A Theology of Fun — Q&A

All right, so if you've got questions, let me know those. I know, Lexi, you had posted something, and if you want to ask the question, I'll bring you up on stage. Relevant for your current ND church plant here, many of them are very digitally involved. We want to be a place of safety. Absolutely. Yes, safety. And we'll get into digital ethics with our last talk, so that might be relevant there, too, to the safety issue.

All right, here's where it becomes difficult. I, as the host, am also the speaker, so it becomes more difficult to ask you to ask questions. And I can't ask myself the questions while you are working to type those out. So please do, if you want to raise your hand and come up on stage, I would love to be able to do that. It is still fun when the gathering is compulsory. Oh, great question. Absolutely.

I was trying to use the pattern and the rhythm as a way of pointing to the viability of it being a rhythm of what we do. But Ruth, Ellen, absolutely, it can be spontaneous as well. If we look through the Gospels, this is where I would go, and see where Jesus encounters people. Like, the wedding was set at a time, however, it wasn't a rhythm that was going to happen every year at the same time. The wedding happened, it's over. So absolutely, we can still have fun with gathering when we just do it not on a set rhythm of those things. And those can be very valuable, too, of just doing a pop-up stream when you have time.

If that's your rhythm, it may not develop building community, but that's still okay if we're doing it that way. Okay, got your message there, Pastor Nate, so I'll check that out in a second. Papstio, have you heard of Gamer of Peace, where they go into games, play the game. At the end, they try to engage someone in conversation, eventually leading them to their thoughts on faith. Hey, One Reason welcome him. I saw you were over in Twitch. Yeah, we're over here in Discord if you want to engage.

So if you have questions, go ahead and put those in the chat, or if you want to come up on stage and ask, you can raise your hand. I've heard of that process of doing it. In fact, I know plenty of people that started out that way. They would just go into a game, a multiplayer game, and then try to bring conversations up. So that's kind of, in some ways, like street evangelism, if you're going to use that approach. So it doesn't fit into what I'm talking about. I'm not opposed to it.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. I'm saying that wasn't the part I was trying to go. I was trying to establish a theology around how do we approach fun, and how do we do it in a rhythm that we see throughout Scripture. But certainly, that fits in the go and engage people in the gospel, and they're going to a game which they enjoy. And as they're having enjoyment, you're going to ask questions about people. Now, people are going to do this differently. If you're ever looking for one of these kind of acronyms to help you think about this, I'll just throw this out.

This doesn't come from sharing faith, but it's applicable there. So it's called form. So you talk about family. So you ask people, hey, do you have brothers and sisters? Are you married? Depending on the age, those kinds of things in a conversation. When you're playing a game, maybe that doesn't always make sense, but you can ask about friends, so you can do those kinds of things.

So you have family, occupation, what do you do for a living? Oh, you're a student. Oh, those kinds of things. So family, occupation, recreation. Well, we're already doing recreation because we're playing a game. And then message. So family, occupation, recreation, and message.

So we're already playing a game. So maybe you ask about the game. You ask more info about it. How long have you been playing? What's your favorite one? Is this your favorite one? What have you played before?

What do you play in addition to this? And then message. So that would be where you get to sharing about your faith, asking them a question about those things. So yeah, absolutely. Going in that direction. Doing spontaneous things can all do that. I was more going from the way of establishing a community in which you're building together a place for people to come and be in the space and do those things.

But great questions. I see Lexi is typing. Anyone else? And Dr. Level Ups or Nerd Pastor Nate, if you've got questions you want to ask me, you're welcome to jump up here as well, friends. All right. What are the scripture references in Deuteronomy regarding carried for the widow, etc.?

Need to write a talk on radical hospitality like right now while I listen. I don't know all of those off the top of my head, but in addition to Deuteronomy, the prophets are all often talking about the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. There's actually four different groups of people that are often identified throughout scriptures as being the ones that we're supposed to give radical hospitality to. Can the pilgrimage also be like an annual IRL meetup? Oh, great question. I didn't include that in my rhythm, but 100%. I didn't want to exclusively talk about that, but yes, for many of us, and I am on that rhythm.

So I go, and this has been for the last four or five years, I go every year to Exponential Conference in Orlando. I often, about every other year, go to Exponential Conference in Chicago. Those are church planning conferences, but those are part of my rhythm, and I mentioned that in my talk that for me, the closest I get to a pilgrimage is going to those events where I gather with people. The Nerd Culture Ministry Summit is another one that I have been to every one of those. Reach Conference is also one that I've been to every one of those. I plan to continue to do those unless the schedule changes for me and my life and my rhythm, or for those conferences if they move around. And then I've also gone to HopeCon, which is, if you know Hopeful Disasters, they put that on.

That is more of a spiritual retreat than more of a teaching us how to do gaming kind of retreat. So if you've done a church retreat, it's more like those. So, yeah. And I love people doing other cons and those kinds of things, even just tacking on to a con that's happening like, hey, let's go to TwitchCon together, or let's go to a gaming con that's in the region, in the area, and we bring our friends to go meet up at that. Those are all viable ways to do that. Vernette, hey, good to see you, too, friend. What are the pitfalls to watch out for in implementing or utilizing this Theology of Fun concept?

I think one of the things, and we did talk about, that was one reason before I dove into it that I did do the assessment there, is if I'm more concerned about the game and winning the game than I am about enjoying the game and the people I'm playing with. And if I'm doing this as ministry, that also really plays a part in that. And so, and I also, I think, is like, how often am I doing it? Do I have control of my schedule, or does the game have control of me? I think that's one of those things. It's the, do I do it in a rhythm where it's balanced and it's healthy and everything is blessing every other part of, is in harmony as the language I like to use. So if the game becomes out of harmony with the rest of my life, it's not a blessing and a benefit, and it's not fun.

It is now consuming rather than life-giving. So I think that's really the thing that I think about is the danger of pursuing that, because are we just going to go down hedonism and pursue pleasure for pleasure's sake? No, we pursue enjoyment in contrast or in addition to the work that we have that's going on in our lives. Great question. Nate, Nate, I'm going to go grab the other thing if you want to come up here.