EP252: Mark Lutz, Season 4: Jesus, Gamers, & Church

I have very deep and meaningful connections with the physical church that I ministered

in for years, but I will say that the ones that I have here at Lux are just as deep and

meaningful for me.

I mean, I love the people just as deeply, and many of them I will never meet in person.

So exactly why is it that we can find these connections and that they seem to work maybe

even faster or I'm not going to say better, but as good in terms of like the depth of

relationship as we do in the physical church.

I think there's a lot of things that have to go into that.

But ultimately, I think most people in the physical church just really underestimate digital

space.

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, episode 252 of the Church Digital Podcast.

Super excited about this conversation.

As a matter of fact, I'm so excited about this conversation.

We went ahead and made a season out of it.

We're launching season four effective today because we want to explore more of this idea of church,

in gaming culture.

That's right.

I just, I'm going to be honest right now.

I've been so humbled within the past three or four months, really getting more exposure,

deeper exposure to the gaming culture.

And I'm realizing a lot's changed since, oh, I don't know, James Bond, GoldenEye on Nintendo

64.

That's actually probably the last video game I was relevant on.

And let's be honest, I'm very happy it came back out on Switch Online.

But you can find me online at Steerfetch.

But that's a whole other conversation.

What I really want to dig into is of how the church can operate and how the church can reach

a different type of person in this gaming culture and in this nerd culture.

And so over the coming weeks and even in the months, we're going to start to bring in people

that will be able to unpack and start to help us realize the opportunities and how we physical

churches, how we digital expressions of church, we individual digital missionaries, we people that

play games, how we can start to connect with people and be the light of Jesus in gaming space.

This is one of many conversations coming today.

By the way, part of this whole thing, before we get to the guest, part of this whole thing

is even starting to get exposure to some of these gaming communities.

And so to that end, we, the Church Digital, we, Digital Church Network, we are launching a

Twitch account.

That's right.

If you go to twitch.tv slash digitalchurchnetwork, twitch.tv slash digitalchurchnetwork, put the

link in the show notes as well.

You will see our new channel.

I don't know that I'm going to be playing, you know, my 8-bit Nintendo all the time.

I've literally got the controller right here at my desk, though.

Probably not going to be doing that 24-7, I wish.

But what we will be doing instead is we're actually going to stream these podcast interviews

live on air.

That's right.

We will be interviewing the podcast guests early.

And so if you want the sneak peek of what we're reviewing, reviewing on the podcast, revealing

on the podcast Monday, come the previous Thursday.

Every Thursday, 3 p.m.

Eastern.

Thursday, 3 p.m.

Eastern.

We will be interviewing people on the Church, on Digital Church Network's Twitch channel.

And so next week, coming up, we're going to be interviewing, we're going to be interviewing

a guy named Bubba.

It's going to be a great interview.

Bubba Gaming?

That sounds weird.

When I look at Bubba, I don't think of it as a Bubba.

You have to jump on Twitch with us next week and discover it.

But we'll get more into what Bubba's going to do with the show later.

But create that Twitch account.

Jump on board with us and start to get exposed to some of these gaming ideas and how our churches

can be effective in really starting to understand and reach this gaming culture.

And I'm going to be honest here, the first person that I have really ever seen do that

effectively is Mark Lutz.

Excuse me.

I butchered his name.

I've never said it correctly.

I'm going to say it correct right here on air for the first time is Mark Lutz.

So Mark, thanks for jumping on the show with us here today.

Yeah, so glad to be here.

Really excited about the new season.

Super excited to see the Church Digital.

I mean, it's always talked to gamers, right?

From the very beginning when I first met Jeff and I started listening to episodes, you know,

we would be talking to Jade and you would be, you know, talking to other people who were

in either gaming space or adjacent.

And so super pumped that we're really sort of focusing in on that world because that's

the one that I live and breathe every day of my life now.

Awesome.

And so really going to get into this and excited about some of the stuff and even doing a check-in

with Lutz Digital Church, church that operates entirely on Twitch and Discord.

So we're going to have that conversation.

And then we're also bringing as well in Andy Mage.

Andy is the on-demand director for Lutz Digital Church.

He's a digital pastor at Bay Hope in Tampa.

He works with Digital Church Network as the resourcing director.

The guy's got as many jobs as I do, and that makes him awesome.

And so really excited to have Andy in the conversation and excited to dig in here a little bit with

what's going on with Lutz, but it may be even start to open the conversation and introduce

this idea of what's going on in gaming.

So cool.

Well, hey, Mark, it's been it's been a minute since I've had you on the podcast.

Actually, I'm flashing back.

Andy, you were on four years ago, like very early on, weren't you?

Yeah, so it was probably about four years ago.

We had myself and Tom Pounder and you.

We were doing a cohort and a lot of faces on there that have just kind of been in the scene for a while now.

Mark, I haven't had you on in a while.

Give me an update.

Like, talk to me a little bit.

What's going on with Lutz Digital Church?

Yeah, Jeff, honestly, I think the time that I was on the show where we launched, I think we were launched, but we were very close to launch.

Maybe a couple months in.

Yeah, so I mean, it's been it has been a wild year, a wild two years now.

So we are approaching our second birthday as Lutz Digital Church, working towards financial stability.

Our church has really grown in actually really substantial ways.

We've crested over 500 people in our Discord server, which is kind of like our community in a place that we plug in and check in with people.

