EP267: Gaming Church, APEST, and Biblical Collaboration

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological

innovations within the church. But more than tech for tech itself, we'll address deeper questions.

Is disciple making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field?

Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? Oh, and where does the metaverse

fit into all this? Whether you're a big or small church, an established church, or a startup church

plant. The Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church,

digitally and physically. Our heart, that churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on

disciple making that will revolutionize your church. And now, here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right. Hey, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. We are streaming live on Twitch. So

somewhere out in the interwebs, people are getting Twitch notifications right now.

to come watch us live. It's Thursday, 3 p.m. Eastern. We've been doing a season here.

Season four, Jesus Gamers in Church doing a deep dive, doing an introspective, doing a 360-degree

view perspective on what gaming church is. Some of the good, some of the bad, some of the challenges,

some of the opportunities. And we're starting to get to the end of the season here. We've got maybe

one more episode coming up, but we're definitely excited about what we've been learning in context

here centered around gaming church, really the fastest-growing category of digital churches today,

gaming churches. We've talked with Mark. Don't call me Mark Lutz. The Lift, as he's been doing

Luxe Digital Church. I did pronounce the church, Dave Wright, at least. Luxe Digital Church. And we

talked nerd culture with Bubba from Love Thy Nerd. We talked digital missionaries with Jate and Aki.

We talked, oh, so much. We talked women in streaming last week. And I know I probably kissed,

kissed. Talking about women. Weird. I know we probably talked. I'm probably missing a couple others

in along the way. Don't call me Mark. I won't. Digital Church Network, I promise. I won't call you

Mark as well. But hey, you know what? Today we've got a great episode where we're bringing in some

really smart people about gaming culture. Once again, I'm positioning myself as the listener here,

podcast audience, and looking and seeing what's happening and what can happen, really, as we start

to explore being the church in this digital space and how it matches up. And so I'm going to ask

The Lift, Mark himself. I'm just going to call him Mark Lift from now on because I won't mispronounce

last name. Mark Lift, do your magic. And let's bring in the special guest for today.

Hello, hello, hello, hello.

Hey, Mark. You're okay with that name, right? Mark Lift? Like, that's not offensive or insulting to

you in any way, is it?

You're welcome to just call me Mark, Jeff. You don't have to pronounce. And you're also welcome

to mispronounce my last name. It actually doesn't offend me. You actually make a bigger deal out of

mispronouncing my last name than I make a big deal. People have been mispronouncing my name

my entire life. I just respond to all of them. My name got mispronounced on my wedding day.

So it's not, you know, you mispronouncing my name at the beginning of a podcast is not a big deal.

Wow. So I can't believe your father-in-law screwed up your last name on the wedding day. That's

horrible.

My father-in-law? No, my father-in-law didn't. My pastor did.

Oh, you're, oh, that's even worse. Like I was, I was, I was announced. Uh, I, I have a pleasure

of announcing for the very first time, Mr. And Mrs. Mark and Jennifer Lutz, uh, was what was said

on my wedding day, which is inaccurate, but it was fine. We, we, we, it went, it went okay. But

that, well, that's not why we're here. We're here to talk to, uh, St. Bear here. So.

I mean, Mark, could you make this podcast any more about yourself? Like I'm just wondering,

like, is there anything else we can talk about? No? Yeah. I have a handful of things that I'd like

to talk about that involve me and only me. So.

Okay. Very cool. Hey, so we got St. Bear in the room. Excited to have you on, sir. Uh,

and so many, and as we've been doing these shows and streaming these shows live on Twitch Thursdays

at 3 PM, like St. Bear has been awesome in the background, chatting it up. And I've enjoyed

getting to know him really over the past couple of months. He was a new meet for me, uh, late

last year. And so Zach, man, why don't you, uh, for the podcast audience, for people that

may not know you just set the stage here a little bit, talk a little bit about who you

are, what you do, the many facets of, of, of, of Zach.

Yeah. Um, it's really fun to be here. I, um, I came from a background. I got my degree in

business administration and then I went into construction and worked for a general contractor

for a while. And, uh, so naturally I'm here talking about the digital church environment.

Um, no, it's just been really fun to be able to land in this place where I get to do what

I do for a living and, uh, also help apply it and be kind of gas in the engine for all

just this wide variety of like nerd culture ministries as we're calling it. Um, professionally,

I'm a producer for Plain Joe studios, which is a studio. Um, it is a story land studio and,

um, we do design work for churches and other cause related organizations, nonprofits.

Um, and our whole, I, our big idea as a company is how do we help the church, um, accomplish

storytelling worthy of the story. We believe the church has the best story ever told, um,

the responsibility of stewarding that well. And we're, uh, as a church, big C church, good

at doing that with our words generally. Um, but our spaces that we create and the culture

we set, our communication strategy, the websites we have, digital tools we use, all of

that speaks and often speaks louder than the actual words we're using. Um, the person

who comes to your church for the first time is being spoken to by how intentional you are

about wayfinding, how hard it is to find a seat, uh, what kind of spaces are you creating?

What kind of culture are they experiencing before you've ever spoken a word to them?

And so, um, I get to do that for a living with a wide variety of organizations, um, all over

the country. And as a producer, I get to lead projects and help set creative direction and

work with teams of artisans and craftsmen and designers and architects to do all of that.

