#47: Where The Gospel Meets Geek Culture

#47: Where the Gospel Meets Geek Culture

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

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JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, Lachlan, the time has come to find out how much of a geek you are. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Dream come true. (laughter) All my life been preparing for this. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so here’s how we’re gonna do this. I have this very official Buzzfeed quiz called “What Percent Geek Are You?” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yes. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so here we go. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: All right. 

JESSE EUBANKS: What do you think about Star Wars? Your options – “Is that the one with Captain Picard?” “Meh. It’s okay.” “Yeah! Lasers, stuff blowing up!” “The originals were great. The prequels never happened.” Or “What I don’t get is how the Millennium Falcon flew between star systems with a broken hyperdrive.” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: I’m gonna go full on – originals were great. Prequels, crap. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, next one. What does “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B,A, start – ” Oh, they don’t have start on there. That’s how geeky I am. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: (laughs) That is straight up video game. Can you name the video game? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, it’s Contra. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah, my boy. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay. Have you read Lord of the Rings? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: (laughs) Yes. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yes? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Obviously. 

JESSE EUBANKS: How about A Song of Ice and Fire?

LACHLAN COFFEY: (laughs) I don’t know what that is. Is that that Will Ferrell movie? Eurovision? Is this Eurovision from Netflix? 

JESSE EUBANKS: It’s the same thing. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay. I have no idea what you’re talking about. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, have you played, have you played World of Warcraft? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: No… This is a game? (laughs)

JESSE EUBANKS: It is a game. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay. I have not.

JESSE EUBANKS: Do you have opinions about which is the best Doctor Who?

LACHLAN COFFEY: Uh, my answer is doctor who? Question mark. Do you like how I did that? 

JESSE EUBANKS: (laughs) That’s good. Okay. What’s Reddit? – “No clue.” “That’s where the bad people of the internet live.” “The front page of the internet.” “Come to my subreddit, our nerd chat, and I’ll tell you.”

LACHLAN COFFEY: I don’t – I know what Reddit is, but I don’t have a subreddit. I go to people’s subreddit. I’ll do that one – “Come to my subreddit.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay. All right. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: But let it, the listener, know I have no subreddit. 

JESSE EUBANKS: (laughs) Okay. Last question – do you consider yourself a geek? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yes. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay. Now that we have formulated this extremely scientific test, what do your results say? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Mine says I got 58% geek!

JESSE EUBANKS: 58 percent? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yes. 

JESSE EUBANKS: That’s kind of fascinating. Do you know why?

LACHLAN COFFEY: Why? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Because I only got 44%. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Ooh, I’m so much more geek. 

JESSE EUBANKS: You are more geek than I am. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah. This says you are more geek than not. You have played Magic The Gathering or Hearthstone, and you know the difference between Uruk-hai and plain old Orcs. (laughs)

JESSE EUBANKS: Is it true? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah. (laughter) I do know those. Yeah. Come on guys. Everyone knows what the difference between Ur-hai, whatever.

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, my gosh.

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JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: And I’m Lachlan Coffey. Every episode we hear stories of social action and Christian community. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Today’s episode is where the gospel meets geek culture. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: 10-point power sword. 

JESSE EUBANKS: (laughs) What are you doing?

LACHLAN COFFEY: I was just checking to see if that was geeky enough, but seriously I’m actually pretty excited about this episode because geek culture runs in these veins. It’s been sort of hidden in the shadows for a long time, right? I mean, it feels like over the last five years, ever since Marvel really, like, came to the spotlight, that it feels like geek culture is starting to move up in the ranks of popularity. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. So today I think that we should take a look at what exactly is a geek, what’s the relationship between geeks and the church, and is geek culture something for Christians to engage or is it simply just a waste of time? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: And just as a point of clarity, people today use the term geek and nerd interchangeably. So you’re gonna hear both terms in this episode, but they generally mean the same thing. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

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JESSE EUBANKS: So Lachlan, you scored that you are more geek than not on that quiz. So what do you geek out about? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: I’ll tell you my number one thing, and it’s (laughs) – I’m embarrassed to say, but I, I love Quantum Leap with all my heart. Do you remember that show? 

JESSE EUBANKS: (laughs) You do love Quantum Leap. Yes.

LACHLAN COFFEY: 1984, 1985, something like that. Theorizing that one man can travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator and vanished. (laughs) I can keep going, but I’ll stop. I, uh, I love Quantum Leap. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. My like super geeky confession. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay.

JESSE EUBANKS: Almost every lunch break, I watch videos dissecting everything Marvel.

LACHLAN COFFEY: That’s what you do? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. That’s like my thing, like I literally watch like easter egg trailers, like –

LACHLAN COFFEY: That’s awesome. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Like easter egg YouTube videos. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: Like every day. You and I are pretty geeky, but we’re not alone in our geekiness. In fact, 17% of Americans self-identify as geeks. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah, but here’s my question – what exactly does that mean today? I mean, what makes a geek a geek? Is it just that you know random stuff about obscure pop culture references, or is there actually more to it? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, the truth is that a term like “geek” is kind of ambiguous to define, but I think what might help is a brief history of where the term came from and how it’s evolved over time.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Great. Okay. Where do we start? 