We're pushing almost 40 people on our dream team now who are serving across our church in various capacities.

We ran Megazord, which I'm sure we can talk about on the show at one point or another, even if it's not this episode.

Just released the Megazord documentary a couple of days ago, which was really cool.

We've had this really great ability to partner with a lot of really fantastic Christian content creators.

Many of them are people who are going to be with us.

Our mission partners are actually going to be part of this season who are going to be on the show, which is really cool and exciting for me because I know them really well.

And I can't wait to dive into a little bit more about what they do.

And yeah, man, we've seen salvations, our first batch of baptisms in year two, seeing people baptized in a river in Oregon, in a bathtub in Missouri.

And just honestly, really incredible, radical life change.

I mean, people who were about to be divorced, saving their marriages, people dealing with addiction, finding freedom, like really radical life change of people across.

And so there has been a lot of really cool, really great things that have gone on at Lux.

I can't even begin to detail it in a couple of minutes.

Well, that was a pretty good attempt at trying to cram it all in a couple of minutes.

But I got you a couple of pieces, right?

I paint a pretty awesome picture.

Just wait.

As we talk throughout this season, you'll get into the weeds with us, right?

So you started this thing.

We met probably fall, summer, fall 2020.

You were part of the first digital church cohort that Stadia Church Planning launched that I ran through Stadia.

And so you and a couple of us went through that.

But you've had this passion, at least going back then, towards this idea of launching a church aimed at gamers or reaching discipling gamers.

And tell a story here a little bit.

Like, where did that passion come from?

Like, you were a physical church.

You were doing physical church ministry.

You were a discipleship guy.

You were a student guy.

And now, all of a sudden, you're on Twitch doing church.

So, like, how did you get to this point?

Sure.

That's a great question, Jeff.

You know, and I was.

I was a pastor outside of Pittsburgh for 11 years, right before this recording.

Just met with their youth pastor and their family life pastor, actually.

So still connected there.

Still love the folks of that church.

But God really moved in our hearts towards reaching people in this space.

And there's a lot of things that added up to me, really, my wife and I, taking the step and launching Lux.

But honestly, a lot of that was just my heartbreak for the loss that I saw in the gaming world.

And knowing that the church at large, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, just because of church subculture, had alienated itself from the growing gaming world.

And I was actually running some statistics the other day.

We know that Facebook brags about having, maybe brag is a strong word, has claimed they have more Facebook users than are Christians on the planet.

But I don't know if you know this or not.

There's, I don't know, somewhere around like a billion, half a billion more Facebook users than Christians currently.

And modest estimates, there's a billion more gamers than there are Facebook users.

So there's a little over 3 billion gamers.

Like, they reach the status where we would say these people consider themselves a gamer.

Over 3 billion video gamers on the planet, which is roughly twice the number of Christians on the planet.

Which is really crazy that we as a church have not really thought about like, hey, what do we think about reaching these people?

Or why is it that there's no element of what we do as a church that even caters towards or tailors us towards this group of people?

And my heart really breaks for them because I am them.

I am a gamer.

I've been a gamer my whole life.

Tabletop gamer, RPG player, video gamer.

If it's gaming, if it's nerdy, if it's 3D printing, if it's LARPing, I've done it.

And so I just, I love nerd culture.

And I love nerds.

And I love gamers.

And so, and I just, I want people to come to know Jesus.

And so those things really all lined up to say, I really think this community is worthy of a church.

I think they deserve a church.

And I think they deserve a good church.

Not just a live stream.

I think they deserve a robust, full ecclesiology, life-changing, deep relationship, disciple-making church.

And that's what we set out to build with Lux.

And it's been a really wild adventure to try to figure out how to do that with the tools that are available to us.

And how to reach these digital natives that are by the billions in our world.

So, Andy, you were, I mean, you were doing digital ministry pre-COVID.

And I know you came from a worship background, the transition in, just because I know some of your story.

When and why, or why and when, did you pivot over?

Because you're still doing the physical church digital ministry through Bayhope.

And you're helping out with Lux on the side.

Like, what's your motive in double-dipping?

It initially started as it was a job offer.

Actually, that's not true entirely.

It initially started as I have a weird background of worship and all those other things.

But also, I have a real passion for tech, for internet, life, for all things digital.

And when the job came up at Bayhope, I jumped at the opportunity.

We were living in Atlanta at the time.

I was a worship pastor.

We were, we had owned a gym, of all things.

And we kind of gave the gym up and applied at Bayhope and got the job and moved from Atlanta to Tampa.

And I initially thought it was going to be just helping with production and soon found out that my passion, actually, for people that were on the internet and passion for digital ministry ran very deep.

And that actually took just kind of being in the job for six or seven months, getting my feet under the table.

And then this weird little thing called COVID happened.

And all of a sudden, the mishmash of everything that I love to do, talking to people on the internet, being in front of a camera, being behind a camera, doing production work, doing tech work, running cables, live television, live broadcasting, grouping people together, digital discipleship.

All of those things kind of smacked in together.

And we really found our footing at Bayhope.

And funny story, actually, I was also kind of working on the side for a product called Alter Live, which we've talked about a couple times.

I've talked about a couple times.

I was doing a bunch of video work for them.

And we were doing a live show called the Alter Live Show.

And I got put into contact with Mark to interview Mark.

And that was, I had kind of been stalking Lux for a little bit, because I also am a gamer.