And the beauty is I'm also a card carrying nerd and I love my fair share of video games and

tabletop games and just all things nerdy. And so, um, I've just been able to get really connected in

this space and get to know everyone and have a passion for it. Most of my closest friends

are also nerds. And, um, they're either Christians who would benefit a lot from these ministries or

they're people who aren't Christians who will only ever be reached by ministries like this because they

have no interest in ever, ever going to a traditional church. Um, and so I just have been very motivated

to say, how can I take all the things that I get to do kind of during my day job as a producer with

Plain Joe and help imagine how that plays out in digital spaces, uh, use those skill sets and project

management chops to, yeah, just be gas in the engine for all these different ministries.

So yeah, that's a little bit of who I am. A lot of what, uh, a lot of the people that we've had

on this show over season four, just about all with the exception of DJ and, uh, pastor Coco from VR

church and MMO church, all of them were part of the Megazord summit that happened back in October.

We gathered a bunch of people together and Zach has was mostly like the brainchild, uh, and the vision

in the heart behind that, right? He and I worked on that a lot. That was an event that was primarily

90% of it was run. It was all funded by Lux or Lux partners, but it was Zach and I that were

meeting together literally every week, sometimes multiple times a week leading up to it, making the

invites, having the meetings and then, uh, Zach in the background who did all of the project

management on that. And so when he says he wants to be fuel in the engine, that isn't just words,

uh, that is, I mean, that is very practically, he has been fuel in the engine of what we've seen

birthed because of Megazord, right? We've seen on the other side of the Megazord, the nerd culture

ministry collective network that has been forming and people are getting into groups and connecting.

We've seen those relationships built. We've seen a tremendous, we've seen more unity in this space

now than I think arguably has ever been in, in the space. I haven't been in the space the seven or

eight years that it's been here, but I think most of the people who have been would say that there's

more unity right now than there has ever been. And then with that, also what we're seeing here doing

at the church digital, um, a lot of the people who are on it, we've had those connections to and

invited them onto the show because of what happened back in October with Megazord. And, you know,

Zach had a little bit of a lot of the heart behind that. So you just want to tell us briefly,

Zach, like why, why Megazord? Where did that come from? Um, and follow that, that trails a little

bit to help people understand.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I remember, man, it's at least a year ago now, which is crazy. We, um, I was thinking

about just seeing all these different ministries. There's Love Thy Nerd, there's all these different

streamers, um, there's digital churches and there's people wanting to serve in the background, people who

aren't going to be the person primarily on camera. They're not someone who really wants to be like a

full-time streamer. Um, but they just love this space, want to serve it well. And so I'm seeing all

these people and I'm thinking to myself, man, wouldn't it be great if we could get them all in a room

to be collaborative because, Hey man, it must be just be so lonely. All of these are people that have

this entrepreneurial spirit. They start going, doing this ministry, head down, just running as fast

as they can. And it's so hard for them to be able to make time to get to know one another. Uh, so like

when you work in a traditional office space, you have all your coworkers and you walk by and you chat

with them and you can kind of commiserate about things that are difficult or share lessons learned and

tips and tricks. And you don't have that when you're working full-time at home for yourself doing this

mission, mission field that you started, you know? And so there's people that have been doing it for

seven, eight years now that barely know any of the other people in the same space. And so we just said,

man, what if we could get them all together around the same table, build a relationship so they can

support one another, love on each other. And, uh, I, I think we talked about this before. I like

wrote up this whole tweet, which, you know, to all three of my followers that I had on Twitter

and I posted it with this idea. And lo and behold, those three people, uh, one of them being my wife

was that we're not the audience that needed to hear it, but I at least got the thought on paper.

And it wasn't long after that, that I met you, Mark. And I, I mentioned the same thing to you.

It's just, man, this has been on my heart. I wonder if this is possible. And, uh, it wasn't long after

that, that we were able to get funding and actually make it happen. But really the goal behind it was

let's, can we get these people together? And also as part of that, um, help them help us all have a

better understanding of how we fit together. Uh, we don't all need to be, that was the reason we called

it Megazord, right? The, the other working title was how to be a body instead of pile of dismembered

limbs. And that was like the whole idea. We're pulling straight from scripture and just using

nerdy language for it of, you know, putting the Zords together into one large Megazord, right?

And to say, you don't have to all be the same thing, right? We don't all have to be Jake. We

don't all have to be Aki. In fact, the beauty is that we're not. So how do we get better clarity

on what each of us are? Cause if you're looking at someone else and trying to say like, I feel like

I'm different, but how do I be them? Um, we're just going to have frustration. We're going to have

frustration as our communities look at us and say, you're not doing the same thing as him. So you're

doing it wrong and he's doing it right. Um, and just to help have that clarity, um, what does it look

like to have the different roles? How do we fit together? How do we operate as a body that's, you

know, where we're synergizing and complimenting one another and supporting one another and even

helping people see like the role of that I could play where I'm saying I'm not going to be the

streamer, but I do have project management shops. So that's, that's one of the roles that we can play

as part of this Megazord. Um, so other people can start to see how they can plug in and be part of

that, part of that body and part of the mission without having to necessarily be the totally,

you know, top tier, excellent, uh, e-sports competitor or the super high energy streamer.

You know, those are important roles, but there's other roles to play and how do we all fit together?