JESSE EUBANKS: To look at the term “geek,” we have to go all the way back to the early 1900s and we actually get to visit a circus. So as far as we can tell, the term “geek” is based off a German word meaning “fool,” and it first started to be used widely here at traveling circuses. It was actually used as a term for certain carnival performers who – get this – their only skill was biting the heads off of small animals like snakes or chickens. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay, that will stick with me for the rest of the day. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, like that’s pretty visual. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: So like from the very beginning, basically geeks were regarded as strange. So you could go to the circus, you could watch the geek perform. Their skills were barbaric. They were society’s bottom rung, which first began the stereotype of geeks being social outcasts. So let’s leave the early 1900s and fast forward all the way to the 1950s. By the 1950s, the term “geek” started becoming synonymous with the term “nerd,” and it meant someone who was antisocial and diligently devoted to schoolwork and study. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah, like, uh, okay, I’m with you. Brainiac, like a real brainiac kind of guy.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. Super, super brainy. And you might hear this term thrown around by kids at the school playground, but it was like, it was not a compliment. It was more a term of mockery, like you did not want to be called a geek at school. Jumping ahead again, let’s go to the 1980s. And here the term “geek” branched beyond academic circles, and it actually became a term for anybody obsessively engaged in kind of anything to extreme levels. This was mostly in reference to very niche subjects like computer technology or comic books. And today, according to Urban Dictionary, the term “geek” or “nerd” – it’s currently most used when referring to various fandoms. So think like Star Wars, Marvel superheroes, Final Fantasy, Full Metal Alchemists, so like very particular corners of culture.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay, so you’re saying, you know, to be a geek, you have to be involved in some kind of, like, super fan culture? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, sort of. I mean, so being a geek is far less negative than it used to be. In fact, according to bitrebels.com, 66% of millennials think that being a geek is actually a compliment. And today being a geek is mostly, like, self-declared, but the people declaring the label have a certain level of devotion. So, like, no one’s gonna play a round of Mario Kart and say, you know, “Oh, I’m a Nintendo geek.” Like there’s a level of, like, extreme interest and engagement that geeks possess. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: So you could say that a geek is someone who engages a corner of culture, but to an extreme.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yes, and that extreme, you know – it can have varying levels, varying degrees. But yeah, geeks engage with culture, and this is where Christianity can step in because we as Christians have specific views on what it means to engage the culture around us.

In the gospel of John, when Jesus is having his final Passover meal with his disciples, he prays what we call the high priestly prayer. It’s a prayer for all his followers to have unity and grit, to carry out the mission that he’s leaving to them. And in that prayer, Jesus says this – “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: This is where we get the popular Christian saying “in the world, but not of it.” Basically, we can’t live in a bubble, like the outside world doesn’t exist. I mean, we know winter is coming, but we should use discernment when it comes to how we interact with that world.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. And in the past when the church has engaged with geek culture, that discernment has actually often led to fear and to judgment, which is something a guy named Dave Chrisman found out at an early age. Dave grew up in eastern Kentucky, and when he was a kid, a brand-new geek phenomenon had just been introduced to the world – a game called Dungeons and Dragons. 

DAVE CHRISMAN: I’ve been involved with Dungeons and Dragons since it was created back in the ’70s. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, now if you’re not familiar with it, Dungeons and Dragons is a board game that incorporates role-playing and fantasy elements. Most people refer to it as D&D. So Lachlan, have you ever played D&D? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: No. Never once. It’s super intimidating. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, there’s a lot involved. Now when Dave says that he was involved with D&D, he means like really involved, like it was what he spent most of his time doing. He wrote his own adventures, drew maps, painted mini figurines, like he was by far a D&D geek. And at the time Dave was playing D&D with his friends, he was also a Christian and involved in his youth group. And of course, like, what do youth groups do? They go to camp every year. But for Dave, camp was not always a lot of fun. 

DAVE CHRISMAN: One of the important things to understand about me is that I have severe asthma, but it was so bad when I was a child that there were a lot of things that the other kids could do that I could not do because, uh, if I was having an asthma attack or a bad breathing day, it was just, I was incapable of doing those things.

JESSE EUBANKS: So every year at camp, while the rest of the youth group was off horseback riding or playing sports or swimming or doing, you know, all the typical camp stuff, Dave was kind of left on his own. But one year when Dave was about 12 years old, he had a camp experience that completely changed his life and his involvement with D&D.

DAVE CHRISMAN: And so as I was walking around the camp, I walked over to a barn. I was feeling down, and I wasn’t feeling well again. And so there was a pastor there. He came up to me, and he said, “Well, hey, young man, you know, how, how are you doing today?” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Man, that, that’s awesome. That’s like a good pastor, someone that’s noticed Dave was alone and actually steps in. I, I like that guy. 

DAVE CHRISMAN: He said, “You seem a little down.” And I said, “Yeah, I’m, I’m just not feeling it today.”

JESSE EUBANKS: So they just start talking about life, about Dave’s interests. 

