on Haiti's word—secular, but just regular campuses. And so if we can come in and maybe create some Esports chaplains and then also properly staff out these programs, that's really what it's going to take. So I would say that any decline that you're seeing is probably due to a lack of understanding between just the generational gap that the people that are being hired out to build these programs out or build—

these clubs that aren't properly supported by the institution yet and I say yeah because I am hopeful for it. You know, I've been very blessed to have my live stream into if ran this esports company for a season and so I'm not in the collegiate esports space to make money. I'm in it because I believe God's called me to be here. Now I would love to financially do this full-time and there's a lot of people that do want to see this happen and see this right because it is perfect for the for the next generation. That's really what it's got to be about is how can we meet the next generation where they're at and I think if we continue to push that conversation then people are going to be much more open to innovating and investing in a space because it isn't a cheap thing to start a brand new collegiate esports program. I mean if you want to build a program that's like top level or like medium to top level it's going to cost you between fifty and one hundred fifty thousand to start that, get that going. But that's not going to cost you ten million like it would to start a football program, to build this field, and to you know dig all these different things and put all these different things in place that need to happen for any other sort of traditional sports program. So I'd be interested to connect with you and maybe we can figure out how to how to help that campus. But I would say the number of gamers is on the incline and there's constantly more people that are getting into gaming. It's designed to get people into it from the way that they code the games, the way that they reward you inside the game. And so people need to have a healthy leadership and healthy time management skills in order to succeed in a space. It's not an easy space to succeed in. So I totally can appreciate that.

Let me ask this: what's the job profile for a gamer chaplain, an esports chaplain? What do you need? What are you looking for? What are some character traits? Tell me how to solve this problem.

Yeah, one hundred percent. I think someone that's able to be bi-vocational and move to the area of the campus if they're not already there would be awesome. Someone that can just be around the guys in the afternoons during practice and be a positive influence for them. Thankfully I've been blessed. I've had probably four guys that have just volunteered their time to help be with my players so that way I'm not there living in the esports arena all the time. But they're also there helping be a positive Christ-like influence in my guy's life. And so there needs to be a connection there. I think with the local church to create chaplains because I guarantee all the youth pastors, all the different pastors are probably gaming and they have youth kids that are gaming. So I actually just had a denomination reach out to me and their entire district in this area of the United States wants to host an esports tournament here in my city. And so I have a call with them next week about that. So maybe we can figure it out. I don't know what it looks like on the traditional sports side. What does a chaplain look like? And then maybe I can help in terms of traditional sports.

Jeff, yeah, like I'll just be honest. Like my lead pastor growing up was actually the chaplain for the Miami Dolphins. And so like he did have a nine to five job. He was a pastor somewhere else. But he, you know, and what it did for him was it got him really good seats. He would leave church and go straight to the Orange Bowl, you know, decades ago where the Dolphins were playing at the time. But he was very involved in the community around that, knew the players, knew the team. And so was able to step in from a bi-vocational standpoint. And you know, Andy's asking or Chino's asking how does existing churches get on board with this? And I'm like, well, there's no shortage of pastors that are around. And some of them might be looking for that extra thing. And you probably don't have the budget to pay full-time, but you probably would have a budget to pay something. And then you're modifying the relationship, the coaching, the discipleship. You're part as the leader, you're part of that, but you're not the end all to that. You've got someone that's walking alongside. It's funny like even just being the guy that works with a lot of digital pastors. I can think of a lot of digital pastors that would be interested in an opportunity like that. They may need to get more equipped in the gaming space and in the vernacular and understanding, but I mean that's being humble and understanding you got something to learn. So that's not even a big deal.

Hey Mark, let me ask you: did you have anybody in your church that's active in esports? Have you wrestled with anything like esports and how to minister and reach into that? Like, what, as a gamer church, I'm just wondering how much esports is on your radar?

