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.

And so we have people, like I'm saying, our our website, our articles are all written by volunteers basically that see something you know, like they sit down and they see a theme through Stranger Things and they're like, oh, there's like

actually

some like biblical truths and like a Christian's perspective that we can watch this.

And so I'm gonna type this out and send it in and like, we'll have, we have a team of editors that go through, again, volunteers that like go through it make sure it's, you

know,

the love I nerd voice and, you know, not speaking heresy or anything . And then we'll publish that and that, that's our community kind of just seeing a need and filling that need.

And

so that's kind

of how we've operated for a while. But recently we've had we put a team together like a collaborative like intensive

round table

group that is the unofficial title . But we put a team together that

consisted

of some of our big like partners and our like just community members that have been around for a while and that like love what we do as well as staff.

And we do have like a board. And so some board members they all teamed up and kind of saw, kind of just sat

down and

said, all right, this is where we see L T N in five years. How do we get. and it

was like

over several months. And just saying like, okay, this is where we see L T N and kind of creating that roadmap.

And so just some of the highlights from that, that we would love to see L T N grow into are we would love to get plugged into have l LTN at 20 conventions in

like

five years. So like throughout the year that's 20 conventions. I am moving into a,

in,

into the, like i r l event lead. I cannot go to 20 conventions.

So part of that looks like us figuring out how can we train up people to lead teams. So it's like, who know, like maybe that could look like a checkpoint church team, you know, where someone from your community or like yourself is like, Hey, there's this convention that's close by that we can form a team and we could visit and just love nerds like every year that this rolls by.

So currently this year we had three before the pandemic, we had I think up to six, maybe seven, maybe more . But yeah, at the end of five years, like is it possible to get plugged into 20 different ones? Another thing we'd love to see is L T N headquarters, like physical headquarters where we have office space because like.

we're all online. You know how difficult it is to communicate and to like work on things online, but we'd love to see ourselves come together at a physical location, but then using that bigger than just a office space, but like as a community center, almost like a nerd community center where we're, it's like a co-working space.

People can come in and work together and build community in that way. We have a place to host game nights and to like train up people like in a physical location. We'd also, we have the dream of going international. We

have a,

being on the internet, it's so easy for

for people

to, to tune in from like overseas.

Like I'm streaming at 9:00 AM and people are like, all right, I've got a head to bed. It's like 1:00 AM

and I'm

like, dude, why are you up ? But we'd love to see like l t n Local Go International. And again it's not like us. Seeing us, we need to be in like every area, but like people love what we do and they want to see that in their local community, and like, how can we do that and train people up to be able to start that wherever they are.

I

could go on. There's a lot of different things, but it all came out of like this group that is passionate about what we do and where they see us going. And it was really encouraging to see people just like, I think the only place they didn't see us was the moon

think

awesome.

there,

are so many questions that are like burning through my mind as I think now.

Yeah.

The possibilities and the potential and.

I think it's important to have structures of accountability within something. Yeah. Checkpoint is affiliated with the United Methodist Church. We're a church plant at the u c, so we have that like umbrella structure. But

even

then, this is an umbrella structure of people that don't really understand exactly what we are doing.

Right? Yeah. Like,

there are

some people that are like more on board than others, but it sounds like what you got and what you've guys have come up with over the past year is people that not only care about lovely nerd, but also people that are in that world, and so they're actually able to discern like a viable future mm-hmm.

And to have their fingers on the pulse of what to do as you move forward with whatever steps you take. And so mm-hmm. Yeah. I think that we'll have to, as you guys continue to work on that, I'd love to learn more about what that looks like. Mm-hmm. How that's working out.

But I'm intrigued by the concept and by the possibilities as we continue to delve into these worlds structure building in these things that literally have no structure.

Yeah.

But I think that's really fascinating. I wanna know more about you, particularly within this mm-hmm. .So what does

does

it look like to be a member of the team, a missionary here mm-hmm. here. Yeah. With reference to the future of L T N. Yeah. I know you guys just went really recently as of this recording, but it'll have been a couple months whenever it comes out. You guys have just been through some restructuring. You had some people that, that had to take a step away.