DAVE CHRISMAN: He proceeded to say, “What are some of the things that you really like to do?” I said, “Well, I love playing games, and I love hanging out with my friends.” He said, “What’s your favorite kind of game?” And I said, “Well, my favorite kind of game is Dungeons and Dragons. We play it all the time.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so Lachlan, let’s back up. You said you love Quantum Leap. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: I do.

JESSE EUBANKS: Like, why did you first get involved with watching it? Like, what value does it add to your life? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: I don’t know if I would say it, like, adds a ton of value, but it was something that I always enjoyed. It was fun. It killed time when I was young. I used to daydream about time travel. Well shoot, I still daydream about time – I night dream about time travel. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well who doesn’t?

LACHLAN COFFEY: I, I dream all the time. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so to people on the outside, your interest in Quantum Leap might seem weird or Dave’s interest in Dungeons and Dragons might seem weird, but, like, the truth is that geek culture stuff at its heart is about “we’re all gonna get together and be in community together and do something fun together, and we’re gonna engage our imaginations together.” Like aspects of that are similar to going to a church service, where we’re in community, there’s a fun element, and there’s engaging our imaginations as we imagine Jesus there with us, as we imagine encountering God. So as Christians, there are aspects of geek culture and aspects of our Christian faith, like those two things can line up really well. But here’s the catch. When Dave was a kid talking about D&D with his pastor, the pastor did not respond as Dave had hoped. In fact, the conversation took a sudden shift.

DAVE CHRISMAN: He said, uh, “One of my spiritual gifts is a gift of discernment and I can discern the spirits and I can discern when demons are about people’s hearts and lives and I can tell you right now that the spirit is telling me that you have demons on you.” Naturally, to a young kid, I was like, “Oh my gosh, what is this? I have demons in me.”

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay, wait, that took a sharp – I was rooting for the pastor for a second, then he took a sharp right. Uh.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Things kind of escalated right there. I remember when we were talking about hobbies, and now we’re talking about spiritual warfare. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Right. Well, it actually didn’t come out of nowhere ’cause in the pastor’s mind there was actually a clear connection.

DAVE CHRISMAN: And he said, “That’s it. I know exactly how these demons got into your heart and life. It was through Dungeons and Dragons.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Coming up – an exorcism, a fire, and the church’s track record with geeks. We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: It’s the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: And I’m Lachlan Coffey. Nanu Nanu. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets geek culture. 

JESSE EUBANKS: We’re hearing the story of Dave Chrisman. It’s the 1980s, Dave is a kid in youth group, and he’s just shared with a pastor about how much he loves Dungeons and Dragons. But he’s also told the pastor how depressed he is, and the pastor becomes convinced that Dave has demons because of his love of that game. Again, this is all happening in the 1980s, and that was during a time when a phenomenon was sweeping through Christian circles related to D&D. And that phenomenon – it was called the Satanic Panic. 

NEWS CLIPS: They are kids like yours, kids who are turning to darkness because society has shut God out… Nothing is acted out. The real action is in the mind… Dungeons and Dragons has been called the most effective introduction to the occult in the history of man…

JESSE EUBANKS: Lachlan, do you remember that? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: It sounds like a dance, like the electric slide. Do the Satanic Panic. (laughter)

JESSE EUBANKS: I wish that it was. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: (laughs) I wish it was, but I actually do remember this. This is like people freaking out. It was almost like, you know, before Harry Potter was a big thing where people started boycotting. You know, there was all this people claiming that there was depression and suicide all linked to, like, playing these board games, Dungeons and Dragons. Christians latched onto that, right? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like as a kid, I remember that I would be watching, like, Saturday morning cartoons and I could watch, like, GI Joe and He-Man and then Dungeons and Dragons would come on and, like, my mom would come in and turn off the television. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: The thing is, like, my mom wasn’t even, like, immersed in Christian circles at the time. This wasn’t a small thing. This was something that was really common in a lot of households around the U.S. It lasted throughout the ’80s, and it even went into the early ’90s. You know the radio show Adventures in Odyssey even did a two-part episode warning kids about the dangers of playing tabletop role-playing games.

ADVENTURES IN ODYSSEY CLIP: Come Jondel, the wizards of Kith are plotting against us. But I left my sword at home. You’ve gotta use magic. Magic? I think it’s time you learned. Come on. What is Jimmy getting himself into? 

JESSE EUBANKS: All that to say, like, when this pastor told Dave that he thought he had demons because of D&D, he was serious and he was really concerned, so much so that his answer to Dave was to basically perform an exorcism right then and there. 

DAVE CHRISMAN: And so he said, “Well, I can cast him out right now.” so he prayed this big charismatic prayer and it was just stirring and it was emotional and I felt the emotion of it. As he continued that charismatic prayer, I really felt like something was going on. I really felt like something was going on inside of me and, and around me. And by the time it was all over, I felt like something had really happened. And he said, “Uh, okay, well now we’ve done the first part. You know, the Holy Spirit brought you to here today and brought us together so we can purge these demons from your heart, from your life. But now when you get home, you need to burn all your D&D stuff, every bit of it.”

JESSE EUBANKS: You know, that was hard for Dave to hear because this was his world. I mean, this is what he spent most of his time doing. This was how he spent time with his friends. But he was also an impressionable teenage boy, so after he got home from camp, he actually did exactly what his pastor had told him. 

