Eric Metcalf | CCC/New Thing Adult Ministry Champion
In my mind’s eye I can see it. I can see a life that is seamlessly filled with the love of Christ. I can see myself living out my hobbies, mowing my yard, enjoying the relationships around me. It’s a vision I’ve had for my life and others for a very long time – what I call a life-integrated ministry – where we engage popular culture while sharing the Gospel. What and where are these communities for us to engage? There all around us: bicycle clubs, LAN parties, Texas Hold’em parties, sports leagues, work-out gyms, book reading clubs; subculture after subculture after subculture.
Wikipedia defines subculture as a group of people with a culture (whether distinct or hidden) which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong. There all around us. We are a part of one as Christians and sometimes find ourselves too immersed in our subculture to even realize there are other social networks around us.
A few years ago I purchased an XBOX just so I could own and play a game called HALO (you may have heard of it). It was shortly after playing this game that I quickly realized I needed to play this with friends – so I invited them over and we had a blast! After a couple of months of mayhem my friends invited their friends and then their friends invited there friends to where we had about 18 people showing up on a weekly basis to play HALO – we were creating a subculture and in some ways we were actually engaging subculture that already existed. I knew this to be true, because many of the guys (and a gal) who were showing up to play already played HALO online and we had simply brought those two subcultures together.
After about 9 months of us playing weekly, I kept having the urge to show the guys I was a Christian. I wanted to open the gaming night in prayer or something – but for some reason it just didn’t feel right, so I waited. Actually some of the guys who played weekly were Christians and one night one of them asked if we could pray for his cousin who he had just learned committed suicide – and of course we did. After we finished praying, we started up the XBOX’s and began the video game madness and then God took our simple community and brought gamers to Jesus.
One by one, guys started turning their life to Christ; baptisms, attending celebration services after being away for years, serving in ministry, leading small groups, and sacrificial giving. How did all this happen? One answer: God’s grace. We were there to just play video games and God had other plans – and I’m glad He did. However, we now try to be more intentional as we strive to create opportunity for spiritual conversations:
- Pray – pray that God gives us the right spiritual moment for us to be a part of
- Hang out – do something other than shoot each other in video games: go to a bar, catch a movie, play darts – something that allows conversation
- Keep it real – a lot of the guys at HALO are now Christ-followers and we talk about church because we love it; so we’re not afraid to keep it real
- Have fun – most people think Christians are boring and don’t know how to laugh – we make sure there is plenty of that
It has almost been 5 years since we first played HALO and here we are 5 years later playing HALO 3 in a finished basement at that same friend’s house. Guys are still showing up who don’t know Jesus because someone who plays invited them. We’ll see what happens, but I’m really excited, because God is using what could be a mindless gaming experience as a mission field and I look forward to see who is going to win the next game tomorrow night.