So that was really the heart behind it. And I think, I think it went really well. I think it

was a success in that respect. Yeah, absolutely. Which I think Jeff, I know that you have, uh,

you're steering the ship, but there was some, uh, I think that ties in fairly well to what you

wanted to kind of touch on and get into in this episode. Am I correct?

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the transition, Mark. I appreciate that. Um, where, let me ask this,

where do you think the, um, where's the collaborative come from? Like individually,

like these, the, these people you're mentioning, they, many of them were never in the same room

or in the same physical space before, uh, before Megazord, when we got together back then,

um, um, or very minimal. And so relationships are digital, uh, they're stretched, um, where,

but you're, you're right. At least, you know, even in the past seven, seven years ago, there

weren't that many people. There weren't enough people to really almost have collaboration because

it was so, so new in this gaming structure. Where do you guys think the collaboration comes from?

Um, I think at a minimum, there's a lot of opportunity in just these networks that we're

setting up, having networks, cohorts, whatever you want to call it. If I'm a streamer or if

I'm an organization leader, if I'm a girl gamer, whatever that looks like, having a group of people

that are on mission doing similar work as me. Um, because if you, you know, if you're any one of

those things, finding someone that happens to like live in your neighborhood or go to your church,

who's doing that same thing is really unlikely. If you're a builder, you might find other contractors

that you can talk to and talk shop with. There's very few, you know, the odds that you're going to

find someone else that's doing nerd culture ministry that you can talk shop with are, are pretty few.

So just having those people where you can be connecting on a regular basis, uh, sharing lessons learned.

And, um, you know, this works well for me. Why are you doing it that way? Does that work better for you?

Like technical stuff? What programs are you using? Practical stuff? Like, Hey, we had this guy drop in

the other day and he was just being really toxic. How do you handle that? Um, we had, you know, I,

I'm not seeing the numbers. I wish I was, how do you stay motivated? And, you know, just those kinds of

things that people normally get when they work in an industry, being able to have that cross-pollination,

I think is really, really valuable. And then there's more tangible things where it's, Hey,

we're doing this fundraiser. Let's all partner on that. Um, Hey, let's do a stream where we do this

event together, uh, so that our communities come together and get to know each other.

Let's do something in real life. We, you guys have five people in this city. We've got five people.

Let's get together and set up some kind of local meetup with our combined communities.

I think there's potential for all of that. Once you have relationships in place.

Yeah, I would agree. Go ahead, Mark. I was gonna say, I would agree with it. I would agree with

that. I think that where does collaboration come into place? I mean, there's some obvious

collaborating things built, it baked into Twitch as a platform, things like rating and hosting and all

of those sorts of things. There's things like what Aki from Aki and Fam does, which is Aki and

Friends and he invites people to come on and just be part. And they have a conversation. Um, he did one

where it was a gamer dads for a while, where like, if you were a dad and you were a gamer, they got on

and had a conversation around raising your kids. Well, uh, who are, you're also raising your kids to be

gamers. I think that there's obvious collaboration there. But when I think about this, I oftentimes think

about what does it look like for pastors in a town, in a small town to collaborate? Um, and it,

it usually isn't, Hey, uh, we're doing a potluck. So all of you bring your people to our potluck,

but where the collaboration becomes really powerful is in seeking unity together. And I think for that,

that becomes, how do we actually speak of one another? Um, and, and how do we respond specifically

when people come to us who speak poorly of other people in the space? And how do we get to the point

where we have relationships where when given the opportunity, we always speak well of one another.

And I was inspired by this just locally because my senior pastor helped to lead a ministerium and

it's been around, you know, he's one of the longest standing members of that ministerium of like 30

years now. And one of the things that Chris said is when people come to my church and they say,

I'm mad at summit Presbyterian church. And I don't like Tom. I say, Oh, I know Tom. And he's a

friend of mine. And it lets them know that this isn't a place that you can just come

and whine and complain and moan about the other pastor up the street. We speak well of one another

here. And I think Megazord. And on top of that collaboration in general has really been about

that, right? For us, we had Amanda on last week from God squad church. They're one of the other

digital churches in our environment. You can't get me to speak poorly about God squad church. Cause I'm

friends with daylight and with Amanda and with boss and with, uh, probably the least with boss, but

and with Susie, right. That those are people who I speak well of. You can't get me to speak poorly

of Aki. Why? Because Aki is the adopter streamer that I have. You can't get me to speak poorly of

Jade because Jade's like my brother. And so because of that, when people come to our community and want

to maybe moan or complain or like, well, I don't really like that streamer. I don't really like what

they're doing here. I don't really agree with them theologically. It's like, well, you're not going to

find any grounds for that complaint here. There's no, no one's commiserating with you here. So go find

a different place to complain. And I think that, uh, that is really where some of this, um, like

working together is at its sweet spot that there's just this spirit of unity for the entire community,

the hundreds of people that are connected to the various communities across the board that every

time one of our names are seen in a stream that streamers like, Hey, pastor Mark. Oh, Hey, give you

guys, we love him. Or when Aki comes in, Aki, it's so good to have you here.

Or when St. Bear comes to St. Bear's here today, right? Like there's this camaraderie amongst the

group and it's like, wow, all of these people know each other. And more importantly, they don't

compete with one another. They actually like one another. And I think that that is a really

important element of what collaboration looks like in this space specifically.

