Nerds of Pray: Digital & Nerd Missionary FrostByteIV aka Luke Filipiak of LoveThyNerd (1.9)

Nerds of Pray is the podcast where Nerd Pastor Nathan Webb of Checkpoint Church sits down with some of the leading people in the realm of Nerd/Pop Culture Ministry. He asks them questions about their specific venture into the ministry, as well as what first led them to the intersection of faith and fandom.

In this episode, Nathan sits down with Luke Filipiak of LoveThyNerd, FrostByteIV and LukeAndAsia.

Support Luke Filipiak:

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lovethynerd | https://www.twitch.tv/frostbyteiv

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FrostByteIV

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FrostByteIV

Website: https://lukeandasia.com/

Nerds of Pray is made possible by the support of Checkpoint Church, the church for nerds, geeks, and gamers online. This episode was hosted, produced, recorded, edited, and mastered by Nathan Webb. It was captured via Cleanfeed and edited in DaVinci Resolve.

Intro/Outro Music is Royalty Free: "The Little Broth" by Rolemusic

Key Art/Logo was created by: Nathan Webb

Character Art/Avatar by: mondayvibes

To support Checkpoint Church and the ministry they produce, please like this video and subscribe to our channel or these other sources:

Podcast: https://anchor.fm/checkpoint-church

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/CheckpointChurch

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/checkpointchurch

Discord: https://discord.gg/zUg5sj7

Website: http://www.checkpointchurch.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/checkpointchurchnc

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CheckpointNerd

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/checkpointchurch/

Merch: https://checkpoint-church.creator-spring.com/

Our next episode will be dropping next month and will feature Matt Alexander of Checkpoint Church. Look forward to that and thanks again so much for giving us a listen!

If you have any recommendations or would like to be considered as a future guest on the podcast, submit your name and biography to checkpointchurch@gmail.com.

The Checkpoint Church Podcast Hub is the hub for all of our podcasts, sermons, and special projects. To learn more, go to checkpointchurch.com or send any questions you have to checkpointchurch@gmail.com.

RAW UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT (MAY CONTAIN ERRORS):

Well thank you so much Frost for joining us. I'm trying to decide if I'm gonna call you Frost or Luke during this. One of my big things with like all of the, you know, I'm on Twitch so often I call people by their usernames that it is so challenging for me to not call them by username or by handle.

So, yeah, I don't know if you also mirror that. Cause I know you guys have a lot of crossover between I R L and online stuff,

but

Yeah,

that's a whole story in itself too.

And I'll get into like how I kind of met some of the people from L T N and stuff, but like very early on. Like everyone was calling me Frost, like in

person,

I was like, dude,

that's so weird. Please stop

And then

it was just a learning process of like, I don't care anymore to the point where on stream when new people pop in, like my whole spiel, I'll give this stuff and then I'll say like, my name's Luke or Frost.

You could call me. Either of those. I don't care anymore.

Well, that's a great place to start. Let's start out,

which

is who are you? Who are you? And then where are you currently? I like to ask this question, both like physically where are you, but also where are you on the interwebs? What places are you most active? So who are you and where are you?

Yeah. So, like I just said, my name is Luke or

Frostbite

four on the internet. I am, I'm all over the place, so physically I'm like in the Midwest like right outside Louisville, Kentucky that is the Midwest, not the South. If you ask

anyone

In this area I stream on Twitch, I'm on Twitter, all these places.

I'm a full-time i r l, events coordinator for Love, thy Nerd and a streamer on their Twitch page, as well as just doing my own stuff.

Awesome.

Well, the

to

this next question is almost always mixing pot. It's always potpourri. It's always, I'm

a little bit

little bit of everything. Yeah. But I'm changing the question a little bit for everybody to say. If you had to s what is the main flavor

Of, of nerd that you are mm-hmm. If somebody had to pick out one particular flavor from the Nerd Soup that is Luke, what would be that?

Whatever. Yeah.

Well,

I have it's funny you just specifically point that out because I have several things written down, but I'd say my biggest fandom is probably video games. That's

kind of

what I just remember growing up with all sorts of different video games. I'll go into this a little bit later, but I had like, you know, a game boy very early on.

