What does it mean to do nerd ministry? This is the question I am almost constantly asking. It is being more and more widely done nowadays. Some do it better. Others do it worse. Almost everyone does it pretty differently. I personally find myself trying to whittle down my focus as often as possible for maximum reach - Twitch, Discord, YouTube. But that is far from the end - creation is king and it always helps to be in pursuit of other avenues. We will have highlighted 25 nerd ministries by the end of this blog and we’ve barely scratched the surface. How are you seeing nerd ministry be done?
Reminder: These will be specifically related to nerd ministry, so be aware that these are not the be-all, end-all of resources. There are also only so many hours in the week - so these will be brief and unedited. I also will not be discriminating against these sources much. I don’t condone or approve of the theology, actions, or anything else that these entities might be involved with. These are purely things I find interesting or worth considering. Venture at your own risk or reward.
More than likely, I will post the latest Humans of Gaming in the Nerd of Mouth blog. I think that Chris and Drew are putting together high-quality interviews with every new episode. It is so refreshing to hear the thoughts on leaders in the gaming space when it comes to spirituality. Every so often, Drew will do a myriad of interviews from the floor of conventions. This episode is one such episode - enjoy!
Josh Larsen remains to be my dream guest for the Nerds of Pray currently in the world of nerd and pop culture ministry. If you’ve never journeyed into the backlog of content put out regularly by ThinkChristian, you should remedy that ASAP.
Full transparency: I haven’t read this book, but the blurb itself feels so incredibly beneficial to the world of nerd ministry that I had to bring it up. If you’re in the act of creating digital ministry spaces, this seems like a must-read and is right at the top of my list.
You caught me - this isn’t a ministry. But this is a must-know for anyone in the work of nerd ministry, especially if you are a podcaster or Twitch streamer. Open source, free, high-quality, OBS friendly video feeds that can be sent out world-wide. Honestly - this is a huge game changer for any of us still finagling with Cleanfeed or Zoom. Open source is always the best choice, even if it isn’t the easiest.
Look - it’s my blog, I can put my stuff on here if I want to. Yes, this is one of the projects of Checkpoint Church, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point any loyal readers in the direction of the Nerds of Pray podcast. In our latest ep, we sat down with the blogger, Twitter-er, and writer Shaneen Thompson for a conversation about collaboration, community, and writing as a passion.
And that wraps up this Nerd of Mouth post. What did you think? Was this helpful? Encouraging? Inspiring? Or do you have some ideas of how we could make it better? Even better, would you be interested in doing it better? For now, that’s where we’ll leave it. Send ideas for improvement or ideas to be included to checkpointchurch@gmail.com.
Until next time,
God loves you.
We love you. You matter.
Buh-bye!