You've had some people that have had to take steps up, and I know your role, as you just mentioned with I R L has kind of taken a shift. Yeah. So, where do you see your future? Is it kind of amorphous like that it just kind of adapts? Yeah. Or do you see it as being like, no, I have my goals that I want for myself at L T N?

Sure. What does that look like?

Yeah. Yeah, as you stated, we, there was a little bit of restructuring, not any, like, not because of any bad reason, but because we are growing like our, we have communities on Facebook and Discord that are just like growing exponentially, like thousands of members on each . And it's like, There's six staff members.

So it's how do you keep up with that, you know? And so there was definitely some restructuring just set in place in order to try to prevent burnout. And so if you've

you've been

a,

like

a part of ministry, it sounds like a big chunk of your life.

Mm-hmm. and it's

I'm sure you've seen it just as many times as

I have of

just that, that burnout of that ministry is because it's, you have that desire and you genuinely love it, but it's, it takes up a lot of your time.

And so we want to take care of,

people

in the organization, like the full-time members, but like even our volunteers and and just the people in the community and we don't wanna burn people out. And so part of that restructure was like, now we've gotta.

like,

We have to have a thing set to where we can take time off

and we can

unplug and all of that.

And we have to like divvy up the responsibilities in a way that it's not any one person like doing a million

things,

And so, for me that specifically looks like, well Bubba moved up into the c e o position and so he's got a lot of responsibilities added on because of that. And so one of his past responsibilities was just

like.

i r l, we call it i r l, but just like in-person li like events.

And that looks like us going to these different conventions get like simple things like getting us there, getting us

to

volunteer in booths. Like, that's

I didn't really

go into, like when we go to these conventions, we're not just going and

saying

hi to people. Like we're volunteering in publishers and developers like booths and running demos for them and just loving and serving them with their immediate needs.

Which

is

super

cool, unique opportunity. But someone needs to like, get a, you know, get our foot in the door there and get us signed up for stuff like that. Getting a Airbnb and just coordinating all of that. And so doing that several times throughout the year that, you know, someone needs to specifically have their hand in that.

We have love nine Nerd LTN Con coming up, which you are gonna have a part in that and we have a ton of people coming to that to just bring people together to build community of.

I mean, we talked about that like connection online, but being able to bring like internet friends together and build community in that way.

And again, to train up people to love and serve their nerdy neighbor as well. Like, that's why we put this on. It's more of a conference than a convention where we have people we're flying people out to, to give keynotes and breakouts on how to love people in different aspects of nerdom, and being able to put something like that on and bring people together you know, it, it's such a unique opportunity.

So I'll be doing that as well as just what other opportunities do we have? Can we do like a lot more smaller meetups in different pockets of community and like bring people in that way? Can we like. We're it mostly in the tabletop scene right now, but can we go to like eSports events and love and serve people in that way?

Can we go to more of these like video game events like E three or some of the other pacs is?

That's

kind of where I'm moving into is kind of navigating these I r L events

And how can we love and serve people in those

area.

Yeah,

I think that's great. I'm excited for the future of l t n as you guys continue to grow and develop and figure out what the future looks like.

Yeah. But I wanna ask, you know, just a couple questions left of you

as a missionary,

Uhhuh uh, in your role and in your

position and in

your specific call. Okay. The answer to this question is always yes, but

I

always leave it open because maybe somebody's gonna be the one to push back on it.

But do you believe that God can use fandoms for good? And if so, I'd love to hear just an encouraging, like, opportunity that you've seen opened or a success story as a missionary, or a time that you've seen God

use these

fandoms for

good.

So yes, the answer is yes,

it always is

Yeah. And I have it in all caps with the exclamation point.

But it, yeah it just comes down to that connection over

over

A, a video game or a board game where we're gathering together and people like that is our

first

connection of like, Hey, we share this common bond of like this,

whatever

it is. Like

whether it's a

board game,

video game. A TV show we have that connection where we could just talk for hours and then it always brings up an opportunity to like relate it back, especially with kind of what I was saying of a lot of

these

like shows and movies coming out, whatever media, whatever it is in pop culture, you can always, you always have an opportunity to look at it from a Christian perspective and being able to share that experience.