We got a console, like a old console. We were like late to the party. But like my high school years, I just remember like Xbox land parties and all sorts of stuff. So definitely, and that's what I do on the internet. I talk people about video games and play video games on the internet with people.

But closely followed behind that. I'm, you know, super into movies, tv, board games,

that

sort of thing.

Well, let's dive into those childhood origins.

let's

dive into, okay, what did it look like to very first become a nerd? I think wh when did you first discover yeah, that maybe

you were a

nerdy

type.

My first, like I said, my first console was a Game Boy Pocket, and it was a it was the translucent purple, like very nineties Game Boy Pocket. And I loved it. I actually got a kit for my Nintendo Switch, my Joycons. I swapped out the case just the boring gray case for Translucent Purple, kind of as a throwback to my first console.

So constant reminder there of where I got my

origin, of

being a nerd a gamer. But my first TV console was the original PlayStation, not even like the brick one, not even the like PlayStation one that has all the nice rounded corners

and all of that. Right.

But I'm pretty sure we got it like right when the, like PlayStation two was dropping or it was like right around the corner.

At the very least because my parents bought it used from a friend with like a ton

of games.

But I just remember playing all like these weird IP games that my parents would get. Like, not weird, but you know, not any like mainstream when people are like, oh, what do you think? What game do you think of when you think of the PlayStation?

It, we were like playing like Scooby-Doo, Tom and Jerry, like Star Wars episode one

like

Phantom Menace video game. Not anything like mainstream. But that's what I remember

And this was very much like the family console. I'm taking it, right?

Yeah.

This was like what y'all played together.

What would've been your first console that was like, this is mine and you gotta ask permission to play it? What would that have

been? Oh, it was

like, I mean besides like my Game

Boy, right?

or

I mean, probably.

like,

Probably our game cube or like, we got a

Game Cube.

And that was like the first console that was like, I had one of those tiny like, C R t, like D V D combo, like TVs that were like, I don't know,

20

inches maybe, maybe less

in my

room. And I had that like plugged in there and I'd play like, you know, me and my brother would play all the time, but that was like in my room.

I could, you know, play that whenever I wanted to.

Yeah, no, for most of us, we tend to have a kind of separate life between our faith and what we grew up in, in the church.

Maybe you did go to church, maybe went

youth

group, maybe whatever that looked like, Uhhuh. But typically we didn't see the two blend, whereas now it's kind of commonplace to have a consult in the youth room at the church or whatever it may be. Yeah. But growing up, that wasn't really the case, so Right. Where did you first find that intersection between those two worlds? And maybe you weren't, didn't grow up in a faith

background,

so I don't make any assumptions there either, but what was that discovery like?

well, I definitely did grow up with a faith background. And it was

it

was like very commonly taught that like, you know, when you grow up you put away childish things. And some of those childish things are things like video games and all these like, nerdy things. And I was definitely taught that but it

it was

by the time I

I was

off

my

own, you know, I wasn't thinking like that.

I definitely kind of like dug into, you know, scripture and developed that on my own and well through other, like

better faith or like better

I would say better churches that I've been a part of realizing like,

that's

not necessarily the case. There's a good balance that you can find. More on that later.

But there was a point where it was actually the year after college where I was off on my own, you know, like I had a job, I didn't have school anymore. I could do whatever the heck I wanted, . And I played a

a lot of video

games, specifically Destiny, when it first dropped. There was, you know, you've seen it played, I don't know if you've actually played it yourself, but it is a very grindy game

and you

can spend just hours a day each day.

And that's what I was doing. I was playing a lot of that. I was kind of isolating myself from people because I'm like, oh, I gotta

squeeze these

three raids in today

Right.

and spend, you know, like six hours just doing that. And you know, there's opportunities to be able to do that with community, but I was just, you know, looking l f G groups, like just trying to find people to crank it out quick just so I could get all my

looped.

