Early on Checkpoint Church was faced with the challenging question: how do we practice generosity in this space? When we are in the traditional church context, it's fairly straightforward. Pass around an offering plate for financial givers. Offer up time and space for mission events for physical and time-based givers. Offer up classes and small groups for leadership-based givers. With Checkpoint, none of that existed at that time. Not to mention that introducing any of those

So Pixar’s Turning Red kind of just snuck in on Disney+ and I honestly probably would have missed out on watching it except for all of the dang controversy around the film. Given my love of pretty much all things Japanese or really Asain adjacent, I’m really glad that I did. This is an excellent movie that is so obviously inspired by the art style that I grew up enjoying that I could honestly leave this movie muted and enjoy just looking at it. You could just feel the Ghibli

Checkpoint Church is a weird thing. This past week I was tasked with, yet again, presenting Checkpoint as a concept to a Board of Ordained Elders, Deacons, and Lay Leaders as a means of continuing my Provisional Membership. I was continued, by the way! Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. Having to 'pitch' Checkpoint so often has made me critically work through every single stepping stone that we have in our community. We're far from perfect, but it would astound any

Batman isn’t a superhero Look - hear me out. Batman isn’t a superhero. At his best, he’s a hero. At his worst, he’s a villain. Most of the time, he’s a vigilante. With the latest iteration of The Batman portrayed in Matt Reeves interpretation of the character, this point gets explored in some really fascinating storytelling. While the movie itself earns an 8/10 from me, it’s an excellent story and has some amazing moments throughout. Bruce Wayne is a fascinating character, bu

Out of all of the things that has surprised me the most with Checkpoint Church, the way that this community prays is astounding to me. I've always been a very private pray-er in my walk with Christ. I would hide behind boisterous singsong prayers in my Youth Group because I didn't often share my intimate prayer methods with others. I'm not quite a 'Daddy God' trope, but I'm closer to that than I am to the rote prayers of some of my peers. There was a study I was reading recen

These past couple weeks of playing through the Old Testament - sorry, I meant Elden Ring - have been some interesting ones. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the game as much as I did at the beginning, given my lack of interest in all of the other Soulsbourne games. Nevertheless, the hype of the game itself has kept me engaged with the entry whenever the game itself isn’t managing to hold my attention. I knew from the intro sequence that I wanted to write a sermon on this game - I

Nerd Pastor Nate is a featured writer for Rethink Church writing on gaming, anime, and other pop culture topics. In this post, he discusses the game Sifu. Read the full article below or visit the main site here.

This past Monday we officially unveiled our Safepoint Policy. When it comes to digital ministry, much of the work being done is entirely novel. Thankfully, we have some precedents to lean on in the traditional church context, but our work often comes to down to mostly rewriting the book and/or reinventing the wheel. This is the case with our approach to providing safety within our community. Long-time church goers will be familiar with the term 'safe sanctuary' as the policy

Do you like getting angry? Not a big fan of it myself, but every now and again I’ll give a rage-inducing game a chance. Sifu is one of those games - from the premise alone I was captivated by this story from the meta. A game where you get older every time you die in the game? Fascinating concept. However, a concept like that means that you have to die. A lot. And those of us not prone to those masochistic tendencies are not gonna have a good time. That being said - I did spen

Today marks the beginning of the Lenten season. From now until Easter, Christians across the globe will honor the age-old practice of fasting as we contemplate the Passion of Christ crucified. As a child, I would choose to fast from my ever-strong addiction to candy and/or soda. I would use it as an opportunity to drop some pounds. I would also use it as a virtue signal of how good I was at being a Christian. Thankfully, as Paul said, when I was a child I thought as a child,