Apparently I'm Narrowed Minded

I apologize for the delay updating this blog, but I have been extremely busy. Last Saturday we had StressBusters ’10. There were not as many people as I hoped, but one person accepted Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. That fact made the event a great success in my book. I have noticed that many people in church leadership think that it having a successful group or event is based upon how many people attend. I believe that if you make an impact in people’s lives and maintain spiritual growth, numbers don’t really matter. For example if you have one hundred people in your group and the spiritual growth of the group is staying stagnant, how effective are you. I would rather have a group of five to ten people who are on fire for God and want to make a difference on their campus.

Last Friday I had a meeting about the future of the current student ministry I work with. I let them know that God has called my wife and I into a different type of ministry. The district head of group made the decision to pull the plug on the program, since we refused to jump through the “proper hoops” to be nationally appointed ministers. His plan to make us nationally appointed would be to uproot us from Northern Michigan University to do an internship under a “properly trained” campus minister elsewhere. I think that if God called us to NMU, we should stay here and not have to jump through “man’s” hoops. I told him about my vision of ET3RNAL R3ALITY, and he called me immature and narrow-minded. The people group I want to reach encompasses all ages. I am not just talking about the hardcore gamers, but people who play video games as a form of entertainment. If you were to take a survey on how many people play video games it would probably be around 75-80% in age group. Having the potential to reach out to this many people is not at all being narrow-minded or narrow-focused. I guess if this vision is narrow-focused, so was David Wilkerson starting Teen Challenge. He took the rough criminals and drug users showed them Jesus Christ and tried to turn their lives around. The people I want to reach out to like Jesus, but not the church. They are sick of the hypocrisy and all of the politics that happen inside of the church. I see the need to show these people that the church is not full of hypocrites and fakes, but real people that genuinely care about them not their money.

What Does Video Gaming Have to Do with Evangelism?

This is my first post on my first blog. I would like to introduce the world to a vision that God has given me. Our goal as Christians is to live out the Great Commission, of which is to "go into all the world and preach the good news to everyone." Right now I working with campus ministry called Chi Alpha Campus Ministries, but this vision may take me elsewhere. Only God knows. Coming up on April 10th, my group is hosting StressBusters '10. It is a night of video gaming, live music, free food, and prizes. We call the event StressBusters, because it is about two weeks before Spring semester finals, when students and faculty are starting to get stressed out. This event is open to the public and completely free of charge. You can find out more information about this event on facebook.

Well, back to original topic, using video games as a evangelism tool. During my sophomore year at North Central University, I had to youth subculture study in my sociology of American youth class. I chose to attend a LAN party and study the subculture of geeks and gamers. For those who don't know what a LAN party is, it is acronym for Local Area Network. This means that at the party the participants create a local network to play multiplayer games on. At this party my computer did not want to cooperate at all, much to my surprise because I know my computer inside and out. Since my computer did not work it gave me a chance talk to everyone there and tell them about the project I was doing. I also got to witness to some people that I am still friends with to this day.

Coming back from the party and writing my paper I came to realization that this subculture of gamers and geeks is virtually untouched by church nowadays. This is just a little glimpse into my world and vision. I will post more about as the days go on. Any comments are welcome, just please keep them appropriate.