Yeah, I mean gaming is such a wide swath, right? And I think that a lot of times people who are not part of gaming culture don't think of it that way. I'm sure you've had that experience, right, where there's just like a very singular definition and understanding of what a gamer is? And people don't understand the nuances between genres of games and type of gamers and what people are into. And it is so ridiculously vast. Jono shared a statistic right here in the beginning of three point two billion gamers in the world. I think you probably shared that, but again the pilot episode or episode one of this show, you know, roughly double the number of Christians on the planet. And that is a staggering statistic. So to answer your question, Jeff, we're not thinking really heavily about esports. I know that there are organizations that are on Twitch who are Christians who are, but when we think about this, when I think about like spiritual guidance, right, in general as a church, like how are we coming alongside of a tremendous number of people who've been hurt by the church, pushed out by the church, been told that their hobby and their interests are stupid and wastes of time, and really don't have any desire at all to step through the doors of the church? And that's kind of one of our hearts is like how do we reach that individual, right, the disillusioned and the detergent? And then the other side of that for us is really content because video games isn't, you know, it is esports and there is competition, but content creators, authors, writers, you know, bloggers, streamers, YouTubers, how do we come alongside of people like that? And that is a little bit more my bent as someone who enjoys making content and podcasting and streaming, to come alongside of people like that. So we don't do a tremendous amount with esports. I don't, to my knowledge, I don't think we have anybody in our community who's like a competitive esports player. There's one person who is in my community who is a professional soccer player, but that is obviously not esports. And so we don't really do a lot in the esports space.

And so as John is talking about the stuff, there's like, man, really interesting to see because in many ways, oh no, you're kind of still on the spear tip of this, right? Because in so many ways the people who own the keys to the kingdom, which really are like the vaults, right, the money vaults, pour out the financial resources consistently and continually on things that they can understand and wrap their minds around. And those things are often things at the collegiate level like football and baseball and basketball and softball and volleyball and things of that nature. And so there's a lot of people who I think are saying, okay, we're understanding it. There's students who want to come to our school to play video games. Like let's wave some money at it. Like it's going to be almost for you, it's kind of like a joking amount, right, of money at it. But you're like, hey, you're giving me the opportunity to step into this world. I think that's amazing and super cool and really encouraging. But from everything that we're seeing statistically across culture, that isn't becoming less anytime soon. That's only projected to grow and increase.

Yeah, so one hundred percent. And so I'll kind of give you an idea of what it looks like to start a collegiate program in esports apart from like a traditional sport. And so one thing that I've been presenting, and I actually had another university that reached out to consult me earlier this week because they're interested in getting into esports, and so I sat and I met with them and shared the model of how esports functions. And my biggest thing that I've been presenting to people is whenever you launch an esports program, kind of like what you were talking about, Pastor Mark, is that you have your Rocket League that doesn't play anything like your Halo. You have your Halo that doesn't play anything like your Valorant. You have your Call of Duty that's nothing like League of Legends. And then also each of those respective esports is going to take you ten thousand hours to master each of them. And so whenever you started your athletic department, you didn't just hire one guy to coach your basketball, your volleyball, your soccer, your baseball, your tennis, and recruit for those at the same time and manage all the matches and the practices for them. And so with esports, the disconnect is making sure that you're hiring full-time coaches to recruit out maybe four to five different Valorant teams. Maybe you have your two varsity teams, your academy team, and your club team that's under one guy. And then you would do that same thing for Fortnite and maybe Smash Brothers. You squish those two together since they're not, they don't function the same way. And so building out a program that's like an entire department, we're not there yet in collegiate esports, but that's the biggest thing because your Valorant practices, for example, Jeff, one scrimmage, that's going to be about an hour. But usually my guys will have like two to three scrimmages per night, that's about three hours for just one of our teams. And we have three other teams. And so if I'm going to be at every single one of those teams' practices, that's going to be probably like ten hours total of time invested every single night. And so that's really where the disconnect I think is at the collegiate level. But again, I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that it'll get the proper investment that it needs to. I think that's just going to slowly change over time as the people that were forerunners start to age into the people that are going to be blessing now, the early adopters and then the late comers and stuff.

