A Theology of Fun

If you have been at, uh, Nerd Culture Ministry Summit, you probably know, um, Jacqueline. She's, she spoke there before and I'm not trying to take her, uh, talk whatsoever. She's talked about the theology of play. So it's a little bit of a tangent there, but, um, I think God created us to do things that are fun. And so I'm going to go through some scriptures and part of it is like, I don't want to spend all of my time just diving into the scriptures and all of that. I want to go to some application pieces of this. So the overall idea is that theology.

So study of God is related to fun. And I overall think the Bible is fun. Like we were talking about some of the gore that is in there. I'm sorry if you have, uh, you know, a young boy who doesn't want to read the Bible, you know, turn him over to the book of judges. He's going to find a story of a battle or, or somebody sneaking around doing something, a who, um, you know, or some of the others, you know, super fat guy that, you know, gets stabbed by a left-handed guy. And, uh, you know, the, the, the, the, his belly sucks the handle all the way in. Like those were the stories I was enamored with as a kid or, you know, the one that everybody gets excited about is a poke and fun of.

I can't remember if it's Elijah or Elisha and, um, the bears, the female bears come out and eat all the little, all the boys that are there. And I'm like, yeah, that's cool. Uh, of course, most of the time that story is told the kids to, you know, tell them to behave and not poke fun at people. And I'm just like going, man, I wish I had that kind of power to call bears out of the wood. But, um, I think the Bible can be fun and I think other things are fun as well. So just, uh, going to go through a few of those places, but we're not going to spend all of my time trying to just do that. So, uh, we'll start with a few of these.

So the divine provider of joy. So one Timothy six, 17, God richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Okay. So we're to enjoy things. Psalm says he brings forth wine with gladness, hearts to make faces shine and bread. Sorry, hearts, but sorry. Let me read that one again.

I misread that one. He brings forth wine that gladdens hearts, oil to make faces shine and bread that sustains. And then every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights. I know that we don't like to talk about this and you probably have more passages or more sermons about don't drink and being drunk with wine and all of that. And there's even a whole group of people that do, I think, mental gymnastics in order to say that Jesus turning water into wine was an alcoholic wine. And I'm like, I just can't see in the text or the fact that the, the, the steward who's going to know what he's talking about says, you've saved the good wine till last. Well, the good wine till last isn't grape juice, people.

And he also makes the point that people don't bring it out until the, the, everybody's drunk and then you bring out the cheap stuff. So no doubt there were people who were probably intoxicated and Jesus made wine anyway. I think when Bible is talking about not being drunk, it's talking about a pattern and a habit of life, not an occasion of celebration where you are partying a little bit too hard and had a little bit too much. Now, I think we shouldn't do that and we should be cautious about that. But what I'm saying is the Bible talks about wine is being created for our enjoyment. Food is being created for our enjoyment. God richly provides everything for our enjoyment.

So what would not be included in that? I think only the things that we are told, hey, we shouldn't do are the things that aren't included in that. But, you know, just to say there, there are more, there are also enjoying the fruits of our labor. So we work and Ecclesiastes has a number of things. So we often think Ecclesiastes just talks about vanity and nothing is worthwhile under the sun. But there's some other passages in there. Eat, drink, and find satisfaction in all your toil.

This is a gift of God. Ecclesiastes says, finding satisfaction in your work is a gift of God. In addition to eating and drinking, so is finding satisfaction in your work. It also says, eat your food with gladness and drink your wine with a joyful heart. Enjoy life with your wife whom you love. So even having people around us and enjoying time with people is also something that we should be doing. And then Nehemiah, go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

So, like, here we have places around eating and drinking and more people. So enjoyment of the fruits of the things that we do. We do all of this work. And what do we want to do afterwards? We want to enjoy time doing things. So I know it's talking about the things that were done historically, but video games weren't in those passages. So can we see that spending time with people and enjoying the fruits of our labor can overlap into games and gaming?

And I think it can. Enjoying spiritual fullness and God's presence. The reason Jesus says he came is in contrast to the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. He comes that we may have life and have it to the full. Psalm 16 says, So you make known to me the paths of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasure at your right hand. So you fill me with joy in your presence.