So it

came to the point where it's like it was hurting my relationships. It was hurting my community. And I was at the point where I'm like, I just need to throw all this stuff

away

because it's taking too much time. And that was from my upbringing of like, you know, if something's too much, like you throw it away,

Sure.

it's like you don't try to sell it

it's of the devil, it's burn it.

And I was like ready to do that. But through

some really good counseling and

through my relationships we, like I was talking about or like was told there's a way to redeem that time. You know, you don't have to be alone in that. Like, it's not necessarily a bad thing, you know, but like God can redeem that for good and like use it for him.

And so I, from then on, I.

I was just

looking into how to use that to connect with people instead of like, isolate myself away. And so

thankfully

it's not, I would say it's not that difficult to do with, you know, just online multiplayers now. And especially like, this is kind of when I discovered Twitch and like the YouTube content creation side of things.

So not only did I start using that in my local community of like, at the time, like me and my roommate, we used that to

connect and we played Destiny

We had our two TVs side by side in our apartment and would play together. But then that's when I started to look into like, what is, you know, how can I meet other people?

How can I reach people through like Twitch and YouTube and stuff? And I I started that pretty early on. It didn't go too far because just a lot of life changes. But

yeah,

Just that's kind of where it clicked of, Hey, I can use this to redeem the time and not and use it for good instead of just to shut myself away from other people.

Yeah. So you found it a little bit in, in just

of your

own personal wrestling and struggles with these things and trying to figure out where was redemption, where was there some purpose? Mm-hmm. in

things?

are you gonna find

deeper meaning?

Yeah. And then somewhere along the way you worked your way into where

you are now.

Mm-hmm. And that is as a part of love, BYY nerd. So I'd love to hear more about how did that first kick off? Where did that connection happen? It sounds like you'd already discovered that intersection. Sure. Before Love thy nerd. But somewhere along the way

two

met. So what did that look like?

Yeah.

Yeah. So, this is a perfect place to

like

kind of pick that up because after that, after I started like trying to redeem that time of like, okay, this is right after college. So I'm trying to figure that out.

but

soon after that, I moved, got a new

new job.

I got married soon after that. So like, tons of life changes.

Mm-hmm.

I, I was just super busy. I didn't really have time to put into, to like all of this, let alone like even play video games. And

it took a natural, just like backseat for a time until, you know, I started getting back into it. I was playing with my friends online and stuff, but I wasn't really focused on like the community building side of it.

It also wasn't a distraction for me, but fast forward to the pandemic and when the world shut down I, I saw that need for community again, where it was like we had friends like meeting on Zoom,

like

just to like hang out.

Right.

And people were just like, We weren't going, you know, meeting physically in church and there was, you know, everything was closed.

Like

everyone kind of

like, locked up

at home and there was that community that need for community that people were just like, hungry for and searching for. And so, because of that I was like, I, I don't have any experience. Like I tried this in the past, but like, let me,

know,

try it again and just start streaming.

And I picked, I, at the time, I was like, man, I

really wanna

play this game, surviving Mars. It's not a super exciting game to watch, but it's like, I just wanna play it and I'm just gonna go live. So I started streaming and, you know, to my one viewer, my wife . And but it slowly started to grow and I had friends tuning in and it, that was a good time.

But then I realized you know, there was a, I could use it. For like, what I originally thought like years ago for redeeming that time and for building that positive community. Because on Twitch, if I wanted to watch, like I'm into Halo, if I wanted to watch someone play Halos, like all the top streamers are like super cracked at the game.

And they are, you know, they're not necessarily family friendly or like encouraging at

at all

that more often than not they're, you know, toxic, proud, arrogant. And it just seeing that for the majority of Twitch it wa it was very hard to find someone to, that was just loving and

encouraging.

And so I'm like, ah, I want to be that person.

And so I started doing that because I'm like, I'm the only one doing

it.

Well, to my surprise, I was not the only one doing it. And I, through that I met more and more communities, more and more streamers that were. That loved Jesus and just wanted to be a safe space for people to come hang out and build community there.