I also have done digital discipleship through gaming and through, you know, I was doing Bible studies on Halo 2 way back in the day.

We were doing, we would sit in a lobby and run a Bible study and then go headshot each other for 45 minutes in a custom room.

It was awesome.

And the idea that that could actually happen was something that was blowing my mind watching Mark and Lux.

This is right after they launched.

And I interviewed Mark.

And then I kind of reached back out.

What, three or four weeks later, it's like, hey, man, if you ever need any help or anything, let me know.

And then I interviewed him again for another podcast I was doing.

And then I think at that time, Mark and I both had, we had a conversation.

Either I reached out or he reached out.

And then it was kind of like, okay, just get in the community and do the thing.

And we've kind of been running ever since.

You know, I always thought all this time I introduced you to it at Expo in 22.

Is that not true?

Did I not do that?

I think, well, so you introduced us face to face.

I had never met Mark face to face, but I had interviewed him twice on a podcast.

And I was diving into Lux right about that time, actually.

Wow, that was over a year ago.

So, yeah, it's been interesting.

Yeah, you go to Expo, you meet people.

That's what we do.

By the way, selfish plug, exponential.org.

The new conference is coming up.

We've got 12 digital metaverse tracks.

Mark, are you speaking?

Did I ask you to speak at Expo this year?

This is awkward.

It better be yes.

Yeah, yeah.

You actually sent me an invite for it yesterday.

No pressure.

Yeah, just don't screw up.

But you can use the coupon code, what is it, digital2023.

Let's get 60 bucks off.

There you go.

Look at me.

Look at me helping you save money.

You're doing the thing, man.

You're a salesman.

Man, listen, all about the commercials, man.

Real podcaster, yeah.

Athletic green.

Slow it down.

Slow your roll.

Yeah, very good.

All right.

Well, Mark, so listen, my gosh, you started mentioning things about board games and Legends

Cast and video games and nerd culture.

And Lord knows I understand the nerd culture.

I could never do Halo 2.

The last viable video game I was any good at was GoldenEye, which is actually making a return

on Switch Online.

Really?

And excited about that, my wife destroys me in that game, which is actually a little scary

when you think about it.

You let her be odd job.

Is that the thing?

She's the small little one.

No, no, no, no, no.

Like she...

The one guy with a clear advantage.

Yeah.

Who cares about balance, right?

She's sniper rifle, find the spot, and just stay there and wait for the one moment and just

takes the shot, man.

It's crazy.

She's so good.

Anyway, you know, there's a lot of subculture centered around this.

And I know we're going to be talking some about the subcultures and the different nuances

of these different areas as we bring in some of these people that are really speaking into

this genre and are trying to reach the 3 billion gamers on the planet.

That number is scary to me.

But let's talk a little bit, at least in your implementation, in your context with Lux,

what does church actually look like?

What are you actually doing in that space?

Yeah, that's a really great question.

And I think when we ask that question, most of us as pastors immediately think towards

what does service look like?

But I think we have to ask a bigger question and say, what does all of the embodiment of

what it means to be a church look like?

Because if you were to ask what my service looked like, I'd say, go to twitch.tv slash

Lux Digital Church and watch our VOD from this past week, and you'll get an idea.

Do a lot of the things that church does.

We do worship and we do prayer and we do preaching and teaching.

And on top of that, we have a pre-show and post-show that is a lot more like me and my

wife sitting on a couch and talking for 15 minutes.

Or like last night, me breaking our fast by eating a ridiculous sloppy amount of pizza live

on the internet.

And so if you think of like live streaming mixed with youth group, mixed with your church

service, you would actually see a lot of things that are similar.

We have really reverent moments like we had this week in post-service, really ending our

fast with the Lord's Supper and taking the Lord's Supper together as a church family, which

we do once a month.

And then we have plenty of goofiness and celebration and things that are part of our services as well,

which includes our question of the day and coming on stream with a really nice lightsaber

at the beginning of service we did a couple of weeks ago and swinging that around a little

bit.

And so there's been lots of really things that are very tailored to nerd culture, but

there's a lot of things that we do that would be familiar to a church when it comes to thinking

about a service.

But it's very tailored and positioned towards the gaming culture and specifically not just

gaming culture, but Twitch culture, which has a couple hundred million people on it every

single month.

And so that's what our service looks like.

But when we talk about the more encompassing question of what makes up your church, I've

been saying this for a long time, and it's actually truer now than it ever was, that 80%

of what it means to be a church for us doesn't happen on Twitch.

It happens on Discord.

We say that Twitch is our sanctuary.

Discord is all of the other parts of our building.

And so we have small groups that are happening throughout the week.

They launch here in about another week, about when this episode will go out.

We'll have launched small groups.

We have, I think, nine or 10 small groups that are launching this spring.

We have year-long Bible studies and monthly Bible studies that are going on all the time

every single day in our Discord server where people are coming and engaging.

We have Bible study leaders.

We have welcome team who are welcoming people into the community and helping direct them.

We have an onboarding process which lets people get to know who we are, what our core values

are, and what our mission statement is.

We have a welcome room, and we have a get-to-know-you section.

And so all of the things that you might think of when it comes to the necessary pieces of

the puzzle to build disciples, which we think are spiritual disciplines, which we do in community,

which is for us, for primary ones, although there's others, is living in community, fasting,

prayer, and Bible reading.

And those things are happening all throughout the week as we live that out as a family.