So John, I have a couple of questions about this on the collegiate level because I think this does impact the church as well. But there are some very unique differences between physical sports, traditional sports, and esports. And one of those is the rapid incline and decline of a skill set that you might need. So for example, a school could invest in a football program because they can figure that football is still going to be here twenty years from now. But what does a school do when they say we want to invest in a Valorant team, but there's no guarantee that Valorant will even be on servers four years from now, let alone a viable thing that people are actually watching? And how does a school actually track and say we want to start a program for this particular sport because it is a skill set, right? Your players can't just swap and be like, I was a professional Valorant player, now I'm going to go play professional Hearthstone because that's what's hot right now. It's not the same skill set.

Card gaming, shooter, a first person shooter, not the same skill set. How do you even manage that type of volatility that the gaming community often has? It's on the financial side. What it looks like is the PC that you're going to play Hearthstone on—well, maybe not Hearthstone because that doesn't—you could play it on your phone from ten years ago. The PCs and the equipment that you end up buying is still going to be viable no matter what esport team you end up having. And if you do have to end up switching, so like for example CS, I wouldn't say CS is anywhere close to dying, CS:GO, but Valorant, you know, it's close. It's in the FPS genre. And so like I do have, for example, some of my players that are here for a Halo, they're playing for a Valorant team now. And so there are transferable skills between the genres of like FPS and then MOBA. But I would say that the main thing is from the financial standpoint. And if the university is going to invest in esports program, that gear is going to be viable no matter how often a game dies and then a new game gets brought on.

The thing that you need to figure out then is if there's a new game that gets started, then as a coach I would get into that early on and I would learn how to coach that. But you know, bringing people on as you add more esports that are experts in that specific one is going to be really important as well. So I think that would be where the biggest change in investment would be—would have been—having to bring on more staff. And how does that look? Let's say you know you bring on a player and you're saying, "Hey, we want to give you a full ride or we want to pay for eighty percent of your schooling to come and play Smash Brothers for us." But then let's just say in a fluke alternate reality, in a parallel universe where, whatever, WB Smash Brothers is actually does become popular and eclipses Smash Brothers, which didn't happen, will never happen, we understand that, but let's just say that does happen and this player doesn't want to go. Does schools need to do things like create nuances inside of players' contracts that say, "Hey, we can at any point cut your scholarship and cut the program because the game just isn't profitable for us as a school anymore and we can't support you playing?"

Hmm, I haven't had to run into that yet. I think the only thing that I've ever had to cut a player's scholarship for was for bad attitudes or for failing their classes. Yeah, I would—I would want to—I would hope that most directors and most coaches and administrations would give a student at least a year and then would try to help them to move to a different academic institution if they were going to do away with the scholarship at that point. Yeah, I haven't run into that problem yet though, but it would be something that I'll think about if that ever comes about.

Yeah, hey, Bub is asking a question in chat. Bubba from Love Thy Nerd, and so he was on last week in line with Mark's question. How often do you have players on multiple teams, much like the college guy that's playing for the basketball team and the football team? Like, do they double dip in some of these games, or is it too hard just from an operations perspective?

It depends on the esports. So Rocket League is going to take significantly less for you to play a series and compete for than it would be if you were to play like League of Legends and Valorant at the same time, just because of the nature of how long a game takes. Rocket League, one match is five minutes, and then you play a series of five, that's gonna be like thirty minutes, maybe thirty-five minutes cap. And so I do have a player right now that's playing Rocket League and playing Valorant for our Academy team. I do have some soccer players that also play for the JV team for soccer and then play for our Valorant team as well. The tough thing with that is just the scheduling and making sure that everything's aligned. Obviously, if you have someone that's part of a team, you want them to be able to commit to it. And so I have had students that have done two esports. Like I had one that was doing Overwatch and Valorant, and he was practicing for four hours a day while being a college student. That's a lot. That's a lot of time for a college student. And then also, like, if that student needs to work a job as well—not that specific one—but yeah, I do have some that double dip in the different esports.

It's interesting. Christian Ninja actually said something a little earlier. I just—I would love to unpack it because I wasn't thinking this way, but maybe I do need to think this way. Ministering the gamers in esports ministry aren't really the same focus. Actually, I would love both of you all to stake on that. Um, John, I want you to go first.