DAVE CHRISMAN: Maps that I had drawn, that I had put together on grid paper and had taped ’em together, it was just a big world map and I had adventure maps and, and all these stories and characters and I even had little figures – took it all out back and burned it all.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Nooo, he burned it all? 

JESSE EUBANKS: All of it. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Oh my goodness. For all of the D&D listeners right now, they’re all just, like, cringing.

JESSE EUBANKS: Right.

LACHLAN COFFEY: They’re like, “My precious,” you know? 

JESSE EUBANKS: And of course today those notions about the dangers of playing D&D have largely been dispelled. But for Dave and for many others, that posture from Christians – it had real spiritual implications.

DAVE CHRISMAN: It became, for me, a real crisis of faith at that point. I had to take some time to go in and start – I started questioning everything I’d ever been taught.

LACHLAN COFFEY: But at least that was in the ’80s. That’s more than 30 years ago. Geek stuff like we were talking about earlier, it’s much more widely accepted, right?

JESSE EUBANKS: In some spaces, yeah. But when it comes to church, you know, there is still a pervading narrative of judgment. You know, for instance, 2010, Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas traveled all the way to San Diego to protest outside a comic con convention. 2015, an evangelical blogger posted this – “The average American male teen plays video games 676 hours a year. With that time, he could learn the rudiments of French on Rosetta Stone, learn to play the guitar, play a sport, learn salsa dancing. He could, in short, become the most interesting man in the world.” So I think if we’re gonna talk about geek culture, I think that we need to recognize that this is still largely an ostracized group, even within the church.

BUBBA STALLCUP: From the church’s standpoint, right, nerd culture is, you know, a lot of times at best, um, marginalized and at worst demonized. 

JESSE EUBANKS: This is Bubba Stallcup. He used the word “nerd,” but remember the words “nerd” and “geek” – they’re synonymous. 

BUBBA STALLCUP: You’re either wasting your time with what you’re doing or you’re going straight to hell for doing what you’re doing.

JESSE EUBANKS: So Bubba’s a Christian. He’s also a geek. In particular, he’s a video game geek. And just like Dave, Bubba was introduced to his geekdom of video games at an early age.

BUBBA STALLCUP: Growing up, there was a kid on my street and I loved hanging out at this kid’s house ’cause he had every Nintendo game. We’re talking regular NES game. He had every Sega Genesis game. He may not have had all of them, but it just felt like he had everything. And so we would go to that kid’s house and play games, and he was like a little blockbuster video ’cause you could borrow games from his house and all sorts of stuff.

JESSE EUBANKS: Bubba continued to be fascinated with video games through high school and college and while he dated and eventually married his wife Anna. And as he’s gotten to know other geeks, he’s heard stories just like Dave’s, where the church’s response to geek culture – it’s been harmful. Here’s just one example.

BUBBA STALLCUP: There’s a person that we’ve been pouring into for several years now and this person’s not a Christian but has a Christian background, grew up kind of in a, you know, Christian environment, and you know, their partner also grew up in a Christian environment and they are no longer Christians and so they have a lot of hurt from the church.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you know, one poll actually suggests that up to 45% of people who self-identify as being a part of the geek culture are actually atheists, and so Bubba decided he wanted to do something, to step into the chasm between the church and the geek community. 

BUBBA STALLCUP: Change preconceived notions that nerds have with church culture and that church has with nerd culture and create that space where the church has largely – not 100% – but largely been demonizing for decades. You know, half a century almost has been demonizing nerd culture. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And since Bubba’s a gamer, he decided – what if he took gaming and used it as a mission field? Like what if through gaming he got to know people and found opportunities to talk to them about Jesus? 

BUBBA STALLCUP: So I told my wife, I was like, “Hey, I, I’m gonna try and do this.” And of course at first she was like, “Haha, yeah, okay, you’re gonna use video games – heavy air quotes – as a ministry.” And I was like, “I, I don’t know how to do it, but I know that that’s what I want to do. It’s what I’m good at.” It’s, you know – it sounded weird back then to say I’m good at video games, but it’s like this is what I enjoy, this is what I’m passionate about, and I know how to talk to people about that. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Well, of course he wants to do those things together. I mean, it’s a gamer that loves gaming, but I don’t know. I’m unconvinced. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you’re skeptical. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. Well, it turns out you’re not the only one that was skeptical. His wife Anna was also skeptical, and the reason she was skeptical was because video games had been a point of contention ever since they got married. Here’s Anna. 

ANNA STALLCUP: And he was spending hours and hours and hours gaming and, like, I would go to bed alone a lot. Like I was just really bitter about it and angry about it because it was like, “I didn’t realize that you gamed this much and you never told me that you gamed this much and I really didn’t get married to just go to bed alone every night.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Now we know that there are, like, plenty of women who are also gamers, but that isn’t Anna’s story, like that’s not her thing. You know, she didn’t grow up playing video games, and honestly she struggled to see why so much value was being placed in them. 

ANNA STALLCUP: There is this association or this importance in my mind of productivity and that you need to be able to show something for your time, the time that you spend.