And we have the equivalent of church potlucks, which is we get together once a month and play

games together and hang out for a couple hours.

That's our church potluck, right?

And so there is all of the things that you might think of as a church if you funnel them

through the lens of Twitch and game culture.

Those things are all happening, but they're happening between two different platforms just

as they'd happen in two different sections of your building.

I was actually in a meeting today with a 60-year-old individual and very respectful of digital,

but was very clear up front.

He didn't understand it.

You know, and he's talking to me about like when he was a kid, he would go to church at

8.30 in the morning on Sunday.

He would do church.

He would do Sunday school.

So he would be there 8.30 to noon and then he would go back for youth choir and the evening

service 6 to 8.30 that night.

And so he was telling me the stories of that.

And then when I started talking about, well, you know, digitally it's everyday believers and

in the lives of people daily we're able to engage.

And in some ways, you know, the digital ecclesiology, you know, I can make an argument that it actually

is closer to a physical ecclesia, or closer to the biblical ecclesiology than some of the

ways that physical is today.

And he was, that made him uncomfortable.

But one of the things that he really like started to struggle with was short-term versus

long-term.

Like, and I just, I would love your takes.

Actually, I don't know that I've had this conversation with you specifically.

Is a digital church, like, is it, are the people that you're doing ministry with in Twitch and

Discord, like, is the, is the goal for them to be connected to your church five years, 10

years beyond?

Is the goal to minister to them and help them get connected physical?

Like what, and I know we're going to ask this question a lot because I know there's varying

opinion, but I would love, you know, just maybe your take and Andy yours as well.

That's a great question.

I think when you talk to most people who don't live in a digital world, right, they don't

really have any context for it.

They don't have a single digital friendship.

They don't, they don't really understand it.

Right.

They're like, oh yeah, the internet is a good thing.

And I'm not trying to be condescending.

They're like, internet is a good thing.

I think that we should do it.

I am in support of, I'm in support of it, but it kind of ends with the long-term, short-term

question, right?

That's where it kind of ends.

And that's where the divide comes because most people who live with a physical mindset who

don't have really any experience or want to have any experience in the digital world are

perfectly okay and supportive of digital ministry as long as the end goal of digital ministry

is to funnel people into physical churches.

If it's not to funnel people into physical churches, then they're kind of out.

And that is not the goal with our church.

Our goal is to be the full embodiment and ecclesiology of what it means to be a body of

believers devoted to the things that the first century body of believers were devoted to,

to be a disciple-making group that makes disciples that make disciples, and to lead people to Jesus

and salvation in Him with baptism, Lord's Supper, sacraments, the whole deal, is to do that in

digital space in such a way that this is your church experience.

This is your spiritual family.

More than just church experience, this is your home, right?

This becomes your spiritual home.

You are sent out on mission from here into both digital and physical relationships.

And so you become impacted here.

And we see this over and over again in our church where people are impacted dramatically

here by their faith and their physical relationships are transformed.

It's like one of our guys fasted this week with us and he, last night in our pre-service

huddle, he was saying one of the really cool things about fasting this week is he got to

have a bunch of spiritual conversations with guys that he works with who aren't believers

because they didn't understand why he was fasting.

It's a perfect example of the fullness of the body of Christ that is existing and meeting

and gathering and sharpening one another in digital space.

This is a guy who was pretty, pretty done.

Like he was pretty done with church before Lux and his faith was pretty idle.

And now it's awakened to the point that he's going a week without food and he's using a

week without food as a chance to engage with his physical life, friends and coworkers in

a conversation about Jesus and spiritual context.

And so no, our goal is not to channel people into physical churches.

That does happen with some people because I'm not, I think that people see a divide and they

say there's a war between the digital and physical in some capacity.

And I don't see that that way at all.

I see that there are people in life who are going to be able to engage and really embrace

a digital expression of church in a way that's transformative to their lives.

And there are people who will come back to faith through a digital expression because it's

newer, it's a little bit fresher and it's a little less threatening.

And then they're going to connect to a physical church.

And we've seen that with several of our people.

And some of those people I've literally released just said, Hey, go right.

One of our key members, Josh, who was a member for quite a long time.

He's a key member in one of our teams.

He got into a physical church that physical church had him starting to help with tech and

he departed.

He hasn't really been back.

And it's like, good, go.

Like you needed that.

It was actually unhealthy for him to stay in our space for a long time, but that is not

the case with Doc.

It's not the case with Boots.

It's not the case with Hood.

It's not the case with Holden.

It's not the case with JT.

Like these, these are people who are growing vibrantly inside of the space and it's transforming

their physical lives as well.

So the answer to that question is really a yes and no, but there's not an intentional

like strategy for channeling people into physical churches.

It's just, if that's what's right for them and that's where they need to go, we bless

them on their way.

You know, I know Andy, you, you'd live in a, I mean, you don't live in a physical, well,

actually you may, but you're, you're very involved with the physical church and this, and you're

working in the physical environment doing digital ministry.

You're working in a, in a, in a digital environment, um, with working, helping Mark and even some

of the stuff you're doing with, with us through digital church network.

Um, talk to me a little bit, maybe some of, some of the other differences between physical

and digital, maybe some of the tensions between the two, because you're, you're in a unique

spot where you are actually seeing both sides of the coin closely.

So, uh, what insights do you have?

Unfortunately, the conversation you were having with the 60 year old gentleman is a little bit

more than norm.