We, uh, we talked about this phrase of, um, not throwing each other's dirty laundry out in the

digital street and saying, if we have an issue or a beef with someone, this space is young and early

enough and it's emerging. We have the opportunity to set a cultural precedent now by getting all the

people who are kind of on the front lines on the same page. So we can set that cultural precedent of

if I've got an issue with you, I know you, I've met you. I'm just going to call you and talk to you

about it. And we're not going to, we're not just going to go on Twitter and throw your dirty

laundry in the digital street. And I think, I agree. I think that was a big part of what we wanted to

accomplish. And I think has, we've seen the fruit of that and it helps to lead all the communities

then to a greater sense of unity by setting that precedent.

Well, there, there's a lot more unity centered around the ideology of Megazord. The, what is that?

That is Power Rangers, right? I'm, I'm, I'm, I want to make sure I get my correct here. Right. So

Megazord, the Power Rangers connecting together to create the giant robot with the sword. No, the sword

is, uh, Voltron, which is the lions. Anyway, I'm getting, I'm getting confused. My own

analogy. Um, however, I did look at dismemberedbodyparts.com is available. So if you did

want to, to shift over to more of that ideology, I, I for one would love to help you launch dismembered

men member body parts.com or whatever that was on GoDaddy. That is gross. I didn't know dismembered

body parts. I did not think I was going there with this conversation today, but thank you all

for taking me there. Uh, so eloquently, Hey, uh, image worse. So here, here's what they don't

believe me. It works. Thank you. Thank you for that. Um, yeah, like every, every Friday,

the 13th movie ever is flashing back in my head. Yeah. Thank you. So, so good. Um, here's

what I wanted to dig into, and this may be a little complex, um, of, of an idea for us to

unpack, but I think we can do it. Um, so you're talking about different parts of the body with

different functions, um, you know, and, and how you, you've got the streamers, you've got

the digital missionaries, you, you've got the churches, you've got the mods. We've, we've

talked about just the different facets of, of roles that, that operate within, um, this,

this gaming environment. Well, uh, it's interesting. There's, there's an idea called

a pest, uh, that is, uh, centered in church planting, where it talks about each person

has, has a different characteristic and whether you're planting a church or doing ministry or

whatever it looks like, the idea is to get all of these types of people together so that

you don't have just a bunch of arms or a bunch of eyeballs or a bunch of hands, um, doing

something because you need all the parts of the body working together, collaborating, synergizing.

I know we had some conversations about a pest earlier and, and, um, uh, with some of the

Megazord stuff. And it really challenged me and kind of opened my eyes to what, what could

be in gaming. I didn't realize, to be honest, I didn't realize there were so many, um, characteristics,

roles. I didn't realize there were so many roles, uh, within, within the gaming church.

And so within this past several months, that's been the eyeopening for me is, is understanding,

oh, you do need really that type of person to fill that specific role in this. And, and, and the,

the mods are not, are not, you know, one thing that I learned last week talking with the ladies

is how important the mods are, uh, in, in some of those situations. And so I would love for us to,

to unpack, um, maybe some of the a pest ideology, uh, maybe see how that maps into gaming church.

Maybe even how that maps into digital church overall and start to get a picture of that.

Now, um, I do want to give the floor to Mark. Um, don't say my last name, uh, lift because Mark

is, is, is inside. He's, he's got a little, he's got a little anger inside him right now. There's a chip

on his shoulder and then the chip is, uh, he's, he's, he's the four guy. He's not the five guy.

So he's really upset that I'm using a pest, even though Alan Hirsch is, is right. And Mark is wrong,

but that's okay. So Mark, would, would you like to just clarify your, your, your fourfold view

for the audience here?

Sure. I, I, it is, is really not a chip on my shoulder, but, uh, yeah. Um, uh, so, I mean,

I went ahead and posted the scripture in, in our chat as well. So Christ gave himself a great

gave himself. So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors,

and the teachers. Um, and so the fivefold ministry kind of comes from that. There are people who are

apostles, the gift of church planting, starting new things, um, entrepreneurship, um, prophets. Uh,

I've always defined that as the ability or the, the giftedness to call God's people back to

righteousness. Um, uh, the evangelists, people who bring new people in and then the pastors and the

teachers. And in, in my, uh, theological upbringing, pastor teacher in Greek is not two

terms. It is a singular term that we split in the English translation of the Bible. So pastor teacher

is a singular role, not a, uh, not two separate roles. So I'm a fourfold guy, not a fivefold guy.

But, uh, the point is, is that all five of these roles are very important, um, inside any faith

community. And it is exceptionally important inside of, uh, inside of this community as well. And I

think what is really interesting is we've actually seen all four slash five of these things, um,

play out, uh, in pretty profound ways, because I think, I think the main point is, is that you want

to gather these things together in a church plant. Um, but I've seen the church led by each of these,

right? There's certainly churches that are led and started by apostles, uh, people with the,

the gifting of profit on their life. That's the one that I lean most heavily into personally.

If there's one that I think God has placed on my life, it's the role of profit. Um, and, and not

when I say that to mean predicting the future, but in, in terms of calling God's people back to

righteousness, um, the, to evangelize to, you know, people who are just really missionary mission

driven. Um, and then pastors and teachers, which, you know, pastors are shepherds, which I think is what

a pest translates it to right shepherd, um, really great at pastoral care and just coming alongside

people and teachers really great at just communicating biblical truth and digestible ways.