So for the first four years of my time back in the gaming space—because I left for quite a while. Like, I played for a YouTube team, a trickshot Call of Duty team back when I was in middle school, and we had about a hundred thousand subs. This was 2009, I believe. I have to go back and look at the time. And then I stopped playing for many years when I played soccer, and then came back to it years later. And my first four years after coming back to it was completely different than these last two years have been for me within esports.

My first four years was completely dedicated towards being a digital missionary online. And so I got into streaming. I got a scholarship for my university and was using it as a platform to be able to just reach people on the Twitch platform and be able to open up about my struggles with depression, my testimony, and just doing life with people from all sorts of different places all over the world. And so I started my live stream in 2017. I reached partner numbers around the exact same time that I started the program in 2020. And that was completely different than the approach that I take with my players that are here in person. It's more of like a relational, and I would—it's relational but in like a different way. The temperaments and the methods are different. It's the same Holy Spirit that I let guide me whenever I'm in those conversations with people, but it's a different audience. I would say with esports, like I said, it's going to take on more of like a traditional sports model with like the FCA, versus like the casual gamer. There's just a difference in personality, I would say, that's there. And it's tough because with evangelism and discipleship, it varies even more on like the personal level based on the individual and how the Spirit's guiding you in those conversations. But yeah, I would say the personality is different between someone that's hyper-competitive and is like constantly pushing themselves to win. And you know the difference between, not the esports players or jocks, but if you can take the same idea of like how a jock would think, versus someone that is just a super niche lord nerd casual gamer. Sometimes there's overlap there. There's just a difference in human temperament and personality.

Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. Like, I'm not a competitive gamer. I'm far too fragile for that life. And so I'm not a competitive gamer, and I don't think our church is really geared towards reaching people who are in that space either. Like, that's not my heart. It's not what we're leaning into. And there's other organizations out there—churches.gg right now—that's kind of getting out there. Like, one of their goals is to help churches run tournaments and help churches compete against one another. And like, that's a really, actually, really freaking cool idea. But it's not my bent, right? Like, I would—I have zero desire to get into that. And on top of that, like, I would be just genuinely bad at it because I just don't play competitive games. And in the same way, like, you know, the people that we're reaching at Lux, and like, we don't even—I don't even think about that. Like, we don't—we're using games as a common ground in a similar way that you would use a coffee shop that people generally, you know, go to and meet at, or maybe fans of football. And you're like, "Hey, yeah, I'm trying to evangelize to people who are also Steelers fans because I am a Steelers fan." And I'm not like, I'm not trying to go out and meet with the Steelers players, but I am trying to create a space where I can engage with people who enjoy watching the Steelers play. And so I'm evangelizing and connecting with them. And that is a lot more kind of our heart and direction.

It's so odd for me because the world is so big and it's so easy when you're outside of it to narrow it down to kind of like a pinpoint and just group it all together. And the world that Jono is in and the world that I am in are radically different. Like, very, very, very different. We share a similar heart. We both love gaming. We don't love the same games. Although, although, you are like a Star Wars Old Republic guy, and so you are an MMO guy. So there is there is at least a portion of you that's not the competitive bent. You just want to go and do story and be part of the role-playing aspect. And that is what I enjoy. And I think that one of the things that you can learn from this conversation if you are in church is that there is so much more here than what you might actually think that there is here. That just because someone walks into your church and they're wearing a shirt that says "Game On" with a picture of a controller on it doesn't mean that they are the same as the next person that walks into your church with a similar t-shirt on. That each gamer is vastly, vastly different.