I did a podcast, um, actually with my brother yesterday that we do for Bayhope and we were

discussing globalization and we were discussing, you know, some of the things that are happening

politically around the world and it got kind of heady and all that.

But the one thing that I kept coming back to was we have these different generations of

people that it used to be your generations were long.

So you had your baby boomers, your Gen X, all those other things.

They were fairly large chunks.

You had your golden generation that kind of came out of world war two.

They were very, they're, they're still around with us.

They're getting older and older and older, very stoic, very set in their ways, very resilient,

which led into the baby boomers again, very resilient, very stoic.

The baby boomers are the ones that are still kind of in control of mainstream church right

now, physical church.

And they have been doing church their way for 30, 40 years.

That's how church is done.

You can never have a relationship online.

That person doesn't exist.

Digital wasn't around when I was younger.

So if I can't hug you, then you don't exist to me.

And what we're now seeing is the push against that, almost like an anti-globalization, almost

like a normalization of the fact that, no, I can do everything I need to do from my phone.

I can do everything I need to do from my computer.

I can have all of these relationships with people all across the world.

And so there's these, it feels a little bit like the worship wars, except it's a little

more volatile than that.

Because now it's not just generational differences.

It's not just get your gosh darn guitars off of my stage.

Now it's, well, you need to, you can't do church on the internet, but hey, I need to call you

on my phone that I could theoretically be connecting with people.

And so there's a, there's a weird, there's a weird shift that's happening there.

And the interesting thing about churches like Bay Hope or, or even some of the, some of

the other churches that are exploring, I was talking with Tyler Sansom, he and I are going

to be kind of doing some stuff as well.

And one of the things both he and I were kind of commiserating about was that 95% of the

people in your church are ready to go digital.

They're, yes, let's go.

Come on, let's do it.

But that 5% of your traditionalists, the 5% of the, the, the ones that want to kind of

stay with the status quo are usually the vocal minority that are, that are really showing

up poorly for the physical church.

And so when you experience something like Lux, and I have to say, like I've experienced in

the last year being with Lux, obviously I've been on staff for six or seven months now,

um, ish, I've experienced more in that last year through Lux in terms of, um, actual connection

with people.

And that's been through my camera in my studio than I have in almost a year at Bay Hope church.

And that's saying something.

Uh, so I, I think there's, there's varied differences there.

I think there's going to come a point when the traditionalists are just going to be retiring

and we're going to have the new norm be this kind of hybrid digital and physical.

You know, let's, let's, let's, I want to, I want to get into some nuts and bolts because

that's a, that's a really, I mean, I didn't want to put words in your mouth, but I was curious

if you were going to go there.

Um, you're getting more relational equity out of a digital only expression of a church.

Compared to a physical expression of a church that's doing digital ministry.

Now I'm not, I'm not looking for a gotcha journalism.

I'm not, you know, that's smoking gun.

That's not, that's not where I'm going, but, but, you know, I've always talked about how

churches that lean into digital community and take advantage of that have far more relationship

potential compared to broadcasting church services in small groups.

Like, do you think that's the reason why you're able to be more relational?

I know, Mark, you've, you've played both sides of the coin as well.

What are your guys takes, um, as, as you're really looking in here?

I know you both have talked about how you've been so relational.

What are, what are the wins that you're seeing?

Like, well, how, what, what's the why behind that?

Do you think I should say?

I mean, I can answer, I can answer almost immediately.

And I, and I'll, I'm going to answer kind of in the form of an illustration, um, every

week or every, every, every month we do what's called the dream team meetup at Lux.

The dream team is kind of the leadership team of Lux.

It's really, they're the heartbeat of the volunteers.

Uh, they're, they're the leaders and Mark kind of has been pouring into them for over a year,

almost two years now, and, uh, is really developing this leadership curriculum for them this year.

Not, not to be draconic or anything, but just to kind of help them up their game in terms of

being volunteers into the space.

Every month we do a dream team meetup.

It's on a Thursday evening.

Um, Thursdays I'm usually drained.

It's been a long week.

I'm working a million different ways.

Uh, I've got a wife and three kids, you know, I'm doing lacrosse and we're doing track and

we're doing soccer and then there's work and Bible studies and, you know, leading all these other

things, but that time, the last, and especially the last time we spent about what, half an hour

in our own separate rooms praying with one another.

And we just had groups of five and six of us just praying.

And I, I, I felt a deeper connection with those other four dudes in that room than I have had

in any room, in any prayer team, in any prayer thing that I have in a year and a half, maybe

even since COVID at, at my physical church.

And I think there's two reasons for that.

Number one is that there is no pretense when you're on a camera in front of people, you're

going to hear kids running around the background.

You're going to hear dogs.

You're going to, it's just, there's just sloppy life happening all around you.

You don't get that when you're at a, in a church building, you don't get the real life

happening around you.

Number one, number two, especially in the gamer world, gamers are so used to immediately

getting to the heart of who you are as a person.

Normally that's a 13 year old yelling at you a call of duty, like really just getting to the

heart of why you're a terrible person and exposing your biggest and deepest regrets and fears with

one comment, because that happens.

But, but the core of it is we are so used to just getting right to the deepest part of who we are.

And, and I think that's very unique.

And I think that's something that the physical church can learn from.

You know, I, I love that answer.

I love that answer, Andy.

And I think it's true.

Um, people are generally less guarded online than they are in person.