You make known to me the eternal pleasures at your right hand. So the psalmist is talking about the things that God has given us and the delight that we have. And then we have one more psalm that says, Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Well, what are the desires of our heart? Those are the things that we want to have. And God says he will give them. What do we do first, though, is delight in the Lord.

Then those things come. And if they are the desires, the delights of our heart, they're not going to be in contrast to anything that it says in Scripture, because then we're not delighting in the Lord. We'd be contrary to that. So there's a number of them. And like I said, I don't want to just proof text all of these things out and pull them out. But how do we make this shift then and in our thinking from, yes, there's a few passages scattered throughout that talk about enjoying life, enjoying creation, enjoying things that we do, the labors of our hands. How do we look at those?

How do we think through all of those? And I'm going to get to another way of looking at it. So rather than just pulling these out, I'm going to go in another direction. But before we do, I want to ask a few questions of everybody. Oh, sorry, I'm on the wrong thing. I need to go over to the slideshow, not the slideshow on the screen in front of you. Oh, so I'm going to make a point, and I hope this will make sense and resonate.

So when we're talking about how do we look at the world, I want to look at what the people of God coming out of Egypt were given. And one of the things that they do is they wander in the desert. They wander in the wilderness. And as we look at the 3 billion-plus gamers who are there online globally is the fact that it is, in a sense, the modern wilderness. So we live in the most hyper-connected generation in human history, yet loneliness resides at epidemic levels. Traditional community structures are rapidly collapsing, leaving millions searching for authentic connection. So we have the most connected way that we can ever be with people that's ever been created.

We can connect with more people at the touch of our fingers on a daily basis, and yet we have an epidemic of loneliness. And I love what Jacqueline Parrish says is, in a world without fun, that's a world without friends. Fun can help build community. And I think that's one of the things to go allude to some of the questions that were being asked earlier is around the idea of how do we connect with people? How do we help them understand is community. Community and relationships are part of the thing that's in place that we are going to do. So I did not know Dr.

Level Up was going to go in this direction in some ways, but I wanted to do a check-in, a survey of how do we consume content? How do we consume gaming? And so there's nothing scientific about my study here or my survey that I'm going to do, but I'm going to ask you to do this. So I've got three different slides, and I want you to rate things as a, one, that you never do these, two, you rarely do these, threes, you sometimes do it, four, often, and five, always. And you get to judge what you are doing on those. So I'll give you five questions, add up your total, type it in the chat if you want to. If you don't want to, that's fine, but I'm going to ask you to do that.

So this is how do you intentionally use, is your use of digital intentional, your mindfulness check? So what are you doing? How are you doing that? Yeah, so one, never, five equals always, and then in between. Yeah, absolutely. And there's one question that we'll flip that around, but I'll let you know when we get that. So I open my phone or my computer with a specific goal in mind, i.e.

checking a specific email looking up direction. So I always open it up just for that purpose, or I never open it up for that purpose. And I'll just read through these. You can answer, add up your own scores. I close an app or a browser tab as soon as I have found the information I needed. The time I spend online directly contributes to my work, education, or personal growth. I use digital tools to genuinely connect with friends, family, or colleagues rather than just passive viewing.

I set boundaries for my device use, et cetera, or examples would be an app timer, do not disturb mode, and I stick to them. So go ahead with those five questions. Rate yourself. I never do those. I always do those, the numbers in between, and add those up. If you want to write them down yourself to keep track, that's fine. If you want to put them in chat, that's fine as well.

We'll go on to the next slide. So hopefully you've got all of those down. So this is the unintentional digital use. So we looked at the intentional use. You intentionally look at it. And now we are looking at the unintentional use. Again, never or always.

I find myself unlocking my phone or opening a new tab without realizing why I did it. I open an app intending to spend five minutes but end up losing track of time and staying much longer. I scroll when I feel bored, stressed, or am avoiding a difficult task. So it could be any one of those when you're bored, you're stressed, or you're just avoiding. I feel a compulsive urge to check notifications the moment they appear, interrupting my flow. I close social media app only to unconsciously reopen it less than five minutes later. So we had the mindfulness check.