JESSE EUBANKS: But at like at the same time, you know, she wanted to be supportive of her husband. So he’s got this idea of, like, “What if I can use video games for missions purposes?” And she’s like, “Okay.” And of course, like, if you’re gonna build relationships with games, you have to go where the people are. And so where are gamers?

LACHLAN COFFEY: They’re online. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So Bubba started getting online, joining guilds and clans and gaming late into the night and trying to be missional, but mostly just playing. And it didn’t take long for things to go really south. 

BUBBA STALLCUP: The turning point for me was I was playing a game online, um, on the PlayStation 3 called DC Universe Online. So you have superheroes. It’s very World of Warcraft, MMO RPGs kind of a game. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. Time out. (laughs) I heard a lot of letters there. There were a lot of letters. I don’t – what were the letters even? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so he said M-M-O-R-P-G. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay.

JESSE EUBANKS: Here’s what it stands for – massively multiplayer online role-playing games. These would be games like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy. You’re playing with other people online in like a role-playing setting. And these are the games that garner a lot of controversy because the way that they’re designed, they can be pretty addictive. 

ANNA STALLCUP: And those are the scary ones to me. You know, when he would play Red Dead Redemption and he could just get through story mode in a week, I would know, like, “I’m gonna lose my husband this week while he has this game, but I’ll get him back. Just let him have his fun, and then I’ll get him back.” But with these kinds of games, there’s no end. Like you can build this character up until you kind of reach the glass ceiling or whatever, and then you can start with another one. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay. I think it’s worth taking a second to talk about the addictive component of these types of games. So an article on the psychology of MMO RPGs and addiction states that there are three sort of design tactics that help make these types of games addictive. All right, here they are. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay.

JESSE EUBANKS: First, these types of games employ well-known behavioral conditioning principles from psychology. This is where they give you small tasks in the game to keep you coming back. Second, they also run on the principle of making friends or joining guilds, so they become a source of social obligation. You know, you can’t let your friends down by not coming to play. And third, they can also relieve a lot of common psychological stresses for those who play. So if you have low self-esteem or social anxiety or you feel out of control in the real world, you can have a sense of power and inclusion within the game. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: So what you’re saying, if I’m hearing you right, resistance is futile. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. I mean, kinda, yeah, just like social media, like, these games are designed to keep you coming back. And so even though Bubba’s intentions were good, the bottom line is he got sucked in.

BUBBA STALLCUP: And so it got to a point where I was playing that game a ton, and my wife was like, “Hey, uh, I don’t like what you’re doing here. You’re playing way more than you’re paying attention to me or the house or, you know, family or anything like that.”

LACHLAN COFFEY: This totally plays into that image of the person that lives in mom’s basement playing video games all day long, not knowing that there’s a world out there that they’re not a part of. You know, and when it comes to gaming, especially as Christians, we value family and stewarding our relationships and our time. And this is exactly the kind of thing that we’re afraid of, right? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and some of that concern is warranted. You know, it’s a common narrative. There are actually online support groups for what’s been coined “gaming widows.” That’s for spouses who have in a sense lost their significant other to a gaming world. As of 2016, one of those sites has over 3,000 members. And so Bubba’s idea to use gaming as a ministry – it had failed. He was being influenced more than he was influencing anyone else, and he and Anna had to have a “come to Jesus” conversation and really duke out what was going to work but also what wasn’t.

BUBBA STALLCUP: I won’t say that it was just like, “Oh, you know what, babe? You’re right. Absolutely. This is what we need to do.” No, we had a knock-down, drag-out fight about it because this was a big deal for me. 

ANNA STALLCUP: What I really mostly want more than just limitless time is to know what’s mine – which time is my time? Um, I just would really love to have boundaries, and then if I know there are boundaries I can deal. 

BUBBA STALLCUP: There’s a very cognitive dissonance in that moment where it’s like this is something that I do love and I do enjoy and now I have my wife, who rightly so is saying, “Hey, I don’t like this. I don’t like that you’re doing this.” And her narrative was not necessarily, “I hate video games.” It was, “I hate what you become with video games.”

JESSE EUBANKS: You know, obviously, like, we can listen to these clips and we can hear, like, these are pretty intimate details in a marriage, you know. And this is not a marriage counseling podcast, so we’re not gonna get into all the complexities of how a couple works these issues out. But in the end, what we need to understand is that Bubba is an all-or-nothing person. And so with that mentality, he made a pretty drastic decision.

BUBBA STALLCUP: “Hey, you know what? I’m just gonna get rid of video games. Just gonna stop cold turkey.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: And so he did. He sold his PlayStation, and he walked away from all games completely. 

ANNA STALLCUP: And I was still a little bit angry because I was like, “That isn’t what I asked you to do. I didn’t tell you that you had to walk away. I asked for boundaries. And so don’t, don’t sell that thing and then tell everybody that I made you do that because I did not make you do that. You made you do that, and that wasn’t even what I wanted. Like I don’t want to be the enemy of all of your fun, like I don’t wanna be a kill joy. I don’t wanna be the one who is just robbing you of, you know, your ability to unwind or anything like that.” But, like, that was what he felt like he needed to do right then because, again, he did not feel like he could strike balance. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Don’t we all want a little Anna in our life? Like that is a healthy person to have around.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. Yeah. She’s just trying to say, “Hey, look, all things in balance.” And, you know, looking back on it, even Bubba agrees it probably wasn’t the best decision. 