There is so much that is in that question, Jeff, because there is the difference between

physical and digital, but that's not the only difference, right?

Some of that difference is that Lux is intentionally not programmatic.

And so we devote ourselves to a handful of rhythms and we just keep doing those things,

right?

And so because of that, we don't have a ton of programs that we're running and things that

we're doing, which allows us to be really intentional about relationships that we develop

and the spiritual disciplines that we participate in.

And that doesn't really have as much to do with online to offline as it much as it does to

do with the fact that physical church has largely been program driven for a lot of years and

it's not working and it's working less and less.

Like I know it's working for some churches and you're probably going to say it works for

my church and that's fine, but nationally it's working less and less and it, and it's exhausting.

And so that's not what we wanted to do.

So there's some of it that has to do with church structure that creates the space and the

room for those relationships.

There also is something because of how young our church is, not just how new it is, but how

physically young many of our members are, most of us are in our twenties and thirties.

There's a generational thing there because twenties and thirties, 30 and 30 year olds are a lot more

comfortable with approaching difficult subjects and being open about mental health issues.

There's less stigmas around that than there are with older generations.

So we don't have some of that stuff to overcome that perhaps another, a physical church might

have to overcome.

I have very deep and meaningful connections with the physical church that I ministered in for

years, but I will say that the ones that I have here at Lux are just as deep and meaningful

for me.

I mean, I love the people just as deeply and many of them I will never meet in person.

So exactly why is it that we can find these connections and that they seem to work maybe

even faster or, um, I'm not going to say better, but as good in terms of like the depth of relationship

as we do in the physical church.

I think there's a lot of things that have to go into that.

Um, but ultimately I think most people in the physical church just really underestimate digital

space.

They just have no comprehension of it because they've never built a relationship there.

And so their understanding is just like Facebook posts and Facebook arguments and, you know,

keyboard warriors.

And at best, you know, at worst, it's just, Hey, yeah, we use Instagram to promote our church.

And there's somebody on my staff that does these things called reels.

Um, and that's like, your understanding is just shipping your story out to everybody and

never giving an opportunity to hear people's.

There's not a person on our dream team who I haven't heard their story, who I haven't sat

in a one-on-one call with them.

I haven't had them share their hurt and their spiritual journey with me.

I know their stories intimately.

At this point, I baptized myself.

I physically baptized one of the members of our team, um, because she was in the area and

came to a service and I baptized her.

And so like, I have a D even in two years, I have a very deep relationship with these people.

And part of it is honestly, because we genuinely do life together every day.

It's, and that's very different than a physical church.

Like we are conversating every single day.

Like someone is always online.

Like when I wake up in the morning, I'm in church.

When I go to bed at night, I'm turning off because I'm just done being in church, right?

We're never not in church, not always in church service, but we're always in the church building

because it's right there at our fingertips all the time.

And we are living life together all the time there and, uh, and gathering together all the

time there.

And so I think that does make a difference too, because you do feel closer to these people

when it's people that have prayed for you daily, that have talked to you daily, that you're

in Bible study with every day, um, that there's this daily connection that helps you break down

some walls and feel close to people.

What's the, what's the spiritual direction of the average, uh, spiritual temperature, you

know, zero nowhere or negative 10, no awareness of Christ.

Zero new Christian 10, um, you know, full devoted disciple, like the average gamer, the average

person that you're, um, working with that, that you're doing ministry with that you're discipling.

Do they, do they know who Jesus is?

Is there, is it negative 10 where they're fully agnostic and atheist?

Like what's, what, what, what are you seeing and feeling in gaming space?

I, I would be curious to hear Andy's response to this.

I would say that most of our people went to church at one point and left the church at

one point.

And most of them have not had an intention of coming back.

There are some people which God has richly blessed us with who are strong believers and

who came to us because they wanted to help us.

And that's amazing.

Um, and they make up a decent portion of our core team, like our, our dream team.

Um, and then it's kind of a mixed bag from there.

Uh, you have really two things in the gaming world.

You have Christians who are gamers who are looking for safe haven, right?

In a world that is largely volatile and hostile towards them and what they believe, extremely

liberal and oftentimes openly, openly vicious to Christians.

They're looking for a safe space.

So we do have some people who come into our community because they're searching for that,

right?

They're looking for a space of like-minded people to play games with, to get connected

with and to grow with.

And then we have people who are genuine explorers, kind of spiritual pilgrims, people who are from

the EU or something like, I'm not really sure what I believe.

I've never really been to church before, but I'm kind of exploring it.

And they have a very strange view of who a God could be.

They believe in a God, but it's like a mishmash of a bunch of different gods that they've

sort of cut apart and pasted together.

But I would say it's not common for us to have openly hostile, militant, atheistic individuals

who are coming into our church wanting to engage.

That does not happen often.

I think maybe the closest to that is Flying Blind, who was a Wiccan church leader who was

returning.

But even he grew up in the church and left.

And so it varies.

It definitely varies.

Just like a physical church would.

I mean, people or people, no matter where they are, it does vary.

I mean, VR guys talk to me about trolls all the time, coming in, trying to disrupt, trying

to literally crash the VR world just to be a problem.

Trolls really isn't an issue in gaming?

Oh, no, it is.

It is.

We routinely have to bring out the band hammer.

We routinely have to mod them out of the chat.

But it's different because in Discord, and I just jumped all over this, Mark.

Sorry about that.