And, uh, we see these things and actually the beautiful thing is we've actually seen these

things on the show. I think that is one of the coolest things is we've seen these on the show,

because when I look, the shepherd rule is Aki and his family through and through, right? This desire

to create a place that if you don't have a safe home, you have a safe home here with us. I've told

Aki and his wife, uh, Natalie several times now, if like they are, they are more equipped for pastoral

care inside of a church than most pastoral care pastors. Like they're just so good at it of caring

for people deeply and authentically, um, in really powerful ways. And then of course we had a

conversation with Jade who unapologetically has said his goal is to have 50% of his stream to be

non-believers. Why? Because he has this deep pulling as, as, uh, as, as an evangelist, right? Um,

and you can kind of see that in the fact that Jade's number one goal, isn't necessarily putting all

the building blocks in place, but it's having those deep relationships. And then we've had Bubba on

and certainly the gifting of apostles on a Bubba's life as he has been a builder, right? An entrepreneur,

a, uh, a serial starter in many ways in which he sees things out ahead of him. And he, he,

he's putting all of those blocks in place. And you can see that in what has emerged with love,

I nerd, and now the nerd culture ministry summit. And so we've seen these giftings actually play out

pretty powerfully. Um, I think through just this podcast and maybe not all five, but certainly

at least most of them. Um, and they are really at work in the space.

So, but Bubba is your, is your apostle in, in, in this model with the, with the builder mentality?

Like what, what's your, where would you put Bubba in that?

Um, I want to be really careful that I don't, I don't Trump on stomp on Alan Hirsch's, uh, uh,

I, I don't know. I don't know how a strict a pest is right. Or how easily it is to flex from one to

the next. Right. I will quote, I literally, I, I, all, all this Alan Hirsch, uh, wrote, wrote the

book, the forgotten ways back in the, in the mid two thousands. I actually have the page open on

my computer. There we go. Perfect. Um, apostle, this is Alan Hirsch, the man who brought a pest

ministry by fold. Really? He, he brought it back. This was something that was around in the seventies,

eighties and nineties. Like it just went away. Two thousands was the rejuvenation of this concept.

Apostles extend the gospel as the sent ones. They ensure that the faith is transmitted from one

context to another and from one generation to the next. They are always thinking about the future,

uh, bridging barriers and establishing the church in new context, the lip developing leaders,

networking trans locally. Yes. If you're focused solely on initiating new ideas, uh, of rapid expansion,

you can leave people in organizations wounded, uh, the shepherding and teaching

functions are needed to ensure people are cared for rather than simply used. And like, and so there's

pros and their con there's good sides to being an apostle is a bad side to being an apostle. Um,

and let's not, when I'm talking Bubba, I'm not saying he's using and abusing people, but

like, does, does, does Bubba fit that model of the apostle? You know, Mark, I know you fit that

model. I would, I would feel comfortable putting you in that space. Um, prophets, uh, know God's will.

They are particularly attuned to God and his truth for today.

They bring correction and challenge and challenge the dominant assumptions we inherent from the

culture. They insist that the community obey what God has commanded. They question the status quo

without the other types of leaders in place. Prophets can become belligerent activists or

paradoxically disengage from the imperfections of reality and become otherworldly. I don't know.

I can see, I can see a little bit of Mark in that too. Yeah. Well, where do you see yourself, man?

Let's make it about you, Mark. That's why I'm saying like, I don't, you know, depending on what

your view on this is, people can flex from one to the next. Right. Um, and there's certainly people

who exhibit multiple giftedness, even in the people that have been in the show so far. Um, whereas all,

I would say that people have primary voices when it comes to eight best and maybe secondary voices

when it comes to eight best. And if I had a primary voice, my primary voice is that of profit. My

secondary voice is that of apostle, at least in this particular season of life. But do you feel

like those, uh, categorically, uh, would you agree with some of that stuff, Zach? Cause you know,

a lot of these people very closely now, as you built relationships intentionally with so many of them

over the last year. Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, I think the space we're in, when we talk about

nerd culture ministry, the whole space in some ways feels like it fits that description of the

apostolic it's going, it's contextualizing the gospel to a specific culture. It's doing something

that's kind of new and different. And within that, then you have within this like apostolic setting,

kind of, you still have all those other roles, right? So you still have the person who's a

prophet in that space, making sure that just because we're doing a new thing, we're not getting

to, you know, so off the rails that we let that new context completely remove us from

what we're really here for and make sure that we're still staying on target and staying on goal with

the gospel. Um, we have the people who within that space are called to be teachers and shepherds

and evangelists. Um, so absolutely that, that, that like brief description, you just walk through with

jake tending toward that evangelistic side, Aki being more of a shepherd, all those, I think

makes sense. And it was funny. I was, I am not, I historically, I haven't spent a lot of time

being familiar with APES. So I just wanted to kind of get familiarized with it and was doing some

research as I flew home yesterday. And I was reading an article about it where it talked about

how for them, a big part of APES is getting rid of this concept of like pastor versus lay people.