Now we're having the unintentional mindless check. So again, one through five on all of those. And the final one is the impact and the aftermath. And the first one we're going to flip. So give yourself a score of one to five as normal, and then flip that score when you're compiling it. So we're going to reverse score the first question here. After a long session on my device, I feel refreshed, inspired, and accomplished.

So score that as a one to never, or always to never, in the reverse order there for your number. I lose sleep because I am scrolling or watching videos in bed. My digital habits interfere with my real-life responsibilities, hobbies, or relationship. I feel anxious, irritable, or brain fogged after spending a lot of time online. I look back at my screen time at the end of the day and regret how I spent it. All right. So we've got three sets of five questions, one to five on each of those.

So a total score between 15 and I believe it's 75, if my math is right. And let's get to the scoring of it. So I should leave it big for everyone. And there's nothing big here. It's just a description of it. So 15 to 35, you are an intentional architect. You possess high level of digital autonomy.

You use your device as a tool to enhance your life, not to distract from it. 36 to 59, you're a balanced browser. You fluctuate between intentional use and falling down digital rabbit holes. You have good awareness, but some habits are draining your time. I think that's probably where most people would fall. And then a digital drifter. Your screen time is heavily dominated by mindless habits and passive consumption.

Devices may be controlling your attention rather than serving you. So add up your scores. If you want to give me your scores, you can. Only so that for the point of comparing one another, what do we have in the room here? I don't care what your score is. I think it's more of a, hey, if you're 60 to 75, maybe there's some place for revaluation. If you're 15 to 35, you probably don't get sucked down the rabbit hole of things.

I will find at different times the notification thing definitely is a thing that I will want to get right on top of and do things. That's why I have most of my notifications turned off so that I don't end up falling into that. Frank, you're at a 40 there. Very nice, Frank. Appreciate that. So a 13, a 12, and a 15. And one of these might be different for you, like one of these different categories.

I tried to set it up in that way of the, I mindlessly do this, I intentionally do this, and what are the repercussions of how those things go? And I wanted to do that to get us thinking in regards to social media can be there for enjoyment, but why am I using it? What am I doing? Gaming can be there for my enjoyment, but what am I doing? Why am I using it? And digital is a tool that we can use, or it can be something that we just get caught not being intentional about what we do with the space. And so as we're talking about fun, and the Bible's saying things are there for our enjoyment, there is a level at which things are an enjoyment, and there is a level at which things become past an enjoyment, and they become consuming of our time, our energy, and they get in the way of what we might need to do in our life.

I don't do this. I don't find enjoyment in gambling. I know plenty of people who can walk in and say, I've got 50 bucks. I'm going to spend this on entertainment. I believe that gambling is a form of entertainment. I'm spending that much, and I'm walking away. I'm bored.

I'm only thinking about I put however much in the machine, and I now lost it, and I got nothing. That's all that I can think about. But somebody else might go in and start that way, and then they suddenly cannot control themselves. They now become addicted to it. They now consume it over and over again. And I bring that up because in my state, maybe yours you're not able to, there's online gambling that's now a thing, and they've gamified gambling in a way to draw you in. Games are along those ways of trying to get you to hit one more thing, to get one more adrenaline click, to get one more thing so that you can level up, one more accomplishment, one more thing.

If you've ever noticed when, and that's why I'm making the comparison to gambling here, is when it goes and it spins, and it's, and I don't know anything about what you get other than the old ones in cartoons, with the 7-7-7, and it comes up 7-7, cherry, and it's almost right there, and it was so close. And your brain says, I was that close. I can get it if I go one more time. And they'll do that, and they'll come close. They'll come close, and they'll come close. Well, gaming is that at times. It makes you think you're that close.

You can do it. You can go into it. So I want to talk about things for our enjoyment. Yeah, predictive AI is growing. Yes, even in that realm too, the level of AI. I'm not even talking with AI getting into the realm of things, just the overall realm of how we do things and how we do it. So they wanted to give us an assessment of that, but now I want to go back into the heart of it.

So I gave some proof text there at the beginning, if you just want to go in that way. But I want to look at an overall way that the people wandering in the desert, the people with Moses, were told how to live their lives. They were told to live their lives around a sequence of events. And those sequence of events, most of the time we call them festivals. But we can look at them as appointed times. Moedim would be the Hebrew word there. Sorry, I was just realizing I didn't have it on screen for everybody.