And I've said this before—I don't think on a podcast before, Jeff—but one of the other churches that are in our space is God Squad Church. They've been around a little over twice as long as we have been around. They're one of the probably the longest-standing digital church that's at least in this space. And a lot of their church was birthed out of Matt Suse's love for first-person shooters. And a lot of the people in their church are reflective of that. Whereas our church was birthed out of a digital card game. So we have a lot, lot of people who are a little bit older and lean more heavily into being intellectuals because that's the group that plays card games. They're not fast-reflex people. They're people who want to—they're really thoughtful about it. And so like, that the feel and the vibe even of our faith community is very different because we came out of a different genre of game. And it is like an entirely different subculture. You're not just talking about gamers. You're talking about hundreds of subcultures inside of the culture of gaming. So let me let me build on that because obviously contextualization, especially in digital environments—you know, I think Mark, you were the one that said you actually have to aim to reach less people to be more effective to reach more because if you try to reach everybody, you reach nobody. So draw a smaller audience—I.E., card game digital—and then Lux Digital Church is born. So is it safe to say then it takes esports people to reach esports? It takes shooter people to reach shooter? It takes card game people to reach card games? Like, do we want to take it to that extreme? And so it's really about empowering esports people to reach their own people. Is this where we're going today?

I think there seems to be a common thread of the people group that you were a part of before you were saved is the same people that God, after he's transformed you, calls you back to. I think we see that with Paul specifically reaching the Roman people and then the Jewish people. And there seems to be a level of God takes the things and the experiences that we go through in our life, the

Gifts and the talents, the things that we like, things that we're good at, and he molds those into a way that we can understand that and go back to that specific group of people and be effective. And I think that's what Paul's talking about whenever he's talking about being all things to all people, whenever he's talking about how to the Jews I became like a Jew to reach those that were under the law, into the Gentiles I became like a Gentile. And so within esports for me, growing up being a super hyper competitive Call of Duty player, there's always been a desire there to reach that specific community. And knowing that language and knowing how to compete and knowing how to play games at a competitive level, I can hang in those conversations and have those conversations with the best of the best. And there's also a level of respect that's bred between people that are in these different subcultures. Whenever you are someone that's part of the in crowd, whenever you do know how to talk about the specific card games, whenever you do know how to talk about the specific esport, there's a level of you have credibility. I'm actually going to listen to what you're saying. Clearly you, it's psychologically it's common ground. That's what it is. And as humans we want to open up to people and things that we're familiar with. And so that's the familiarity that connects the individuals so that way that bridge can eventually be built to share the weight of the Gospel.

So fascinating. This has been a great conversation. I was with all the different topics we're hitting here within this season, the esports is the one that like I just came in, I'm like I have no clue. And so Jono, this has been a great conversation digging into it. Chino Mage asked the question, and so we'll land the plane on this. Kind of, I don't know if Chino really has a thirteen year old, but supposedly if a thirteen year older wanted to get involved in this stuff, how would they get started getting into esports? That's a tough question because it depends on location. I would see if you could find some type of youth esports thing that they can get into. Um, kind of like Jeff was pointing out earlier, look for like a middle school program something that's supported by the actual school that they're going to. And then I would actually start as soon as they get into high school, start looking online. There's a company called Stay Plugged In. They connect players with coaches and colleges all around the nation. And so that's what I would do is as soon as possible, I would start getting your student into when you go to high school. Is it fourteen or fifteen? What is a freshman year?

I would just pay attention. Fifteen.

Okay, get as good as possible in the safety of your own home. See if there's some official things that are backed by your school. And then also too, I think that we're seeing a rise in like not parent church but like para-institutionalized stuff too. So look for places like Rewind, look for places that are starting these youth esports programs because I do think that in the next probably five years we're going to see a ton of people that are starting to build out this model that looks like what traditional sports do. So like club soccer, club esports, start looking for things like that your student or your child can get involved in to where they can get coached by people that are a little bit older in their age and their time in esports industry.

And I would just, it's fascinating, I would expand on that and just say like if you yourself are a gamer and a competitor, like see if you can help start the club at the school. Like because there's kids there that want to do it, but a lot of times the school administration just doesn't understand it. Um, like this is happening in my mother-in-law's at a school, and this is nerd culture stuff, but they started a Dungeons and Dragons club. They had so many kids sign up for it that they rotate every week a different group of kids because they had dozens of kids who wanted to come play D&D. And the teachers connecting there, I have someone in our church who is, I don't, I think that Lord's Shadow is, hey, Lord Chad is not a believer, but Lord Shadow came to our church, played D&D, and he runs a middle school D&D club at the middle school once a week. And it's been something that's been on my heart like I'm an avid D&D player. If I was an avid, you know, gamer and could kind of help a school get the equipment that they needed and begin coaching a team of kids to play League or whatever, um, there are definitely kids in every school across the country that want that. But a lot of times schools either A don't have the funding or B just don't have the knowledge base to be able to do it. In most, I think high schools and middle schools recognize the validity of it and actually want it to be part of their opportunity for their students. Like they see it, they want it, they just don't know how to take steps in that direction. So you know, maybe you can be the key that begins unlocking that for your school as well.

