One of the unexpected challenges of planting a church for nerds, geeks, and gamers is that I don't often get to preach in a church building. I'm not complaining—I have the coolest job in the world. Every so often, I am invited to speak to churches, youth groups, podcasts, etc (I'd love to speak at your church, too!)
There is always one remark that cracks me up when I go and speak. I try to gauge those gathered by asking, "Who knows what Twitch or Discord even are?" Normally, no hands go up at all. But sometimes I see a couple of teens who raise their hands or some tech-savvy young adults. When I got to preach at Hillsdale United Methodist Church in Advance, NC this past Sunday, this was certainly the case.
I see two real ways to interpret this reaction to our main methods of communication being foreign to the masses of church-goers.
1) This is bad. No one has ever heard of these two places. We've put all of our eggs in one basket and any success that we have is just a fluke.
2) We are reaching a totally new group of people otherwise untouched by the mainstream Christian church. It's such a dramatically different group that barely 2% of people in our current churches have even heard of these things.
Now, I may just be the eternal optimist, but I firmly believe we are experiencing the latter. I don't get even a little discouraged when I see one or two hands go up out of a hundred. It fills me with excitement. I have no intention of reaching those who are currently in the church. It fills me with joy to imagine that Checkpoint Church really is reaching beyond the four walls of the church.