BUBBA STALLCUP: I mean, hear me out. If that’s a thing that you have created any kind of dependency on, a full cut is probably a bad idea, and I know for me that it 100% was because I lost everything that I had. You know, it’s like, “Oh, man, what do I do? How do I, how do I move forward with this?” But I tried. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So for a couple years, Bubba didn’t play any games. He focused on his job as the tech director at his church. He spent his time hanging TVs, moving cables, prepping for services. But the truth is that he wasn’t really himself. I mean, even Anna noticed that he seemed drained of life because the draw towards gaming – it was still there. But it wasn’t just gaming – it was also this desire to be on a mission.

BUBBA STALLCUP: And that left a massive void in my life. And so I said, “Hey, I need to do something.”

JESSE EUBANKS: But, you know, after all that Bubba had been through, he knew, “I cannot do it like I did before. I did it before. It was a failure. I can’t do it the same way again.” So this time Bubba got online not to play a game, but actually to do a Google search. And he actually ended up finding other Christians who were doing what he wanted to be doing – being intentional about engaging geek culture. And so he told Anna, “I’d like to try again, but this time I wanna try it with some community and with some accountability around me.” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: So what did Anna think about that?

ANNA STALLCUP: Still nervous, definitely still nervous, but willing to give it a shot I think was where I was. You know, obviously like we had mentioned, the dream was still there and the desire and that constant tugging and pull toward it, and so it was like, you know, we have to continue exploring this. If this is going to be a sort of safe way to explore it, then okay.

LACHLAN COFFEY: So did it work?

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, Bubba and his new Christian Geek friends – they got together and they talked about, like, “What would it look like for us to work together as an actual legit ministry truly reaching people within geek culture, a ministry with structure and roles and clear purpose behind it?” And the result was the birth of the other LTN. Stay with us.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Jesse Eubanks.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Lachlan Coffey. Today – where the gospel meets geek culture. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So we’re following the story of Bubba and Anna Stallcup. Bubba’s a gamer who feels called to use gaming as a ministry but wants to learn to do it in an intentional way that can also be healthy for his family. So he and some friends have gotten together and decided to launch a small organization that would give them the space to do that, and they decided to call it Love Thy Nerd. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Hmm. Interesting. Uh, sounds very familiar to an organization I know called Love Thy Neighborhood. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, I know.

LACHLAN COFFEY: A little bit of a copyright infringement, Bubba. (laughter) Did they copy that off you guys? 

JESSE EUBANKS: No, but it is funny, right, that they also refer to themselves as LTN. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: That’s really confusing. I assume we’re in the upside down at this point. LTN on the LTN podcast.

JESSE EUBANKS: But here’s the thing – now being a part of Love Thy Nerd, Bubba would not be doing this as a ministry on the side. Instead, if he was gonna seriously use gaming as a ministry, he would essentially need to become a full-time missionary. He would raise support and spend his full-time job reaching geeks and geek culture. 

BUBBA STALLCUP: Instead of going to Zimbabwe and building a home, um, I play video games and board games and talk with different nerds in different parts of the world on, you know, building relationships and how they use that as a tool for getting to know people.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, Lachlan, imagine you wanna be a missionary like Bubba to geeks and geek culture. How would you even begin to explain that to a possible donor? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: (laughs) So yeah, what I’m trying to do – at level 37 is where most of them are at… I can’t, I can’t do it. It would be impossible. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, like this is not an easy one. Like “I would like for you to give me money so that I can play a video game and – “

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: ” – hope for a moment to talk to people”? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: “What’s my money go to? Well, it goes towards upgrading all of my weapons in the game.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. Yeah. Not easy. 

BUBBA STALLCUP: Trying to convince other people, right, that I’m not just sitting around playing Fortnite, you know, for 16 hours a day, you know, and quote unquote calling it ministry. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: And he’s getting support from the church, which historically has been pretty skeptical about this kind of culture. I saw this blog recently that called into question this movement that we’re seeing within geek Christians, saying it just feels like another attempt to be hip and cool and but it doesn’t have actual substance. There’s no actual truth that’s in there. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the bottom line is, like, Bubba is walking into hostility on both sides, you know, with geeks who are gonna likely be resistant to any sort of Christian talk and on the other side Christians who are gonna be resistant to any kind of engagement of geek culture. But then check this out – before Bubba could start reaching out to people to ask for support, people actually started reaching out to him. 

BUBBA STALLCUP: God showed up. He sent people to me that would schedule meetings with me to say, “Hey, I really am interested in what you’re doing and I would love to support you, but I haven’t seen anything on how to do that.”

JESSE EUBANKS: And so as a result of those meetings, in 2020, Bubba actually stepped away from his job at his church and he became a full-time, fully donation-supported geek culture missionary with Love Thy Nerd. 

BUBBA STALLCUP: We want to be the love of Jesus to nerds and nerd culture, and we wanna reach them in a way that speaks to them in a way that they can understand and not just understand but accept. And we have decided, uh, that that model is relationship. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Bubba spends his time going to conventions, podcasting, and playing a ton of games, all with the purpose of actually getting to know the people he meets and doing life with them.