But in Discord, you have to go through a series of steps before you can even post or before

you can even put links in or anything like that.

So it weeds out some of that stuff.

And then by the time they actually start posting, you can almost tell immediately there is no long

con there.

During a live service, we've got anywhere between four and seven moderators in the chat at any

time.

So they'll just swoop in and excise the demon out of there.

I'm not sure if you're being literal or figurative with the word demon, but that's...

Take it as you will.

Some of them may not even know either.

So that's interesting.

Would you agree what Mark was saying about the spiritual temperature?

Andy, does that resonate with what you're saying?

Yeah.

A lot of it is...

The only thing I would say that would run as kind of an additive to that is that

they, most people had been to church, but I don't think it was their own faith.

Like they didn't go of their own accord.

Most of them were drugged by their parents or grandparents or, you know, some other friend

or something and had either rebelled or had just had spiritual apathy and had no care in

the world about exploring who Jesus was.

I don't think most of them, there was no real curiosity.

We have a lot of people too who, for whatever reason, just do not fit in well in sub-church

subculture.

And whether that's because, you know, they listen to a lot.

They really like death metal, right?

Or they love Dungeons and Dragons.

Or for some of them, we have some people with learning disabilities, right?

Or anxiety.

A lot of people who struggle with, you know, diagnosable anxiety disorders or, you know,

ADHD.

And so we do have some people who are sort of like on the spectrum in a variety of different

conditions.

And so it's hard for them to connect.

We have some people with disabilities.

They can't go to a physical church because of physical limitations as well.

And so there are some people like that, which like the reason they are in our church is

sometimes it looks a little bit different than maybe the reason why, you know, which my point

is this, Jeff, is that it's everyone.

It's everyone.

Like it runs the gambit.

And our church is specifically geared towards reaching de-churched people.

That's who we're trying to reach.

And so people who left the church 10 years ago and have no intentions of going through

the doors for church again, rather roll the dice with hell.

And so that's the type of person that we're going after.

And largely, that's the type of person that we get.

So is there any, you know, in marketing and normally in digital church, I talk about like

a persona, have a target audience.

Are you like reaching 16-year-old men?

Is it 40s?

Like what, what, is there a persona?

Like what do you, how do you, how do you manage that?

Yeah.

Our goal is to reach a 27-year-old man who's working a dead-end job.

Not really sure what he's supposed to do with his life.

Comes home from work each day.

Tries to escape from that feeling by playing video games.

Gets off too late at night.

Tries to fall asleep and struggles too.

Isn't really involved in a whole lot in terms of like things that are bigger than himself,

than LGBTQ rights.

And that's largely not because he believes in it or really cares much for it.

It just feels culturally like that's what he's supposed to be in favor of.

And so that's kind of the feeling and vibe of the person that we're trying to reach.

And you can see that through the equipment that we use, the language that we use, the way

that we preach and teach, the way our Discord is designed, everything is funneled through

that one.

But you've told me, I mean, I remember you telling me there's like a grandma that's part

of your church or something.

Like, and so you're even stretching beyond the perceived personas as you're doing ministry.

Yeah.

The smaller you aim, the bigger you hit, right?

And I think that that's true, period.

And you can see this in marketing all the time.

That might even be a marketing thing that I should attribute to someone in a quote that

I don't know who quoted it.

But yeah, we've seen that, right?

Like my wife's aunt, Jannie, is a member of our team.

She's a prayer warrior for us.

And she prays live on stream from her iPad.

And it's a little fuzzy sometimes.

But my wife's aunt's like in her 60s.

She's not a gamer.

But man, does she love our church.

I don't think she's missed a week of Lux in two years.

And she's awesome.

Jannie's awesome.

She's in a small group.

She's plugged in.

She said she has grown more in the last two years at Lux than she did.

Spiritually, then in her entire life growing up in a physical church.

And we've seen it.

We've seen it.

We're seeing her life change radically.

And this is somebody who's not a gamer, who's not in our age bracket, who isn't even the

gender of the individual that we're targeting.

And that's the case across the board, right?

Yeah, that's our aim.

But we have Mika, who's 17.

And we have Mika's mom, Lynn, who's older than 17 because Mika's 17.

And they're awesome.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

You have a mom and a daughter attending a digital...

Are you kidding?

A couple of them.

Yeah, a couple of them.

I've never heard that story.

That's awesome.

Yeah, we have Zef and Homemade Things.

So Zef is awesome.

She's in our area.

I won't give any personal information out.

Zef is pretty private about that.

But Zef is the person...

Zef came into our community.

And Zef had problems in other communities with dishonesty and a lack of transparency, sort

of posting images that weren't really her, that sort of thing, kind of creating a fake

persona.

And I know some of my friends' discords where they had had some conversations as a product

of that, right?

Zef came into our community very guarded.

I've never seen Zef's face.

She had never turned on a camera, never shared anything.

In time, she shared her real name.

She's posted real pictures of herself this year for our costume contest that we did in October.

And Homemade Things, her mom is coming to our server.

She's dealing with some medical issues right now.

We're literally meeting every week with Homemade Things, who's older and not a gamer.

And we're praying with her every week as she goes through the medical stuff that she's going

through right now.

And we're caring for Zef and Homemade Things, mother-daughter.

And we're seeing that.

We're seeing a couple of specifically mother-daughter combos.

But part of it is too, it's just like I think with Meek and Lynn, Lynn is seeing a place

where her daughter's faith is being awakened.

