As you're reading this, perhaps, I am sitting down with several of our LVL2 members and of our benefactors from the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. We are gathering for our bi-annual Stakeholder's Meeting. In this time, we will talk about the past 6 months of Checkpoint Church's existence and the myriad of goals we've met or fallen short of meeting. We will discuss future plans and set goals for the Spring meeting of the same name. All of thi

To provide a teachable moment on TikTok, I made a quick commentary on how SNL's coverage of the Try Guys scandal was very similar to the underlying, often unspoken sentiment that - just like YouTubers are not *real* entertainers - the digital church is not *real* church. My first mistake, of course, was saying anything at all. I'm not one for the limelight, so mostly I leave the controversial out of my mouth. But I did this time. And I quickly got a commenter on how a digital

Constant and attentive innovation is necessary for the digital church. The world online moves quickly and unapologetically. This nature has resulted in our actions as a community having to be equally rapid in evolution. For instance - when Discord added a Clubhouse-clone to its list of features, we had to ask ourselves if/when to utilize that feature. We decided that it wasn't the time, but clearly, Discord chose to implement it for a reason. Some communities needed it, which

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

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video mentions a tragedy in Ohio, but the event in fact occurred in Michigan. Adjustments and edits have been made as possible. Apologies for any affected by this error. The past few weeks have brought a haunting reality to the forefront of my mind. With the advent of the Internet, the world became a good bit smaller by the pure virtue of connectivity. When tragedy strikes a country across the globe, it hits the airwaves within the hour - a far cry from th

Before we get too far, I want to welcome all of the new subscribers to our newsletter and members to our Discord, Twitch, and YouTube family. We have been featured in quite a few random places (notably by the UM News service). This new wave will no doubt enter with questions about where to get started in this community. It gives me great joy to inform the first-timers that, while it's far from mandatory, we now have a path for you to take to get plugged in here at Checkpoint.

Warning: this post will be brutally honest and yet hopelessly optimistic. Last week, we had our second ever Check-A-Thon and set the goal to reach $500 for Child's Play. We didn't meet that goal, but we did raise the very impressive $330 for children to have the joy of gaming brought their way during their hospital visits. Before the back to school season, our streams on Twitch were starting to hit nearly ten concurrent viewers on average (if that doesn't sound impressive, be