BUBBA STALLCUP: We don’t browbeat, we don’t Bible bully, we don’t do anything like that. We just say, “Hey, I’m, I’m, I’m in it for the long haul. I wanna play a game with you, I wanna hang out, and I also wanna be the person that when your grandma gets cancer that you come and ask me to pray for her, knowing full well that you don’t believe in prayer but you know that I do and you’ve seen it work in my life.” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah, so in theory, I love this idea, but the question is – does this work Jesse? Are they just slapping Jesus’ name on it so they can play games and indulge in their geekiness, or are people actually even being transformed by this? 

JESSE EUBANKS: I think that’s a fair question. And I think to answer that, like here’s some examples of some of the work that they’re doing. So they actually structured their ministry with three pillars. So the first pillar is thoughtful content. So they have a podcast network with seven shows. They host their own virtual conference. They have a website with articles reflecting on geek culture from a Christian perspective. Their second pillar is relational outreach. So they take people on mission trips to gaming and comic conventions like ComicCon and GenCon. They stream on Twitch. They have their own Discord with nearly a thousand members. And all of this is actually in service of their third pillar, which is intentional community. In fact, Bubba actually shared this story with me.

BUBBA STALLCUP: A buddy of mine was, uh, doing an adoption fundraiser and this is a guy that I love with every part of my being and this happens to be a good Christian friend of mine, right. And so it was act – like it was an adoption-themed D&D. It was cra – it was the craziest thing. And he was like, “Hey, can you come down and be a part of this D&D game?” You know, drive down to his, his place in Dallas. And we’re playing with a bunch of people that I don’t know, but these are people that are important people in the industry that we’re playing this with because these are his friends, right? We’re talking like famous voice actors, um, you know, heads of different, um, you know, tabletop things, and, you know, people that work with him at his company, all sorts of stuff. And we played for like three and a half hours, four hours, whatever, something like that. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And so after the game, they all go out and they hang out at another guy’s house and the house they go to – this guy, he’s not a Christian, but he had been there playing D&D for the fundraiser.

BUBBA STALLCUP: Uh, we’re standing out in his driveway and we’re talking and all this stuff. I’m telling him about LTN and all this stuff that’s going on, and he says, “God just keeps putting really amazing Christians in my path.” And he doesn’t consider himself a Christian. He says, “God keeps putting really amazing Christians in my path.” And because of the small amount of time – where most of it is we’re role playing, doing something completely different – in that small amount of time, he considered me to be one of the amazing Christians that God had placed in his path.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Wow. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. I know, right? Like, I mean, think about this. Like this is a guy – he’s not a Christian, but he is openly acknowledging first that God exists, and second that God is active in his life. And here in this moment, you see, like, a community of people gathered around a table to play a game and have fun together, but the spirit of the Lord is at work in this guy’s life, drawing Christians to him to show truth to him, to show love to him, to pull him into the family of God, like all of this is happening because of this fundraiser. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Wow. Yeah, it just goes to show you, I mean, God can use anyone and use your talents and abilities, whatever they are, whether it’s tabletop games or online gaming and stuff – like that could be used for the glory of God, and it’s, it’s awesome to see what the Holy Spirit does here with this guy. But hold on for a minute. What happened to Anna? Like, she was really frustrated beforehand. Like, what about now? I mean, her husband is basically gaming for a living. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, yeah, actually Anna is supportive, but that’s also not to say that there aren’t moments that are really hard. 

ANNA STALLCUP: I still find moments where I’m not okay with the gaming, like, “How does this still happen?” We had a, a blow up, like, a while back ’cause Bubba was trying to get online streaming going and he was playing Destiny and he really loves Destiny. He loves Destiny too. 

JESSE EUBANKS: But here’s the thing – like Anna knows that relationships change lives and she sees the value in it, and it also helps that Bubba’s doing this with other Christians who can help him and who can model a balanced life. And even though, like, she doesn’t consider herself to be, you know, super geeky, she’s even found a way to join Bubba and to begin to build those relationships too. And actually she’s pretty excited about it. 

ANNA STALLCUP: Sometimes it’s me showing up on stream with him and I’m not playing Destiny. I’m just watching chat and being a peanut gallery and, like, engaging with people there and just being and just talking with people because I think ultimately as far as ministry is, like, people need to see healthier relationships modeled a lot of times, it not being escapist. Like, he’s not escaping me for gaming and I’m gonna, I’m gonna come and be with him in that space and that we can do that and that’s okay and other people can do it too even though I’m not the biggest nerd and, like, I can’t really talk about the Elder Scrolls or who even knows – I haven’t even finished Harry Potter. I’m working on that, but, um, that I can just be there and be a person to talk to and be a part of it.

JESSE EUBANKS: In the gospel of John, when Jesus is praying the high priestly prayer, he’s at a meal, the final meal that he would have with his disciples before his crucifixion. If you read the gospels, you’ll see that much of Jesus’s ministry was spent having meals with people. In fact, the gospel of Luke depicts 10 scenes of Jesus at a meal, and in that time period, having a meal was a sign of fellowship and intentionality. And Bubba says that’s what he’s doing with games, that it’s not just escapist or a waste of time but that it’s an intentional time of fellowship. 

