Planting a church like Checkpoint is a fairly inexplicable thing. I can't begin to describe the surprises that have been waiting on me around every corner. Like all church plants (and churches), God has worked in mysterious ways. But when your church is designed with nerds, geeks, and gamers in mind - it's downright bizarre.
The very first surprise came within our first month of streaming. I had served in a local rural parish for four years before beginning the planting process. They were a great church, but my history of the church experience had ingrained in me the sense that few actually wanted to be at church. They would come for the hour on Sunday morning and then try to slip out during the last song to make it to the local Mexican spot. So, when things first got started, I assumed this was the situation with streaming. The less, the better - because no one really wants to be there, right?
I was dead wrong.
To this day, it astounds me that we have so many people who are not just willing, but downright overjoyed to watch someone play a video game, host a podcast, or watch an awards show for two-ish hours. And here's the kicker: most would prefer if our streams were longer. The stream-watching community enjoy the stream experience.
Personally, I'm old-school when it comes to Internet videos. I like shorter pieces of content. So we're trying something new for those of you in my shoes. We're not planning to slow down our lengthy streams - but we are wanting to condense them into monthly 'Best Of' highlight videos for the rest of us to enjoy, too. You can start watching with our first ever November highlight here and expect one at the beginning of every month. Who knows? Maybe the FOMO of the highlight video will make viewers like myself realize just how fun it is to stream real-time - whether it's two hours or ten.