And so one of those communities was lovely nerd. And like I said, it was right at the beginning of the pandemic and so they were trying to figure out the whole like, online thing as well because a big chunk, and I'll get into this, but a big chunk of L T N is to go to conventions. You know, you go to where the people are, the people who are going to conventions, , and those conventions weren't happening anymore cuz the world shut down.

And so they were like, well, where are we? We're trying to meet nerds, where are the nerds going, if not conventions. And that's on the

onlines

on different streams and stuff. And so they were just getting their start on streaming. But I

I

was able to chat with them, like found out Bubba, one of the founders of Love d Nerd was coming to the area.

So I'm like,

I

would love to meet you. And Matt, who I found out was already in the area met them pretty early on and we just, we chatted about

like our mission and

vision and values of like what we were each doing. And I found out very early on that

that

like we shared the same like passion and same vision.

And so I, I basically was just like, well, how can I help you guys? Because I'm not

in it

to get big. I'm in it to build community and share the love of Jesus. And you guys are already doing that and I feel like we could reach more people if we team up And so that's kind of how it started.

I started kind of

you a title of a nerd culture missionary. Yeah. That I know this is how you introduced yourself at the beginning. Yeah. Right? Yeah. You wanted to partner into this thing and serve as a missionary alongside of this organization, Uhhuh ,that was kind of finding it Sea legs on, on, its on its own.

So, yeah. Yeah. I'm curious to hear more about that and how that actual partnership took place from where you were Yeah. You were interested forming relationships, getting

to

know the people, and then now we're entering into a place where

you're

you're partnering.

Yeah. So I think the thing that hooked me, like, you know, the whole conversation was awesome. I'm like, I really liked you guys. They really liked me for some

reason

but the thing that like hooked me Bubba said we want to love people like Jesus did first and then earn the right to share the gospel.

And from a personal experience, I've just seen so many people just like, there's multiple ways to do it, but there like, For

the most part,

with

my upbringing

and the church that I was in, it was very much like,

like gospel

in your face, kind of shoving it down people's throats, which works for some people, it does not work for all people.

And I've seen people burn by that. But the fact that they just wanted to love people first and bring them in and not to like bamboozle 'em or anything cuz we were very open about our faith and we'd tell people Jesus loves them

all of

the time. But to be just like, Hey, come be yourself. Let's build a relationship first where you can trust me

to

the point where I can share whatever I want and you're not gonna run away from me.

Well,

my understanding of love thy nerd and game church and their mission mm-hmm. ,like you mentioned, coming out of convention culture.

Mm-hmm.

You think of Christians

at conventions Yeah. You don't picture them inside the gaming halls. Mm-hmm. ,you picture them right outside of the gaming halls. Right. Screaming into a megaphone. Right. Exactly. And so of all people that's in this position. Yeah. I'm sure that Bubba and the other founding members of L T N and the members of Game Church before that mm-hmm. they have a real perception on how toxic yes. That delivery of the gospel can be. Yeah. And so that's probably an important mission for them for that reason

as well. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's one side of it too, is the, like, love thy nerd is we want

be

that bridge between church culture and nerd culture. And it goes, a bridge goes both ways. So we want to approach nerds and be like, Hey, I don't know if you have a, like a faith background or not, but like, more often than not, people have been burned by the church at some point.

And

whether that sets them up. So like from a personal

personal experience,

you know, from my

upbringing,

I don't

agree with

a lot of stuff that I was taught like in the church, but I didn't let.

like,

I feel like I

out

of that well and was able to learn from that experience and build my own beliefs based off

Of scripture and just recent teachings.

But for some people similar background, it, that just shuts them completely off to the gospel and they want nothing to do with it. And so we can come in and be like, Hey,

we

are not like those guys outside of this convention with signs and screaming into a megaphone. We just want like, let's sit down and play a game.

Like, I'm not even gonna mention anything. Like you're gonna kind of discover that I'm a Christian as we, as things unfold and like as you're asking like why I'm different or like why I'm even at this convention. And so that, that is just part of us being nerd culture, missionaries of being able to go, like I said, We have a calling to reach nerds and we have a unique opportunity because we are nerds there often when people think

of

missionaries, I think we just think, oh, you're going overseas and reaching an unreached people group or reaching a, like a foreign culture. But we have that unique opportunity where it's like, no, we're in that culture and like that's where we're called to. And so we don't have to like learn another language.