And so, like one of our articles on our website is Can Christians play Dungeons and

Dragons

And

you like recently have had the opportunity to do like a viewing of the Satanic panic and the battle for the Imagination from Derek White. And so like that's

still a thing that is still a thing

today that people believe like.

Dungeons and Dragons is evil and satanic. And that's something that we can use to be like, we can actually look at this through like a Christian lens and pull like biblical truths and like turn something that you think is evil into something that we can use as a sermon illustration. And so I'm encouraged to see people like yourself of taking pop culture and like recent things and being able to pull biblical truths out of it and turn that into a sermon with like scripture behind it,

And I'm encouraged to

to

people like doing that in short-term

content,

like on TikTok and stuff

of like,

Hey, I was watching this and I thought of I thought of this biblical truth because whatever, and like, just relate it back to, and that captures people because it's something that they love.

Whether, whatever it is in pop culture. And so, specifically, oh man, I have a ton of stories.

I

guess one time I was I was trying to convince, not convince, but

like,

you've had this

experience

of, hey I'm a pastor on the internet, or like myself, I'm a missionary on the internet or in nerd culture.

And people are

like,

how does that work? And it's just like, this one guy I was talking to, I was like, at the time, what was the show? It was one of the Marvel shows oh, moon Night. Like, you watching Moon

Moon Night. He's like,

oh yeah, I love moon night. And like, we just started talking about that. And then I like, I can't remember the example, but I slipped something in of just like, you know,

I see this

biblical truth and how this works.

And like I just went off on that and like made that connection with him and I was like, I just met you. And we had zero connection. You did not believe what I did, or not that he didn't believe what I did was valid, but I'm like, you were on the fence. You didn't see how that worked. But then I just brought up something nerdy that is happening right now, and I just started talking about that and we were both super into it.

We were both like predict, trying to predict the end. And then I, like, I was able to insert like a biblical truth and turn that around. And then we were talking about that and I'm like, that is what I do. That is why it's so important to connect with people first. Because if I just dove into like, Hey, I think you're a sinner, people would

walk

away

But if we can connect, we can use those experiences that we both share in our love for like pop culture. I don't think that's going anywhere. I think that's gonna, that is a valuable asset to have to connect with

people.

Yeah, well, it's kind of an interesting little fun fact. But, so I wrote for lovely nerd right at the very beginning.

Whenever we were first working through things, I got in touch

with Drew

Dixon and I was like

I would love

to write an article for lovely nerd just kind of starting this journey and encouraging anybody else that wants to get into this nerd ministry. And yeah.

so

had a little bit of a relationship there and published an article is a great experience.

Love, I mean, I've been with him since the very beginning of this thing for myself. And I sent Drew a second article on Under Tail. And it was like eight pages long , and it was basically what I

for nerdy sermons.

And I sent it to Drew and Drew sent it back and he was like, Great stuff.

Can we get it down to a page ? And I was like, oh, I don't think so. .

So

we decided not to go forward with it, but then that evolved into Yeah. What is now our nerdy sermons that we do each week. Yeah. And so it's really interesting how there's all these different models and these things that we create and the people that we reach, kinda like we've talked about repeatedly throughout this conversation of there are people that lovely nerd is gonna reach that Checkpoint Church isn't mm-hmm. then there's people that Checkpoint Church is gonna reach that love. Le Nerd isn't mm-hmm.

we're

we're gonna be able to do this work in tandem with each other. Yeah. Right. In really remarkable ways and lift each other up mm-hmm. whenever we can and other times say, Hey, not really right for what we're doing right now.

Right. Mm-hmm. .And that's the important thing to discern as we figure these things out. But as we continue to move forward as we continue to form these relationships you know, we've talked already about the connection that we're forming and the connections that Lovely Nerd has with other churches and other groups.

I'm curious to know without just considering love by Nerd's future, what do you think the future is for all of these nerdy ministries mm-hmm. for this connection of faith and fandom. Mm-hmm. And the way I like to ask this question

question is if

you could dream right? Yeah. If you could dream, where are we at in 5, 10, 20 years of this nerd ministry that's just kind of burgeoning right now?