And it had this phrase in there where it said within the Christian community, there are few

words more disabling than lay person or laity. But this whole point being like, everyone has a role

to play and yes, there's the shepherd or there's the, there's the teacher and like the things that

are kind of more obviously pastoral roles, but everyone has a role to play. And that's part of

what I think is so cool about the space is, is that is to see how people, it's not that guy up there

is doing the work and I can support it from back here as a lay person, but all of us have a part to

play as a part of this body and they're all important and they all matter. Um, which I think is really

beautiful.

I can remember having early conversations with Jate. This is going back all the way to maybe 2018, 20,

this is probably the first podcast I did with Jate whenever it was. And, um, and, and he, he told me,

he's like, yeah, I, I, I will never be called a pastor. Uh, because he felt if he took the moniker,

the label of pastor, the expectation would be for, from the people that were, were following him,

that he would be the one doing the work. The expectation is that the pastor is doing the work

in the audience is, is consuming. And, and, and so for him, he, and, and that's, that's just his

spin, you know, Jate's Jate. Um, his spin was don't call me pastor. I'm just one of you people.

Let's, let's do this ministry together. And I always, I always respected that. I don't, I don't,

I don't know that I agree with it. Um, but I, I certainly respected his view of it. You know,

Leonard Sweet, I also did a podcast with him maybe late last year. And I remember I, I was talking

about, I forget the term that set him off, but it was, it was something in the priesthood of all

believers like camp. Oh no, I know what it was. It was bivocational. It was, it was like a, it was a,

uh, so I was talking about a bivocational pastor, somebody that's doing ministry that has a job

and then was doing ministry outside of that. And, and, and he was in, in literacy was like,

yeah, that's, that's, that shouldn't be a thing, Jeff. And I thought he was like trying to talk

about how, you know, everybody need to go to seminary in that model. He's like, no, like you

don't need to call out specialty people that are bivocational. He says, we all have the responsibility

to be that. We all are carrying that, that mantle of weight of, of ministry. And so it like,

he, he flipped it where we all should be doing that, not just pastors that, that are, that are

bivocational. And so I love seeing, and I love seeing this, this rollout in, uh, in gaming.

Let me ask, because, you know, apostles, prophets, you know, I can definitely see that in Mark. My

gut is we've really drilled into Bubba. We probably would see something, uh, in, in the apostle

prophet space, uh, evangelist shepherds. We, we talked some about that, uh, teachers. So he, let me,

let me read the definition of teachers here. Uh, according to Alan Hirsch from the Forgotten

Ways 2000 book that was written, uh, teachers understand and explain communicators of God's

truth and wisdom. They help others remain biblically grounded to better discern God's will, guiding

others towards wisdom, helping the community remain faithful to Christ's word and constructing

a transferable doctrine. Without the input of other functions, teachers can fall into dogmatism or

dry intellectualism. They may fail to see the personal or missional aspects of the church's

ministry. Who's a good example or what, what does a teacher look like in, in, in gaming context? I'm

curious here. Uh, you know, I think of two people and one that we have not had on the show or was on the

show a while ago, Susie has a way of being able in the middle of a raid, um, to preach a sermon

off the top of his head and take complex spiritual ideas and make them simple. Um, and, uh, he hasn't

been in this season, but I've watched him do that in a way that was like compelling and life giving to

me as after a decade in ministry, right? After a decade of listening to sermons and writing sermons and

studying stuff, there's not a lot of people that I sit and listen to and I can like, they get me up out of my

seat instead of make me sit there and critique. Right. And so when, when Matt has been able to do that, it has

been like, yeah, like this guy can, this guy can game, read, chat, and preach a sermon off the top of his head.

Um, there's some giftedness in teaching there. I think that he also flexes really well into evangelist

to be fair. Um, I would say the other person that I can think of off my head, uh, uh, Zach, someone else

who has not yet been on the show and we should have on at some point, which is Dustin. Um, pastor

Dustin, uh, literally does like his Bible studies. What's really cool about Dustin is that there are

actually a lot of people who will jump on here and they will do teaching on, on Twitch. Plenty of people

that do their, their weekly sermon prep live with people. Um, or they do Bible in one year,

which is what flat cap does. And he was on, on the show earlier in the season. Um, but then you have

guys like Dustin who have the ability to have unbelievably great video and audio quality. I mean,

it is his ideas and the way that he has a setup is just staggering. I keep saying like everyone in the

space, a Christian space needs to learn from him in many ways. Um, and then he also does a lot of his

sermon prep and just Bible study on stream. And it's excellent. Like he does a really, really great

job at it. And then he'll also play games. And so he has the ability to flex into multiple of these

things where he creates a space for fellowship and people really do come to flock just to learn from

him. And I think that is one of like the major draws for his live stream is people show up in his

live stream just to learn from him. Um, and that isn't the case with my live stream. So I, I, I always

really appreciate that induced. Am I, who am I missing? Do you agree with that? Uh, Zach?