Yeah, I love that. Cowboy Morgan in the chat, I love this. When I was growing up, churches paid missionaries to go overseas and witness. Now we're in a day where missionaries are witnessing online in games and really, you know, that's the heart of Digital Church Network is helping people discover the influence they have digitally, including in video games, and even training and equipping them with how to make disciples, how to grow into leaders, how to plant churches and networks and things like that. And so recognizing the esports is a mission field, and that to reach the mission field you've got to reach an individual within the mission field and equip them to reach the mission field. Like it has to be within. Is a huge opportunity for churches and individuals and gamers and friends and people that are within this culture. It's a huge opportunity for us to tackle. And so I've loved this conversation. I've loved where we're going with this season. We are three episodes in and all three of these have been well, Marx was a kind of iffy, but everybody else was good. I probably butchered his name on that podcast too, but who really remembers anyway. In any way, at least I don't. So hey, listen, Jono, it's been great. But yeah, we're gonna land the plane, we're gonna wrap up here with the show here talking about esports. Let's do Mark first. Marcus, we're wrapping up here. Any closing thoughts?

No, but go check out what is going on locally in esports in your area. Go check out Jono's stream. Um, and literally just swing by and hang out with them and ask questions because you get them to listen here, but you could go ask him questions live and have him respond to it every week for a lot more hours than what you're listening to this podcast. So what is it? Just twitch.tv slash Jono, J-O-H-N-O. And go check him out for sure.

Awesome. Yeah, go check that out. And Jono, any closing thoughts on your side? We're wrapping up.

I'm just excited for people to connect more of the capital C church with what we're doing here in the space. It's been awesome to be here for seven years, and now we're just seeing so many different people really flock to the space. And usually whenever God lays something like this on as many people's hearts, you know, he's really trying to reach people. So I'm just really blessed and honored to be on this, and thank you for having me today.

Jeff, thank you.

Oh, listen, this was, this was soul. This was great. My mind is racing around the chaplaincy program for esports. How do we start? Get residents and send them into those spaces to help out, connect. There's lots of opportunity here. And so we're going to keep the conversation going, definitely. Uh, who is it? Cowboy Morgan asked how can you find the other episodes? So the church.digital slash podcast. If you want to listen to it on the audio site, subscribe to the Church Digital podcast and you can find them in there pretty easy. Um, and then I'm on YouTube. We're on YouTube. It's youtube.com slash the church digital, and there's playlists there that you can find Mark's episode and Bubba's episode there as well. But hey, we're gonna land the plane. This was awesome. I'm gonna look at my son playing esports in a whole new way. And hopefully one day I get to cash the check. No, I'm kidding. That's not terrible. Well, maybe. But that's a conversation probably for the after party. But hey, so we're gonna land the plane right here. Remember, you podcast listeners, you can find it on us here on Twitch, twitch.tv slash digital church network every Thursday at three P.M. We're going to be doing Jesus Gamer Church season interviews live here on the show. I actually have no idea who's next. And so somebody Mark nicely transitioned me off and I didn't take the time to look. So we'll post it in DCN and social media as well. I want to say it's Jade. Is it Jade? Somebody's smarter than me has that information. And but let's pretend it's straight. Mark doesn't know. He came back just to give me the hands up. So um, yeah, that's the way it rolls here with Digital Church Network. It's a little chaotic, but we're gonna land the plane. So for Jono or Mark, for Jeff with the Church Digital and Digital Church Network, thanks for jumping on the stream here, and we'll see you next time on the show. You all have a good day.