What do you see that looking like, in the

the future?

So,

I think that

The collaborative spirit is definitely there among like believers in the twitch space, in the content creation space. I believe everyone wants to work together, and that's

a start. I

would love to see us do more together. And there's several things that we have in the works right now in order to like, help achieve that because I think especially in like a streaming space, in a video game space, it's easy to get competitive.

It's easy to see like man checkpoint, they're like really reaching the people I wanted to reach. like how

can

I get more view?

Like

there's a healthy competitiveness that is not, that's not healthy to see kind of like what other people are doing

Mm-hmm. And

wanting that. And I think it's important for us

kind

see where our strengths are and capitalize on that.

And so, people like recently people like Susie, Susie live, he's kind of got his thumb on the final fantasy, like m o things right now. And so it's if people come to L T N First Time Chatters that's an awesome new tool that Twitch has introduced recently. I can see when people are hopping in for the first time, which is highly important for a multistream like us, where like we have multiple people.

Like somebody

could

have tuned in, like while tyranny was streaming or while Matt and Bubba was

And then

they tune in with me and I think they're new.

right?

Now I can tell like if

they're new or not.

But anyway, that's a tangent.

And

but I can be like, Hey, what I usually do is like, Hey, what, like, how'd you find the stream?

What games do you like playing? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Like, I'd love to get to know you.

And

then while they're kind of typing that up, I give my whole

spiel.

I'm

I'm Luke

Frost. You could call me whatever this is love thy nerd. We're an organization that exists to love and serve our nerdy neighbors.

And I just go way into that. But then they reply like, oh, I like games. Like, you know, I'm super into anime and like, I like all these indie games. And I'm like, I know the people for you.

Like mm-hmm quick

shout out to Checkpoint Church. You should check. Like definitely stay here cuz they're, you know, you may or may not be live at the time, but I'm like, when you see them go live, you should check them out because they're into like all the same stuff you're at.

And I think that collaborative spirit of being

able

To realize that like,

okay,

anime and all of that is not, My wheelhouse. Like I, I believe I can love and serve this person to, you know, the best of my ability, but like I know other places that they'll be welcome. And being able to have that mindset of like, I don't necessarily, like, I'm not

in it to

get, you know, 75 congruent viewers so I can get Twitch partner.

I'm in it to make a difference and love and serve this person no matter like what walk of life they're in or what they're into. And I think I know someone that could serve them better. I just think that's unheard of in the Twitch community because it's, it is a little bit competitive of like, no, I want to be successful.

There is a good, healthy way to be successful to reach more people. But what does that look like? And so recently I'm looking at it right now, behind you is that trophy of recently

I've had kind of this

yep, there it is.

The crown, right, hidden behind your. , if you like,

I know.

I need to get it, you need to get it just right.

That it's just right on there. But.

being able to yeah. Do something like that. The community event we did, and if you are listening to this and you have no idea what we're talking about, I had the opportunity to just put together this ultimate community showdown where we got several like-minded communities together, including Checkpoint Church, including Susie and Aki and God Squad and like so many other communities.

We pulled them all together and we just had some stupid fun in Fall guys where all almost 60

people from all these different

communities are just like rushing to get the crown at the end of

you know,

crazy wipe out, like map . And it was something super silly, but it really

people

together to like meet.

Other communities, and I've seen people come back from other communities like Checkpoint and Love that nerd right now have a lot of overlap to where there's people that are tuning into to both communities. I've got people that are from the luxe community that are coming over and there's that overlap and that sense of camaraderie now to where it's like, no, there's other people out there. And it's not like we're trying

steal

views or anything, but it's that no, we're not alone and we've realized that we can't be live 24 7. Not one of

us can

be live 24 7. It's just that is impossible.

And

so being able to work together to where we

almost

achieve being live 24 7 of like just spread across multiple communities that, that's super, super important to me and I would love to, to dig into that more and make more of that happen.