Yeah. Deustin is the one that immediately came to mind for me. Um, I just popped into his stream

the other day and he was going through a commentary, but it was like, there's like the, Hey, I got a study

Bible. It's got the little notes in the bottom. And then there's like the commentaries that,

you know, pastors use that have like 20 pages on one verse kind of thing. It's like a, it's a,

it's a full novel just on the book of Romans. And so he's going through, I think it was the book of

Romans. I might be getting that wrong. Um, and, uh, he was, he spent the full stream. It was multiple

hours going through one verse and just really digesting, getting into the meat of it. Right. And so

that's different and that's good. That's kind of, kind of the point, right? There's people

like Jay who want to do it very conversationally and make it very, um, accessible to someone who's

never read the Bible before. Um, I feel like more of the like pastoral approach is like what you see

in like a church setting where it's halfway there's information, but a lot of it is meant to inspire

and encourage what he's doing is like, Hey, let's do a study together. This is going to be like,

this is meat. We're going to dig in. It's going to be a lot to digest. Let's really wrestle through

this. And there's not a lot of people doing that. And if you're a new believer or someone who's not

a Christian, that might be a harder setting for you to get plugged into though. I know he does have

people in his streams that, that love that who aren't Christian, but want to hear and get into the

meat of things. But yeah, being able to really get into the meat of things that way as a teacher,

he does pretty uniquely. I think there's a few others, but I think he's probably got the most

like, um, tenure, I guess. Uh, and like he's doing it in the most solid way. Um, to your point about

like, we're just really having a well-established setup in his space and a community that gets it.

And he's been doing it for a long time on a very consistent basis. So yeah, I would agree with that.

Justin, what's his, what's his handle on Twitter? Where do we find, or excuse me on Twitch,

where do we find them?

Pastor Deustin, D-O-O-S-T-Y-N.

Oh, I've seen him. That's, that's interesting. Y'all have to, I'll have to check them out.

Very, very cool. Uh, and so like, but all those, it's interesting comparing Jade as a,

as a teacher, conversational, Deustin, what you're describing, you know, very different.

Remember, even for the audience, like contextualization is so important. The people

that Jade are going to reach with Jade's model of, of conversational relational is completely

different than the people that, that pastor Deustin is going to reach, uh, with, with his, um, with,

with his approach. And so it's not that one's bad or better than the other or one's wrong,

one's right. It's they're both serving their purpose for the, for the kingdom to connect with

those different types of audiences. So I, I, I love that. Um, what is the, is there one of these,

is there one of these that's more difficult in, in gaming environments, like discord,

relationally connecting or, or, or Twitch? Like, is, is there one that's just more challenging

than the other? Hmm. So between apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher, um, yeah, I'm just

curious. I mean, I, I think the space lends itself. I agree with Zach and the fact that he said,

like the entire place feels apostolic, right? Because it is so new and so future thinking,

like there is nobody in this space that got in here, um, because they, there are some of us who've

been inspired by others, but there's nobody who's getting in here because they're a late adopter,

right? Like there, every one of us are either like really early adopters or like first people. Um,

and so because of that, it feels very apostolic period. Um, I would say that

it's really interesting. I think that it really lends itself heavily to evangelists too, because

most of us have just a heart and a love for people in this community and we want to see them come to

Jesus. And it is such an unreached people group that you really can't get away from that. Like there's

not a lot of people who are like, I just really want to care for Christians. Um, and so they decide

to start a Twitch stream. Why? Because we all know the reality is that you're going to get lots of

people who aren't Christians coming into your Twitch stream, very likely. And so it feels very

evangelistic in that way as well. I think maybe the voice of the prophet is one of the harder ones

to find a place in this, in the space. Although your definition of profit, not so much because you

really were talking about like challenging the status quo. I don't think that you can get into this

space without having at least a little bit of fire in your belly and wanting to challenge the status

quo. Right. You kind of have to be, you have to be a little nutty to be honest with you, to,

to be actively in this space as a Christian, trying to influence people towards Jesus. Like it's just

openly hostile towards Christians. So, um, I'd love to know your thoughts on it, Zach. I feel like all of

them have a very clear place once you get to know the environment.

I think, um, the things we probably have the most of and that feel the most obvious are evangelist.

Um, I think we have people that are trying to, that are doing the apostolic element. I think

the profit element feels very important because whenever you're going and contextualizing to a

new space, um, having someone who's challenging those people to stay on target and to not have any,

um, mission drift in that space, um, to stay true to the gospel. I just think it can become really easy,

especially when you're doing a mission. Um, that is also something you love to do,

right? Cause people are doing this because they like gaming. If you didn't like gaming,

I, there are some people that get into the space purely missionally and don't like gaming

and they really struggle because people see right through that and they can tell that you're,

you're disingenuous about the space you're in. Um, and so I think within that, it's really

important to have people who can help everyone keep, uh, you know, avoid mission drift, stay on

target, make sure that we're holding true to the gospel, um, not sacrificing truth for the sake of,

uh, reaching a new context more effectively or trying to evangelize better, um, not watering down.

And so I see that role as being really important and probably something that we could even use more

of, um, just being able to kind of keep that check and balance and teacher, I think is probably like

probably the part that is the piece of the equation we have yet to really nail down is the effective

discipleship part. Like you've gotten someone who says, I want to be a Christian, help me walk through

that. Uh, I think Jade does it well. I think everyone is figuring it out, but really having

good tools in place to then really teach them and start offering them meat to chew on, I think is an

area that there's still a lot of room for growth. Um, and for people that can do it better,

better tools to do it with, um, yeah. My, you know what my, my hope is, and, and, uh, it's

interesting. I'm going to tie this in. My, my hope is that, you know, vendors and resources like,

like plain Joe and, and, and some others that are out there start developing, you know, tools and

systems to better allow for, uh, Jay and the crew like that to develop, you know, there there's the

idea of, which is one of the reasons why I champion the idea of digital discipleship so much right now,

because that's, that's, that's the missing piece to really blow open the doors on digital church,

on gaming church, on virtual reality church, uh, to, to once we can really start to have some tools

and resources to help, uh, create a more stable disciple in, in digital space. Um, this has been

a great conversation. Like, you know, I've, I've loved hanging out with St. Bear. I've loved hanging

out with Mark, the lift and, uh, definitely, uh, excited about, um, you know, what's coming up here.