We speak nerd already. And we can reach those people. And I think

The idea of people that people have of missionaries is like going to those foreign countries. Well, order to do that, it's like you have to like spend years learning a language, learning the culture, make sure you're not offending like anyone in that culture.

And the end goal is to be able to train up people to be able

to,

like, from that culture, reach their own people, right? And so it's like they're almost

putting

all of that work in to go overseas to then train up people to replace them basically. If it's like a healthy like mission, like I feel like that's like, I think it's valid.

But,

and people are definitely called to do that. And I love that. I have many friends that are missionaries overseas, but we, like I said, have that unique opportunity where we don't have to go through all of that. And we're reaching a people group that more often than not, people just don't know really exists.

And so, I think that's why we have that just unique

opportunity.

To not only reach those people, reach nerds, love nerds and nerd culture, but kind of create awareness about it.

Yeah. So I've had several of these conversations now and I've met with a lot of people that are doing online ministry in this way.

Mm-hmm.

and

they all kind of approach it with the same humble spirit that you are, where,

I don't know

if you would even self de define yourself as being a pastor. This is originally

gonna be

like nerdy pastors. Sure. But most people are like, oh no, I'm not a pastor. Oh yeah. Oh no. This is just me.

And that's fine. I'm not gonna like, make anybody call themselves a pastor . But I think that's an interesting piece of humility is like yeah. Where I'm finding that more and more of these people that are doing pastoral work Yeah. That aren't. Seeing themselves in this way they're seeing themselves mm-hmm. in that light. And so I, I would love to hear more about your particular call because the truth is like, we all think the pastor is

is one thing.

But

the truth

Is that every pastor does a little bit of different stuff, right. And where they go, it's so circumstantial and so based on the scenario that

they're

in.

So for you specifically in Love by Nerd what do you understand your call as a missionary? You know, how is it different from Bubba? Yeah. How is it different? Yeah. From, you know, insert other l t n member here. Yeah. What makes you a missionary here?

Well, like the way you phrase that is I feel like is really important because we each have, like all of us in this space have the

desire to share the gospel.

,and there

is, I think we can all agree there's one gospel that we, we can all share to point people

to

truth.

truth

and.

our unique calling is all completely different.

And so,

But we're all working towards the same thing. And so a thing I love

repeat

is like, Hey, we're on the same team. We're all working together. This is not a competition. You are like, your content is not.

like,

not Christian enough does

like not exist because we each have our own calling. And so

my specific

calling I believe goes back to that like redeeming the time of like, I, the thing that got its hook in me early on was I wanted to build that

I

wanted to love people. I

want

to love people like as Jesus would and earn that right to share the gospel. And

so that

looks like me as simple as like just streaming and being welcoming to people and building that community

of people coming in where

we share

the same

love and

like

Just can talk about the same things.

And so, people that hop into your stream, , that looks like you talking about anime and the different game, like indie games that you're playing for me. Like people

are hopping

in and they're, we're talking about destiny and halo and tabletop games.

And

it's that unique opportunity to be yourself and relate it to like, what I believe and what I wanna share and my mission there.

And so just being able to create like a positive and welcoming community on the internet where the internet is such a dark place and it's easy to, it's easy to hide behind a mask and be negative all the time. And people do that all the time. I'm sure you've experienced that with people coming in, in your chat or mods exist for a reason, to kind of just like put, try to put those at bay.

But

I think speaking of being yourself and of discerning where to kind of head forward. So one of the first decisions we made as Checkpoint was that we were gonna stream as Checkpoint Church. Yeah. You know,

There were a

lot

of options on the table, right. We could have streamed as just Checkpoint

Checkpoint

community.

Mm-hmm. or as nerd Pastor Na, or we could have done a lot of different things there, but I chose No. Yeah. We're gonna be super upfront and say Checkpoint Church. Mm-hmm.

day one.