Man

I've been talking on that for a minute. I can't remember what the question

Well, it was just on

the future of faith and fandom and pop culture and where we're headed from here. Yeah. But I think that's, I think that what you've said is important. I have so little have already aired by the time that this podcast comes out, but it's not been aired live as the time of us talking here.

Sure. But I had Jake on the last episode. Okay. And Jake was talking about how he's got this like, intimidation factor of, he's at like 35 viewers right now. Mm-hmm. .And

doesn't

really want more. Yeah. Like of course

he

wants more. Yeah. But he

like,

like, this is as many as I'm comfortable juggling. Yeah. And like he's had the 70 viewers at a time where he is been rated a bunch and he's got so many people, but it's like, that's too much. Yeah. Um,

From a

pastoral aspect, I've always heard the magic number is one 50. But that's not a live stream. That's like in a congregation. Mm-hmm. .You don't want more than 150 people in your congregation because then you need to hire somebody

somebody else

cuz it's unmanageable.

Sure. For you as a pastor to deal with more than 150 people. And so there are these magic numbers that we've come up with, and there's this tension that we come up with. And the reality is like the internet is

so massive,

Yeah. That we just can't possibly

imagine a world

where we're able to reach as many people as we dream of reaching.

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. On our own. It's just not doable. And so being able to work

and to

collaborate and to build one another up and to encourage one another that's the body of Christ. Right. That's the thing that we're working towards at the end of the day. Yeah. And

yeah.

I totally agree.

I totally affirm what you see as being the

I'm a big fan of the connection. Mm-hmm. and a big fan of us moving forward into a deeper sense of Yeah. And support.

Yeah. Well, that's another

nerdy

Sermon you could do is the Body of Christ. Me and some buddies are, we're talking about like how that looks in the nerd area, and we talk about like mega

and how, you know, like

each part comes together to form the mega.

sword.

So that's free. You could take that.

That's

a free one. I'll take that one with me. There you go. Yeah. Once the Meor comes back into the

We'll figure it out with the next Power Rangers movie

with

Ducker

Montgomery. I

it

think it ever

left. I

don't think it ever left.

All right.

Well, one last question to yeah. To close us out here. I think it's been a great conversation. Again, I do appreciate your time, but I like to always close these out, even though it dates these episodes horribly, I still like it because at the very least, somebody will get a recommendation that maybe they missed whenever it came out.

Sure. So our final question always is what are you watching? What are you playing

what are you

reading right now? And before you ask, reading does count audio books. If you're an audiobook listener that is definitely verified reading. Yeah.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna start with the reading because you and I have had this conversation before. You read like, what, six books at a time?

Yep. And then the Bible. So seven total.

so seven. Okay. I threw

out

six, just off the top of my head as a random number, but I got pretty close. I don't, I'm not a

reader like.

I've tried audio

I listen

to a lot of podcasts now.

Mm-hmm.

But,

The one book I'm reading on or reading through is really, really slow is the like five levels of leadership. We're reading through that together as l t n to kind of just like, you know, Bring us together. Also, how can we lead each other well

lead our community well.

So that like, and when I say slow, I mean like very slow.

I'm pretty sure I started that at the beginning of the year

and

I'm not

done with it.

And then thank, like, I'm just super thankful for my church that has like a

Like

a reading program that kind of like, we're able to read and it kind of sets us up. It's not the scripture that we're gonna dive into necessarily for like the Sunday sermon coming up, but it goes

hand in

and it's really good to reflect and this is another good way to like connect with people.

But like our community, like our local community here, there's guys that we meet every Friday to just like chat and that's it. But we also, we started.

The Southern

Indiana Community Group or a Sikh group, s i c where we're talking everything. Like there's nerdy stuff in there. We're talking board games and stuff.

There's a wood shop section where we're talking about like wood projects we're working on and building, but there's a section where it's like, Hey, I did today's, like daily reading. Like

this is kind of

how we can share that and build each

one another

So I find that super valuable. And then the le the less valuable things.

What am I watching and playing?

I'm a big fan of Bob's Burgers and I'm

through Bob's

Burgers again cuz it's just fun and it's easy to like turn on at night and

unwind.