And she's becoming excited about me maybe being called into ministry.

And she's exploring that.

And I think it's put some excitement there for Lynn to then come and say, okay, what is...

And I know Lynn.

I've met with her.

I know their physical church.

I've preached at their physical church before.

So I know that Lynn is still probably very involved there.

And Lux is a thing that she does with her daughter.

But it's still really cool and powerful.

That may be.

I mean, one of the criticisms that I get around digital church is the generational gap.

Like, are generations able to go together?

And I've never...

I mean, I've always...

Yeah, why not?

But this may be the first story that I've ever heard.

There probably are others, but I just haven't heard it.

My wife's small group runs from 60s to 17.

Wow.

That's her problem.

There is such a generational gap in my wife's small group.

It's a handful of moms who have young kids, a teenager, and some people who are older than

that, like kids out of the house age, empty nesters.

And that's one of the biggest obstacles she has with her small group is how big the age

gap is there.

And yeah, generational stuff happens.

People ask me, how do we do children's ministry?

Well, come by and check it out because Bougie read the Bible in one year with us.

And now every day he reads in the New Testament one year.

He read the Bible in one year.

He never read the Bible before.

He read the whole Bible with us, asking great questions the whole time.

Gets to the New Testament a year, says, this is not enough Bible for me.

So every day he reads the chapter before, the chapter of the day, and the chapter after.

So he's reading the New Testament three times over the course of this year.

And every day he reads it to his son.

And now his son is going to him, daddy, we read that last time.

Or daddy, I like that part, or this or that.

And his son, who Roman is, I don't know, about my daughter's age, a little bit younger.

It's like four or five years old, is being discipled by his father.

And his children are being discipled by their father because Bougie is experiencing Christ

through our church.

And this is another couple, wife and husband, who attend our church faithfully, who would

not be in church right now.

By the way, Bougie wants to be called Bougie.

Mark is not insulting Bougie by calling him Bougie.

He's not bourgeois.

Yeah, no, no, this is good.

It's actually somebody wants that name.

So that's tolerable.

That's his screen name.

That's his screen name, Bougie.

Hey, listen, we can have this conversation literally all day.

And that's why we're doing a season on this through the Church Digital.

In the coming weeks, we're really going to start to look at some of the nuances in digital

and nerd culture and gaming culture and churches that are operating in Twitch and Discord, churches

that are operating in actual video games, churches that are physical churches that are doing things

alongside gaming culture and reaching in.

I really want to unpack the idea of gaming culture here and how we, whatever expression of church

you have, can be involved in reaching into that.

So Mark's going to be along for a lot of the ride for me.

Andy, I'm sure, will have a presence as we're going through this.

So gentlemen, just right up here as we're closing, thanks for taking some time, kicking the season

off and excited to hear what's going on with Lux and beyond.

But as we're landing the plane here, Andy, let you go first.

Any closing thoughts?

No, looking forward to the season.

I think there's a lot of, especially with the guest list you got coming up, there's a lot of

information.

There's a wealth of knowledge out there and you've got a lot of different models.

But most importantly, you got a lot of hearts for Jesus that are just looking to do things

to reach the community.

And that is so, so, so cool.

Awesome.

Yeah, so sounds good with that.

Mark, on your side, anything, any closing thoughts?

You know, there's this really cool thing over on the Church Digital's website that you can

click now called Physical Church Consulting.

And it either is launched or it'll be launched shortly after you listen to this episode.

And you can hire me or Andy or Jeff to come hang out with your church and talk about how

you can move from putting a live stream out there on the internet to building genuine relationships

and deepening those with people online and to see stories like some of the ones that you

heard about right here because there's people looking for it on the internet.

So that's my only plug is go check that out because the Church Digital is doing a ton of

really cool stuff.

And Jeff has put what seems to be an endless number of thankless hours into this beast and

continues to do so.

And so you should go click on that link and check it out.

Hey, Mark, Andy, thanks for jumping on the podcast with us as we've been kicking off this idea

of season four, Jesus, Gamers, and Church.

Really looking forward to more of these conversations moving forward.

Mark is going to be a regular guest, a regular host, a co-host is probably a better word, a co-host.

Let's call it that.

Officially, let's just say that right now on air.

Mark's going to be a co-host with this season with me as we start to explain and explore

this new gaming culture and how we, the church, need to be operating in it.

Remember what we had talked about.

We're going to be on Twitch, twitch.tv slash digitalchurchnetwork.

We're going to be on that platform every Thursday, 3 p.m. Eastern.

We've got an interview coming up in just a couple days with Bubba from Love Thy Nerd.

I hinted at it earlier, but he is with Love Thy Nerd.

They're doing an incredible job reaching the nerd culture for Christ and coming alongside

churches that want to help reach the nerd culture.

What is the nerd culture?

How does a physical church reach that?

Well, come listen to the interview Thursday on twitch.tv slash digitalchurchnetwork.

Links in the show notes, information in the show notes as well.

If you're not going to catch the live stream, it'll be on the podcast as well.

We'll take the stream and turn it into a podcast by the usual time, Monday.

But hey, you know what?

We're going to land the plane.

So for Mark, for Andy, for myself, Jeff at the Church Digital, Digital Church Network

and lover of Goldeneye for Nintendo 64.

Thanks for jumping on the podcast here and we'll see you next time, literally Thursday on the

show.

Y'all have a good day.