So I'm just going to read through the names of these real quick, and then I'll talk about them in more depth. So we have Sabbath. We have Passover. We have Unleavened Bread. We have Firstfruits. We have Weeks or Pentecost. We have Trumpets, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot or Booths.

So Sabbath. I know not everyone thinks about this as an appointed time, an appointed season. It's something we're supposed to do. But we have slaves who are coming out of Egypt, and the very first thing they're supposed to do is set aside one day a week to not work, to believe that God has them, that God is going to give them everything they need. They need to instead rest. What do you think that rest is for? Rest is to enjoy the creation that God has given you.

Also, when God gives the analogy that we want to enter into his rest. That's one of the things, one of the phrases that comes on as we enter into his rest. What is his rest? His rest is the Sabbath day, the day he rested. Now, we think of it as just ceasing from work, but resting for the king who has been established as king is now sitting on his throne. His kingdom is put in order, and so we enter into his rest by entering into his kingdom, by being under the rule and the reign of the king who is providing everything that we need as being a subject of that. So being in Sabbath is knowing that God has us, and everything we have is from him, and so we enjoy it.

So we have that week—they have that weekly rhythm. I hope you have that weekly rhythm of having a Sabbath where you rest every seven days. Now, there are what's called the pilgrimages that they're supposed to do, and Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits all happen for the first pilgrimage. So they're supposed to, when they get into the land, go together, gather in Jerusalem, and have these festivals. Then the next one is Pentecost, or weeks, which is 50 days later, the second festival that you're supposed to travel for. And then you have trumpets, Yom Kippur, and booths that are the fall festivals. So I want to talk about—and we know these.

We know these. But why are they supposed to have a Passover? Well, Passover is what happened while they were in Egypt. And if you notice that the blood that's on the door is a sign for them, it's not a sign for the, you know, the Spirit to Passover. It's a reminder that they are participating in what God is doing. So this is a participation. And Passover is a feast that is commanded.

There's all the ingredients of everything, of what they're supposed to do, how they're supposed to do it. So it's a feast, a feast of remembrance. It is participating in the event as it's happening. And that is the one day with the Lamb that happens. But the festival of unleavened bread is then the next week. So you have a one-day feast, and then you have unleavened bread that follows for the next week. And that is purity.

That's leaving Egypt. It's all of those things that God was providing for you in haste. So you have everything you have for enjoyment, even if it's unleavened bread. It's still there for your enjoyment. It's still from God. It's still part of what you do. And then along in there, and this one rotates around, but it should be, you know, because it follows a Sabbath that falls.

So it may not actually be day 22 there of Nisan. It can move around, but it's first fruits of the harvest. And that's realizing that now that you have just celebrated coming out of Egypt, and now you are in the land that God has provided for you, we now celebrate and we come together. So God as slaves are coming out of Egypt makes the point that you need to have festivals. You have a weekly festival that is called a Sabbath. You also, which I didn't put in here, is you have a new moon festival that happens as well. You have Passover festival where you gather together.

It's also a pilgrimage. So you are going to gather together with your family and take the week off, okay? Don't overlook that. Like, this is one of these things I really wish we had as a pattern and a habit in modern society is a week-long festival celebration that we participate in as a ritual, as a practice. The closest I get to that is going to conferences where I hang out all week and do that. I go on vacation. I don't count that the same.

It's not really a gathering of a bunch of people doing the same thing. I don't think vacation counts as in that same way because it's not a gathering of people I know who are coming together for one purpose. There might be other people I don't know on vacation there. I don't travel at a pilgrimage together to go to the place. They would have festival songs that they would have festival songs that they were singing along the way, all of the food that is prepared for them, all of the stories that they're telling of when they've seen people last. They're countering other people that live in other places. Yeah, Frank, I totally agree.