Don't recommend

it for everyone, but it's just a ton of fun. And.

and

it got an awkward start. Like,

it was trying to be like family guy in these other things, but like, along like season two, maybe season three, it just became like a family comedy.

Mm-hmm. and

it's all these like family, like inside jokes of like just weird families. It's hilarious. Also watching She Hulk, that's the new thing that's going on

right

now.

I could

go on a tangent of that. I love the content. I

love

this story. It is fantastic. I think it's hilarious. I just want movies again.

Yeah, I'm kind of getting tired

of shows. But that's a whole thing. Matt, one of the founders of L t n disagrees with me. We argued that a little bit about it last night. Playing Destiny Two Season of Plunder. It's a new season that came out this week that we're recording this. Easiest way to describe it is space pirates, and it's awesome.

There's like

an, a

seasonal activity that you're literally, you're on your space pirate ship in space, and you, you know,

raid

other space pirates and steal their loot. It's

fantastic.

And then doing a

lot of

halo, playing a lot of halo. Get diving into the ranked this season trying to get a

little bit sweaty off

stream.

And then onstream every Friday night, we try to put on like Halo community events, bringing people in to play Halo. Couple people from Checkpoint have been playing with us like

trombone. And we try

to make it approachable to anyone to allow people to dive into Halo even if they don't think they're any good.

Yeah. I always know to throw my FBS people over to l t n cuz I they ain't gonna get it outta me. It's not gonna happen . It's not gonna happen. If they like win a godon that allows them to pick

a game

for me to play or something, that's pretty much the only way I'm gonna play an fbs.

Ooh. So I'm gonna have

to try to win

one of those

then. Yeah. Well game, play, I'll play. I've got 'em, I've got all of 'em because I've just accumulated over the years. But we played whenever it first came out, just because I tried to play whatever's trendy and whenever Death Loop came out, oh yeah. I played that and I played like the first level and I was like, I'm miserable, you guys.

this is such an awful experience. It's a great game. It's

a fine

story. Good stuff going on. Yeah. But I was like, this is miserable for a non

non f b s person.

So I think we all have those games, like,

have you ever played the game? Like, this is an fbs, but this is kind of what it is for me. Have you ever played the game? Outer Wilds.

Yeah. Okay. Couldn't get

people.

you didn't get into it.

Try. Okay. Me neither.

Me neither. Okay. I'm glad I'm not the only one then, because like I've heard several great things about it, and the concept of it is really cool.

Like if you, like, if you play through the game once, you could log in and play it again and just go straight to the end because you're not locked behind anything. Like, like in a

a Zelda game,

it's like, oh, you need the grapple hook to get into this area. Well, in this game you could go, if you knew

what

you were doing, you could just go straight to the end and beat it and roll credits, so you're only locked behind information.

But because of that, there's a lot of reading and I hate reading as

I'm a fan of reading as we've said, but what I'm not

a fan of

is of like, Linear stuff, so I really want to explore. Sure.

And so

my problem with Outer Wilds was I played it

and I explored,

and I totally missed the first like milestone that you were supposed to do. Sure. And so I was just, I was going to a bunch of planets and learning Yeah. And trying to figure things out. And I was like, no, this makes these sense. Yeah. And somebody in my, and somebody in my chat was like, it's cuz you

missed

the like tutorial. And I'm like, well, I don't wanna play their

way.

I wanna play my way. Yeah. And so that's where I

get, it's funny cause that

is a game that rewards you for exploring. But yeah,

my

patie, I guess I, I'm too good at it. I'm too good at exploring. I

too trying to play it. I was trying to play it all like fallout and really just go wherever I wanted to and let the story tell itself. Whereas it was like, we'll let you do that, but you need to start at a certain spot.

So I, I was stubborn. I guess I'll go back and play it eventually. It's got too high of a magnetic score for,

wanna

wanna finish

it because I'm like, I'm also like working through a backlog of games that I've like, and that's been on my backlog, so I wanna beat it, but like,

I'm

not gonna do it on stream cuz that, I think that's important for people, like if you're getting into streaming, , you wanna play games that you're enjoying.