Yeah. Uh, And we're gonna let people know this is a church presence. Mm-hmm. This is a community that is a church. I am a pastor.

We're gonna be as upfront as we can. But then over on TikTok, on the other hand that's more of a personable platform. Mm-hmm. And so Checkpoint Church doesn't even have a TikTok account. I have a TikTok account that I use for sometimes checkpoint church promotion. There's a difference between who is leading

forum, who's

being the one outspoken and who's being the presence.

You have the unique opportunity that you are both , you have streams that you do for love by nerd. Yeah. And then you also have streams that you do as frostbite four. So I would love to talk more about that distinction. Yeah. If there is one. And how you maintain

Sense of boundaries or connection between your two Very yeah.

You know, different and distinct streaming platforms.

Yeah, so

I, I

think it's really important to have, so we have the Love Nine Nerd Voice, so, like Love Nine Nerd on Twitter and on our website. And Like, everywhere you see Lovey Nerd, it's, there's six of us, like on full-time staff, and then there's multiple people that we write that have written for like our website with different articles and stuff.

But it has one like Common Voice but it's made up of multiple voices. And

I think

that's super valuable because again, it goes back to like, not one organization is going to reach everyone. The vibe that Checkpoint Church has is going to reach a specific people group, and the vibe that love thy Nerd has on our stream is gonna reach a completely different one.

And so it's important to know that we're, you know, not one organization, not one streamer, is the answer to like, reach all the people. The internet of Twitch or any specific platform, but we all have a unique voice that is going to reach someone else. No matter if you have, you know, no matter if you're a partner on Twitch and have like hundreds of viewers, or if you have like a, a constant three viewers and

you're

streaming on Twitch, those three people are not going to jump into a stream with like hundreds, thousands of people.

They're gonna, they love that tiny community of like, I feel like I have that, that not like the undivided attention of this streamer because he's talking to three people. That is just as valuable as someone that's got, you know, tons of viewers. And so, because they're reaching those three people that the big guy's not gonna reach.

And so I've, I find that value of streaming on my own, having my own voice, even though it lines. It lines up with L

t N

and what we believe. But it is just completely different. I'm a little bit more competitive. I'm like, when we're playing Halo or something. Or like, I'm diving into the nitty gritty of that.

Where on L T N I'm, it's more so just like we're playing silly games like Power Wash

sim or something. Mm-hmm.

and just like, you know, being open to anyone and the game. I think the common thing through that though is the game always comes second. I'm always like, if I feel like I'm being distracted by chat and I'm like focusing on a game, like that's where I'm like doing it wrong.

And so I think that's the common thing through that. But yeah, to me, like l t n one is not like, love nerd is not the answer

to

all. Like we can't it. It's not everyone needs to tune in to love that nerd. It's, we can't be live 24 7. And so it's setting other people up with other separate voices, myself included, for success.

And so if we can't be live, we try to point people, Hey, checkpoints live. Hey, frost is live. Hey tyranny, our community manager, she streams, she's live radio Matt, our radio station manager and content, you know,

guy

like, he's live, go watch him. I've got, I'm like lurking in a friend of mine, another like nerd pastor the lift or mark.

I've got him like there's several people with, like I said, that all have the. Mission of sharing the gospel just with different voices. And we want to set people up for that. So that's why I think it's very important to have that organization that's gonna make your kind of like big connections, but then have your smaller voices to go out and spread the

word that way.

way.

So let's expand on that a little bit. Mm-hmm. ,so we've talked about in-house, right? Mm-hmm. ,you have your team of six, you have your writers, you have people that are mm-hmm. very much affiliated with L T N, but then you also have other people that you

And

that's something that I've commented on before.

Mm-hmm. that I think is the best part of Twitch. Mm-hmm. Is the collaborative nature, the ability to raid the ability to lift up other voices in that way, and to put recommended streamers and to host. That's a big thing. So what does that look like as far as l t n connecting mm-hmm. so many groups together, because I think that's something that, that l tn really does in an exemplary way.