All-inclusive can't coo and is nice, though. Yes, it is. I've done that many times, and it feels good. But if we were doing that, imagine doing that with a whole group of people that you know that are coming there for a spiritual pilgrimage, that you're celebrating what God has done, and you just bring 50 of your closest friends to an all-inclusive resort and you hang out. That could be one of those things, but we don't have that as a ritual in our daily lives. So that's the first of those. Weeks or Pentecost, 50 days later, is celebrating the giving of the law.

And so you go to the one-week-long festival, you come back later for another festival, and you celebrate that God has given you the law on Mount Sinai. So it's another festival. It's another pilgrimage. It's the second time in the year that you're going to do this. So then you go, and you work for the summer, and then you have the fall festivals that come together. So you have trumpets, which is declaring the presence of God. You have Yom Kippur, which is a reset.

You have cleansing. You are trying to evaluate how you've lived your life for the last year to be right with God. It's also known as the Day of Atonement. So is your name going to be in the book of life to have another year of life? And you have Sukkoth or booths. And this is one I really, really love this image here. It is you are living in booths to be a reminder that you lived in booths when you came out of Egypt.

So they begin celebrating this when they get in the land by, like, they pitch a tent up on the roof. They live outdoors, those kind of things. So if you've ever done camping in your backyard, this would kind of be that idea. You go and you camp out. But it was also supposed to be a pilgrimage festival. So you would pilgrimage and live in booths, and you celebrate the presence of God. So in every single one of these, there's family, there's food, there's festival, there's, you know, all kinds of things happening.

Whether you do the pilgrimage or not, you're supposed to be celebrating these things. You're supposed to be gathering together. You're supposed to be going to the appointed times to do things. So when I talk about, and I think about fun, and I think about the theology of fun, what is God up to? What has God done? The whole rhythm of their lives, now not being slaves, is supposed to be filled with festival. It's supposed to be filled with gatherings.

It's supposed to be filled with celebration. It's supposed to be all of those things happening and going on. And so why would that then exclude anything else from being able to participate in it? All right, so looking at just in more detail, because one of the things that happens as they talk about is a holy convocation. It is in Leviticus, so translated as a sacred assembly or a calling together. And so we do all of those things. We gather together.

We're gathered together right now. Good to see you, Jay. Thank you for stopping by. I appreciate you, friend. Love you very much. Leviticus talks about this, the Mikra Kodesh, and I'm probably saying that wrong, is a sacred assembly or a calling together. God did not design faith to be isolated and individualistic.

He built us. He built the entire calendar around the designed gatherings of appointed times. Moed is just a gathering of the people together. So don't, you know, I got a bunch of things there for being online. Your stream schedules, regular raid nights, your regular reoccurring weekly meetups aren't just hobbies. They are establishing rhythmic, sacred gatherings and a generation lacking structural belonging. And I think that's a fantastic way to look at this.

So what are you doing in your stream? And maybe you're not the streamer. Maybe you just show up. Maybe you're in Discord. It can be any of these places. It can be in Discord. It can be in YouTube.

It can be like wherever it is. So I'm just saying you're online, you're gaming as you're doing these things is what is the rhythm you're setting up? What are the sacred gatherings that take place? When are you gathering in? Not just the daily ritual of things, but yes, you do need a daily schedule or you need a weekly schedule of when you're doing things. So what is your weekly gathering? That's like your Sabbath.

Okay. What is your weekly rhythm of those things? What are you doing in Discord? What are you doing online? Also, talking about those sacred gatherings, like Twitch has unintentionally created some of these gatherings and we know them. They're just not the same for everybody. In my stream and probably yours, if you're a streamer, you celebrate your affiliate-aversary if you're an affiliate.

That's a date on the calendar when you achieve that and we celebrate it and we celebrate the community together because all of you helped me make that happen. We celebrate a stream- aversary. This is when I first went live and you are all still here. And since you're all still here, we're going to celebrate that I've been doing it for this length of time. And if you make partner, you can have a partner-aversary and you celebrate those things and you do it for this length of time. And you build a rhythm and a schedule including those things, incorporating those things. And we can do other things as well as those things.