BUBBA STALLCUP: What if you took a thing that people like to do and you just hung out with them and loved them well through that? That’s what we do with games. It’s, it’s what Jesus did, like it is exactly what Jesus did. And so it’s what we’re trying to create through something as silly and stupid as video games, the latest Marvel movie, uh, comic books, whatever, like just nerd culture in general. It is fishing in a barrel with dynamite. It’s so easy, but it just takes time. It is intentionality, like sitting down playing a dumb game for a really great cause, but, you know, just make believe. You can still have a massive impact for the kingdom. You just have to be intentional about the time that you have.

LACHLAN COFFEY: What about Dave Chrisman? Remember the poor kid that burned all of his D&D stuff and all of the stuff that he made for D&D? What happened to him? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, so after that experience, Dave really actually started to take his faith seriously because he wanted to learn what was true and what wasn’t true. So he started reading the Bible more than he ever had before, and he found people that would disciple him. 

DAVE CHRISMAN: Thank God through diligent study and through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I came to the conclusion that that gentleman, he, he had good intentions, but he was operating from a misinformed point of view in, in those areas. But for me, I, thankfully, I came outta that crisis of faith and then later on in my teenage years was actually called to ministry. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, so today, believe it or not, Dave’s actually on staff at a church, and he still considers himself a geek. He’s gotten back into D&D, he even writes official campaigns for Wizards of the Coast who are the makers of the game, and he also joins his fellow pastors to host game nights as a way to connect with their geeky neighbors because just like Bubba he wants to help bridge the gap between geek culture and church culture. And for Dave, he finds the imagination used in board games and role-playing and fantasy as a really great way to do that. 

DAVE CHRISMAN: One of the things that we know about the very basis of Christianity is that faith is the essence of things unseen and the substance of things hoped for. So through imagination, we can imagine God. We can imagine Jesus. We can imagine the Holy Spirit. We can imagine heaven. We can imagine this idea of, of what heaven might be like or what might be like just to see Jesus face to face. So through our imagination we can do that, and perhaps we can tell stories to each other around that. And I think role-playing games and D&D is, is – those are very important exercises in helping us exercise a – we can call it a muscle, an imagination muscle that most people just don’t exercise very much.

JESSE EUBANKS: You know, I think about, like, when a new Marvel trailer comes out and people spend hours scouring for all the easter eggs.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Like you do. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yes, totally like me. And I think about, like, God is the originator of the easter egg. Like if you study the Bible, it’s full of cross references and callbacks to other things and it’s woven together in a way that would, like, give the MCU writers a run for their money. You know, it’s incredible. And I say that to say we have something to offer geek culture. People want to be in a story that’s bigger than themselves. People want camaraderie. They want a common goal to work towards. And Christianity – it is all of those things. I just think that we’ve presented such a bad representation of Christianity.

LACHLAN COFFEY: I think what we see from Bubba’s story and Dave’s story is that there is a third way here. We don’t have to completely reject geek culture because it’s bad or demonic or whatever, and we don’t need to make our own Christian knock-off so that we can feel better about our obsession, right? It’s like Jesus said – we are not of the world, but we are in the world and we’ve been called to follow him in it and make disciples wherever we are.

JESSE EUBANKS: So if you’re listening to this, lean into your geeky self. Whatever geeky stuff you are into, enjoy it. Have fun with it. But remember that Jesus has made you a different kind of geek. You know, whatever it is that we do, whether it’s eating, drinking, or playing tabletop games, we do it for the glory of God ’cause I can guarantee that there’s somebody on the other side of that gaming screen or sitting around that tabletop game who’s embarrassed, struggling with loneliness and shame, and they need to hear the love of Jesus that can bring them dignity and worth so that they can know how deeply loved and treasured they are. And you might just be the one to show up and tell them that.

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JESSE EUBANKS: If you benefited at all from this podcast, please help us out by leaving a review wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. Your review will help other people discover our show.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Special thanks to our interviewees for this episode – Dave Chrisman, Bubba Stallcup, and Anna Stallcup. Also special thank you to Collin Stoneking and Angel Toe. If you’d like to learn more about Love Thy Nerd, you can find them online at lovethynerd.com. This episode was edited by the following Love Thy Neighborhood staff and team members – Kiana Brown, Rachel Hamm, Case Raisley, and George Perry. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Our co-host today is Lachlan Coffey. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Rachel Szabo is our media director and producer. She has also told me that she has a new hobby. 

BUBBA STALLCUP: Fishing in a barrel with dynamite. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Anna Tran is our audio engineer. Music for today’s episode comes from Lee Rosevere, Poddington Bear, and Blue Dot Sessions. Theme music and commercial music by Murphy DX. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Apply for your social action internship supported by Christian community by visiting lovethyneighborhood.org. Serve for a summer or a whole year. You’ll grow in your life skills and your faith. Learn more at loveyneighborhood.org. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Which of these was the neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, “Go, and do likewise.”

LACHLAN COFFEY: We’re coming for ya, Baba, us, our cronies, and those kabas over there. It’s from the country of Latin. (laughter)