Even as we're looking ahead to what's, what's in store for, uh, for, for the gaming church,

as, as we're landing the plane here, um, uh, Mark, any closing thoughts on your side?

No, I don't think so. I think this has been a really great look at how, um, I think it's just

been a really great look at how, like the very same things that we look at inside of physical church

and in church planting are vibrant, alive and well inside of this space as well. And I think that for

me, that's just encouraging. And hopefully it's encouraging to you. If you're listening in and

you're a physical church pastor and you're trying to figure out what are the differences between what

we're talking about here digitally and what you're doing, you'll begin to notice that God doesn't

use different skill sets because the platform changed. Uh, he, he continues to give the church

the same tools and we continue, you use those tools in new ways. Um, and it's just so cool to see the,

the 2000 year old, you know, giftedness that Christ has given the church over and over again,

continue to play out to reach new people. And I love that.

Would you say, Mark, just real quick, quick answer. Um, would you feel that you have a pest or

fourfold, um, represented within your Lux leadership right now?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Yep. Uh, like inside you're like, you're intentional again.

Yeah. Inside our church. Yeah. We identify that stuff. We do our best to identify that stuff pretty

early on looking at the larger scale picture, Jeff. I think that it's easier to pick those things out

because people's giftedness is just wildly on display. Um, and in some cases, but absolutely

you see that come out. And as we're doing leadership development inside of our own church with our own

dream team right now, we're actually seeing that pop off even more.

Love it. Um, Hey, uh, St. Bears, we're wrapping up here. Any closing thoughts on your side?

Yeah, I just, I would, I would agree with what Mark was saying. I think it's really encouraging.

It's easy to look at this space and be like, why, you know, it's new. Why do we have to reinvent

what the church had been doing for 2000 years? Um, why can't we just let a good thing be a good thing?

And to Mark's point, I would argue we're doing the same thing that's been being done for 2000 years.

Um, the church has always been about taking the gospel and offering it to new contexts and doing

that in ways that hold true, taking the same skills and, um, and giftings. Um, and so we're just trying

to do what the church has been doing for the past 2000 years, um, with this nerd culture context in

mind. And so that to me is really helpful. It's really grounding and it's good to be rooted in that.

And I think it's helpful to see some of the tangible ways that that's true. Um, and I think it's really

beautiful for people like me who aren't feel, don't, don't feel called to be pastors or, uh, to be

generally the person in front of the camera to help people see how, you know, they don't have to think

of themselves as like, quote unquote, just a lay person. They have a, an important role to play.

Um, and it can, they can be kind of out to the box and what that looks like as a behind the scenes

role sometimes.

St. Bear, what are you, what do you consider yourself? We didn't, we didn't ask, uh, apostle, prophet, evangelist.

Oh, I don't know.

I, uh, again, I learned what apest was fairly recently. If I had to guess, uh, I'd be curious if, if Mark has a

take on this, but if I had to guess the closest would be a shepherd. When I think of like a project manager, uh,

which is kind of the heart of who I am in a lot of my life, I feel like, uh, that's someone who kind of shepherds

a community of people and shepherds a story. So.

Interesting. I agree.

Caregiver of the community. They focus on the protection and spiritual maturity of God's flock,

cultivating a loving and spiritual mature network of relationship making and relationships making and

developing disciples. So interesting. I could see that. Awesome. I'll take it. Well, I tell you what,

we're going to land. Yeah, you take it. This is, this is great. St. Bear, the shepherd, um,

bear and shepherd are two separate images into itself. So maybe we can dig back into that one later,

but that's a conversation for a different day. So, Hey guys, we're going to land the plane,

uh, short conversation today, but, but at the heart really wanted to explore the idea of maybe

there's nothing new under the sun. You know, what we're, what we're doing in these gaming communities.

We were really, you know, to quote DJ Soto, we're not trying to reinvent the church. We're trying to

reimagine what it can be in biblical context. And so we're not creating the something new, um,

we're, we're re-imagining it and, and imagining what it can look like in these gaming contexts.

And so, Hey, this has been a great conversation. I want to thank St. Bear. I want to thank Mark

for jumping on the podcast. I want to thank my wife for delivering smoothie King literally right here

to my, my desk as we're wrapping up this podcast here. So you've been listening to the church digital

podcast. We do this Thursdays, uh, 3 PM Eastern. And so, Hey, we're, I think we're wrapping up the season,

Jesus gamers in church next week. Uh, so come celebrate what's happening. Come check out the

closure, uh, and some things that, that we'll be talking about next week here with Jesus gamers

in church Thursdays, 3 PM on Twitch. And of course you can find us at the church digital podcast,

the church that digital slash podcast to subscribe to that podcast moving forward. Thanks y'all.

Thanks for being here and, uh, y'all have a good day.