This is why the church still has rhythms. We have the season of Lent that is there where we are leading up to and preparing for Christ and Holy Week. And we have the events of, I'm blanking on the triumphal entry there, Palm Sunday, couldn't think of the name. Palm Sunday, all through Holy Week, Maundy Thursday if you do that, Good Friday if you do that, Holy Saturday if you do that, and Resurrection Easter Sunday. We do those. We have that rhythm. So whether you do all of Lent or it's just that rhythm throughout Holy Week or parts of those things, we have holy gatherings.

We have holy conviscations where we invite people together. And our streaming space, our digital space, can do the exact same thing. We create the rhythms. We invite people in to participate and be part of what we are doing and how we are engaged in things. And then, you know, we also have Christmas and we know all the things. So you just create those things. The church has those things.

So as a streamer, where do you put those together? How do you bring those in? How do you create the rhythm of fun and celebration for your community that you are establishing or you're a part of if you're a group of streamers or you're in a church that's doing this? Like, it applies to all of us, whether you're an individual because your community isn't individual. It's all your community. Whether you're a group of streamers or you're in a Discord server with a bunch of streamers, how do you create the rhythms within there? And then how do you do that overall, too, if you're a church?

I love that idea of creating those sacred gatherings. I'm going to give you a comparison here in some ways of how to think about the ancient biblical festivals and modern gaming community. So you have pilgrimage journeys to Jerusalem. You have logging into Discord servers and Twitch feeds. So logging in is your pilgrimage in some ways. You have holy convocations, the appointed assemblies. You have scheduled raids, streams, and tournaments.

So those things that are scheduled. You have sacred rituals. You have the Passover Seder. You have the Sukkoth or booths. You have our sacred rituals are a little bit different. You have stream emotes that are unique to your channel. You have memes.

You have inside jokes that happen because people are there. You begin to develop these rituals part of your community that's there. You have intergenerational oral storytelling. You have mentorships for newbies and sharing game lore. I love the stories, and I've heard so many people go, and somebody puts them under their wing and says, hey, you don't understand this game, let me help you, let me mentor you, let me give you insights and ways to learn and grow in the community, and you become part of it. So we have those things. You had generational economic redistribution to the poor.

Now, they didn't necessarily always do a good job of it. They were supposed to celebrate every seven years of restoring the land, and they have other things that are going on. But we have hype trains. We have gifted subs, and we have bits. So we have different ways that we also – so I'm not saying these are perfectly one-for-one comparison. But in some ways, the ancient way of doing things with festival, we have that all built in with the things that we can do in our gaming communities. And there's a parallel there.

And so if we want to investigate why did they gather together, why did they travel together, why did they do the pilgrimage, so that they could be together, they could be gathered. So logging in, being gathered together. So you can take and dissect what was God calling them to do, what were the pieces that were going to come out of it, the relationship building, the fun they were going to have, the celebrations that were going to be there, and how do we do those in a gaming space. Another one on the pilgrimage principle, a sacred caravan. The three historical pilgrimage festivals required physical traveling together. This journey forced dense social bonds out of shared travel hardships, physical interdependence, and common focus on Jerusalem. So because they traveled together, here's what happened.

Now, I'm just using raiding as an example. There's other things that we could also make a comparison to. But you have a multiplayer clan functioning in exactly the same pattern. Through strategic vocal coordination, role specialization, hey, you're our tank, you're our healer. You have collective trials. You have players developing high trust, durable social networks. So we can and do some of these same things in gaming space.

Now, I'm not in FPS. I don't do all of those things. But we can develop similar things and similar patterns in our communities, regardless of that, of it being that specific to that genre of game. But I think the point is made there because you're spending time together. You are journeying together. You're pilgrimaging together. You are playing games side by side with others.

You're doing an MMO. You are with others. You develop all of those things that would have happened on those sacred pilgrimages. I'm not going to go through all of these in a lot of depth here. But there is sacred language that's developed. There is a digital pilgrimage that we do. Raids are built into it.

And there's liturgy and lore. And don't get caught up in liturgy. Liturgy is just the process by which you do things. So the things that are happening, whether you are, like, we have high liturgical churches who are going to have a call and response and readings and prayers that are recited. Those are high liturgy, others, spontaneous prayers, non-liturgical. But you still are liturgical, even if you don't. Liturgy is simply the rhythm of what you do and how you do it.