You have the unique scenario of at least how it's been explained to me. LTN doesn't seem themselves as a church, right? Yeah. And so you don't have that kind of, not even baggage, but you don't have that kind of structure that you're working towards, so you're able to be really connectional.

Mm-hmm. .So is that important to L T n, I guess is the first question. Yeah. And then what do you do in order to maintain that sense of connection outside of your own in-house structure?

Yeah. So I think it's important to state

that

like love th nerd is not like, we're not trying to make it big. Like obviously we're like, if one day we could hit Twitch partner, that'd be

If

one day we could have like, you know,

on

on thousands of people in our community, like, great. But like, that is not, our goal is not to just

like grow

it is to train other people up to do the same thing that we're doing.

And that's not necessarily, like, for example, not necessarily like, Hey, this is how you put on a game night.

Or of like having the like LTN stamp of approval. It's not,

how to

create a lovely nerd game night. It is how to make a com community game night. We put on a game night here locally, me and a buddy of mine, and it's not the, like my home church is sojourn.

It's not the Sojourn

Game night. It's not the love thy nerd game night. It's just community game night, super generic

we want everyone to feel

invited. And so what that looks like on the

the internet is

We'll create different resources to train up people and how to do something. So a year, about a year ago we did actually, probably exactly

year ago,

we did a Minecraft league.

And so if you've ever seen like Lego Masters or anything like that, basically people put teams together. We incur each week we gave them like a theme like, Hey, here's like food just. Take that word and do something cool in Minecraft. And so like each week there was a panel of judges it brought community together.

There

was

A winner at the end of it all. They won a cool prize, but we took everything we learned from that and

we put

it in a resource and we put it on our website to be like, here's how you could do it in your local community or your online community, or whatever. And it's absolutely free. All goes back to us not being at the center of this. It's like we realize we can't do it alone and we want to multiply, not necessarily grow, but we want to multiply and we want you to be able to repeat it in your community, whether that's online or locally. And we want to help train up others to love and serve nerd culture

well.

Yeah. So

It's through resourcing, it's through equipping and mm-hmm. providing for other organizations. Yeah. But I'm curious, as you, as the team kind of discerns this right. As they move forward, and this is kind of

an adapted

question

from

one of our community members, Kung Fu Carl okay. What shapes that as you discern it, because no doubt you you're a big enough organization at

this

point.

You have tons of possibilities, right? But you only have so much time. Right? And so what allows you to take that step forward towards saying community game night is what we're gonna do next. Okay. What are the either the goals or the milestones or the things

you're looking out for to know,

This is what we're doing

next.

Yeah. So honestly, a good

good example

of that is back to like where I first, you know, set foot into L T N and started helping. There is Love that nerd was, we were going to conventions, we were, there was like five or six conventions, maybe more that we were going to, and then all of a sudden that is gone.

Like it conventions do not exist. And it's just like, what are we doing? And it's that being just like adaptive of like, okay, where are the nerds? Like what can we do in the meantime until stuff comes back? And that was, oh, hey, let's,

you know,

let's go online and like figure out what that is. And so then that's kind of how I discovered L T N.

And I was just kind of looking at the needs of like, okay, how, you know, what does this look like? And so now I'm fully behind L T n, but I'm a like a volunteer and so it looked like me mostly as like a consultant almost, of like, okay, you guys are on you guys are on YouTube right now, but. Like Twitch has this more community focused, like you were saying,

like it

has raids, it has emotes, it like has all of this stuff.

I feel

like

you guys should move to Twitch because it's just more community and like, if we're talking about going to where the nerds are of like, and the gamers are they're not at conventions right now, so they're online, but we're at online. I firmly believe they're on Twitch. And so this was before like Tim, the Tap Man and all, and like YouTube really started making their move.

I still to this day think Twitch is the better place just to form community.

But

anyway, that story is all just kind of like we see the current needs and we adapt and we kind of depend on people to like see that need

and.

Like I said, there's six of us on full-time staff. We can't do everything. We can't be in every corner of the the internet alone.<