If you're not enjoying a game, your chat is going to know it. So it's like, that's why you don't play FBS games because you would not enjoy it and people would

not, it's fun. Enjoy watching you

not enjoy from a very short amount of time.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think

it's gold content for like 30 minutes of you just like complaining, but, or like me complaining about something.

But nobody wants to like, see someone suffer through something they don't wanna play. But I do want to finish it just so I can, cuz I'm also stubborn and I want to add it. Like,

put

so much time into it, I want to add it to my list of games beat this year.

Totally.

But yeah I'm, I can't do it on stream cuz I

complained

the whole time.

Wow. That's great. So, I'm watching the same thing as you are watching She Hulk as well. Yeah. And I'm enjoying it well enough.

I still will never, I'm never gonna let this show live it down. I haven't seen anybody on the internet talking about it, but I'm gonna talk about it until it becomes a thing they made Hulk say bruh and nobody's addressing it. Hulk says, bruh, in the very first episode. Yeah. Mark Ruffalo, 54 year old Mark Ruffalo said bra and I'm not letting him live that down.

That's not

just, I did, I think I saw

a meme. I think I did

see a meme.

If it's not a meme, it's gotta be a meme. I need it to be bigger.

thought that was hilarious too.

absurd. , you need to just make it

a gif and like keep posting it in all the

discords.

Yes. It's gonna be my bruh gif now, so I'm gonna be save on my phone and

I'll post that

for my bra moments.

I'm playing Cult to the Lamb and still working my way through that. I'm on the second bishop,

so I've

beat the first bishop. Still working on the second. I'm worried that it is going to require too much grinding and it's gonna take too much of my time as a dad of two. I'm running out of patience with it, but I want to beat it.

I'm stubborn, like I said, same without her wilds. I just gotta beat the games. And then I'm reading AM manga called Living Stone? It's okay. Okay. It's kind of, There are like a set number of souls in the universe and there are these rocks and they go from one person to the next. And so we play or we read the story from the perspective of these people that are able to like, see people's stones.

And I don't know, it's weird. It's kind of like men in black meets meets soul people, you know, kinda like a soul-based men and black story where they're trying to protect the universe and protect these stones. Strange, weird manga. Most mangas typically are pretty weird, but this one has been one that I got from a Manga Spice Cafe box, and so I try to read all of those anyway.

Yeah. But it's just been all right. But yeah, I will say I want to note on your reading, you said you've been reading the same book since the beginning of the year, Uhhuh. That's okay. Regardless of your pace, regardless of how you're reading or how slow or how fast or how the books you read, I think it's just good to read.

So yeah. No, no shade. No shade.

I would love to, I would love to get, I would love

to read more, whether that is actually reading something or listening to audiobooks, because there is, there's just valuable information out there. And like, I don't, it's not that I'm like, nah, I think reading's stupid.

It's just like, I don't

make it the priority that I need to make it.

So you

specifically

are an encouragement to me to be able to, you know, like eventually do that. As well as I think you were in the chat at one point where I'm like, all right guys. Like, I legit made a form that filled out a spreadsheet of like book recommendations.

And I'm like, one day I'll go look at that.

Yeah, but I r l reading is good, but reading in games, I think you think is not good.

I

don't read games. ,

I don't tho those

the heavy like dialogue games. I'm like, this isn't what I signed up for.

That's

I like tunic so much. Tu. It's another tangent. It's my game of the year. It had no reading because it was all in another language. You couldn't read it.

Yeah. It was su such an interesting game. I wanted, that's another one that's on the list

for,

you know, I'm gonna go

back and

play it. I started at least. But considering that

that it's

your gti, it makes me definitely wanna finish it up. All right. Well Luke, our final real question.

This isn't really a question, but more of just an opportunity. Yeah. Go ahead and shout out where can people find you whether it be l t n or on your own Twitch stream. Just let us know what, where can people continue to check out your stuff. It'll all be linked down below as well.

Yeah.

I'm gonna go ahead and quick. Yeah. Plug Love d

I

feel like I breezed over it cuz we've been talking about Love Dine nerd. Like everyone knows what it

already. Mm-hmm.

