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These days, churches use all sorts of things to aid in evangelism. Movie nights, Super-bowl parties, and yes, even Halo 3. Recently Owen Strachan posted on his blog about this growing video-game evangelism trend. We liked what he had to say so much, we thought we’d have him on the show to talk about it.
Owen is a soon-to-be graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is also an assistant to Dr. Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also just a really really smart guy with a heart for ministry.
All three of us also count down our Top (Bottom?) Five Misguided Uses of Pop Culture! You don’t want to miss that!
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We would love to hear your top five. Maybe it will include us! Send that or any other questions or comments to christandpopculture@gmail.com. Or you can leave a comment below. Even better, you can leave us a voicemail at 206-333-0211. (Note: some of you may have left voicemails at the old number recently. We’re sorry, we never got them. That number has expired and is no longer used. Please call and leave your message at this number. Thanks!)
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Really, my only objection is to the idea that we need to connive to get people into church. The church operates the best and is most successful when it exists simply as the church, a sanctified body that exults in the gospel of Christ and its proclamation.
If the members of a church want to get together and have a Halo 3 LAN party* or something, by all means let them indulge. But they should imagine that such a thing could or should be a tool for evangelism.
Incidentally, did you hear that Willow Creek basically stated that their program-oriented style of ministry was an utter failure in terms of kingdom expansion? Similar idea to the Halo 3 ministry thing, I think.
*note: I don’t even know if xBox 360 can support LAN parties.
I really liked Owen’s concept of Family evangelism and discipleship.
In regard to the difference between film and video games I think the distinction Owen drew between films often engaging deeper life issues and games rarely doing so is becoming (and will become) less and less true. A perfect example of this is Bioshock, a game that explores the problems with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism and also foregrounds the seriousness of taking human life. Yes, button mashing fun will always be with us, but the industry is changing.
As far as not spending too much time in a virtual world, I think that what we’re really addressing is being good stewards of our time in general. It’s not that playing video games is any more of a potential distraction from our obligations than watching football every Sunday or going to the movies, it’s just another aspect of our lives–in a culture in love with entertainment–that we must be vigilant in moderating.
I can’t agree more about Owen’s comment on Christian rappers who take the style and violence of gangster rap and just change a few words. I’m going to be looking for this cd of his now…..
I would suggest getting someone who is actually an active online gamer the next time you want to talk about the pop culture behemoth that is video games. I got kind of angry listening to this podcast, particularly since it was my first one.