So all of the things that are part of your channel are the liturgy of your channel, your community. All right, I do want to dive into the Sukkoth principle here a bit. So Deuteronomy commands rejoicing that explicitly includes the stranger, the orphan, and the widow. No celebration is complete until the vulnerable are safely gathered. So even if you were poor, you were included in the festival of booths. If you're living in booths, there is no division between those who are poor and those who are rich. Everyone is included in that.

And in digital spaces, we break spatial, generational, and accessibility barriers down. We offer secure havens for the marginalized, the anxious, or isolated individuals who would never step inside physical cathedrals. I really want you to think about that. And this is the point I'm going to make an argument for. So in all of the pilgrimage stuff, in all of the having festivals and fun, I'm going to make the argument that what we essentially are doing as we are in these spaces is we are creating digital tabernacles. Okay? A space where people gather.

And remember, the tabernacle is not the temple. It is portable. It is movable. And we are making sacred spaces that people enter into, and we're inviting them in to pitch their tent among us, if you will, to be part of us, to travel, to journey with us. I really think that's part of what we are doing in digital spaces, whether we know it or not. But we can be intentional about that, of saying, I'm creating this sacred space within my stream. Maybe it's not within my stream.

Maybe my stream is the door to invite you in. The sacred space is in my Discord. It doesn't matter where you're creating it. I'm saying we are creating it. We're inviting it. Or you could look at it this way. The Court of the Gentiles is my stream.

My Discord server is entering into the tabernacle. And then there is the Holy of Holies when we gather together to do worship with other communities that are in there. So however you want to look at it, I think this principle applies. You can apply it where it makes sense for you. So as we are thinking through this, so we have the gathering. We have the design of the rituals that we create. We have the fostering co-op, cooperatives that we do with others.

And we have sacred encounters where we open pathways for people on stream to pray. We debate spiritual themes, in-game narratives. We offer natural pastoral presence. That was the one I wanted to get to most. I think we know and understand the gathering. We understand the creating rituals, what we do on our channel. And we foster community.

The sacred encounters need to be an intentional part. And what you do and how you do it is going to be based on what your calling is, your giftedness, and how you do things. I have, and I know many other people do as well, have a redeem in my channel that you can ask for prayer. And I can stop right in the middle of what I'm doing and pray. Others don't have that, but something will come up, and you offer to pray for people. I've had this in my channel as well, where somebody comes in and just makes a mention of, hey, I'm not feeling really well today. I'm not doing good at all.

And someone else in the chat will immediately say, hey, we should pray for them. And I see if it's okay, and I go and I pray for that person. So we create the rhythm with our liturgical rituals and practices. We have cooperation between us and the chat when they come in. And then we create the sacred encounters for people, even when they aren't necessarily used to it. We create the space that those places can happen. And we all do it in the way that makes sense to us and makes sense to our community that we are fostering.

So I hope those are making sense with what we're doing. And then there's a prophetic edge to what we are doing. And by that, a prophetic edge, like, we in some ways are bringing the gospel to people. So by that, we are being prophets. We are speaking the very words of God. So I love what Jacqueline Parrish says. And if you want to go get this book, The Theology of Play, that's not what I base it on.

But some of the ideas that she shared before that are in her book really overlap into what I'm bringing is, Go where the fun is and say it louder. You're not dragging Jesus into gaming spaces. He's already there. You're just pointing him out. I don't think I can say what we should be doing any better than that. We're not bringing Jesus into gaming spaces. Jesus is already there.

He is absolutely already in the Discord servers. He's already in Twitch. He's already in YouTube. He's already in TikTok. All we're doing is saying, have you met Jesus? And I want to invite you in so that you can enjoy what we're doing together, but also have more joy than you've ever had by knowing the reason for the hope that I have, and that's because of Jesus. So, yeah, we're just pointing him out.

Okay, that was, I believe, everything. Let me just see. Oh, nope, I had one more slide. But this is really the point is, you know, we're going to build tabernacles. We are in the wilderness. The gaming space is the wilderness. So we're building digital shelters to bring grace, fellowship, and joy.

So go raise up sacred shelters, sacred sanctuaries in digital realms. That's what I'm hoping that we will do.