But for those

you who

are still listening, and don't know what Love Dine nerd is. Love Dine Nerd is an organization that exists to share the love of Jesus with nerds and nerd culture.

You've heard a lot about what we do. We stream on Twitch. We have podcasts, articles, all sorts of stuff.

I

encourage you. Go to love thy nerd.com. And just like explore we, like I said, we have articles. Nate has written an awesome article that's on there and maybe we'll be writing more stuff in the future.

You never know. But we also have podcasts I mentioned, I think I mentioned them free play podcast, which is just a bunch of nerdy talk

And then our Church

podcast

one of our, one of

my favorite podcasts. It's Bubba and his wife Anna. Just talking about, like we were talking about of like things in recent pop culture and how we can relate that, like view it with with a Christian perspective.

And super good podcast. We have d and d content. You name it, we got all sorts of stuff. So check out love dine nerd.com if you wanna find me on there. Specifically love dine nerd.com/luke or slash frost both work because again, I don't. Care what what people call me anymore. But check that out.

You'll there, you can read more about what I do. You can find more about me. There's ways you could support me, whether that's through prayer or financially or like sending me something to improve like our stream to reach more people. But you could also find me@frostbiteiv.com, frostbite four.

And there I try to keep people updated with a blog of like what I'm doing. It is very outdated. I think me writing

is

above me reading. I would rather read stuff than write

stuff

But if you want to see what I've been up to, check that out. All my socials are there too. If you go to frostbite four.com/socials but we talk about, I'm on Twitter, twitch

Facebook Discord, you name it.

All those links are there.

So

We also have, like I said earlier, LTN Con coming up if you are free and in the area

of

Louisville slash New Albany, Indiana October 14, 15 and 16. We're all gathering together to be nerds and we have

all

sorts of events. Nate is doing a jeopardy, an anime jeopardy in

some things like

that as well

as.

you just get to hang out with him and the rest of us at L T

and play

games and learn stuff.

So it's gonna be super cool. Definitely come out. Would love to have you show up at that,

I have

feeling will come out after LTN Con, but I do want, I'm gonna leave that in just to hype

it up. Okay.

And then I'll say what's the plan for next

Are you guys,

guys, have you talked about that? Is

gonna be another, is it gonna

gonna be online?

So, the idea is we would love, so we haven't been able to do this Since 2019. So 2019 we did an in-person one. It was awesome. Everyone loved it. And then Covid hit and so we moved it to online. So we did

we did it in

in person and

then two online, we're coming back in person. As of right now, it's kind of up in the air.

We wanna learn from what we did well, what we didn't do well with the in-person love diner,

t n Con.

But we would love to bring it back every year in person. And whether that looks like us doing it every fall, and then in the spring, we do like an online one, or we alternate like years. Are we gonna move it around?

I would love to do it.

it

In like different pockets of our community. So I'd love to do one on the east coast. I would love to do one in Texas. I would love to do one on the west coast or like wherever we have these pockets of our people. I would love to take it international, like we were saying in the next five years.

We have a lot of members in Canada. So, yeah, it, it's kind of up in the air, so like, just keep an eye out on that. If we come to your area, I'd, we'd love to see you and have you be a part of that. If you're like a creator or like a like a local, like we're, we have booths that are gonna be set up from like local creators.

If you're one of those

that you

wanna set up a booth, like at one of our future shows, we'd love to work with you there and help promote that. But I think, yeah, possibilities are endless. So we'll learn, we'll invite you next year, whatever that may be.

There we go.

Yep. So that'll we'll take away from the shout out will be email your

l t n representative and

them how much you loved ltn Gone.

If you went,

and

you weren't able to go Yeah. Then tell them where you are so they can make sure they make it there soon. And that'll be awesome. All right. Yeah. Well, thank you so much

for your time. Look forward to it.

I so appreciate you being here and being on the podcast. I look

Thanks for having

man.

To

L T N continues to

to go.

Yeah.

Excited.

We're excited. Thank you for having me.

Awesome. Thanks.