by Kurt McDonald
“The opinions expressed by the Tabor College EML student bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of Tabor College. Tabor College is also not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information in the post.”
If you’re a Christian single, or have been a Christian single in the last decade or so, you’ve probably heard the term missionary dating. For those that haven’t, missionary dating was coined to describe those that are believers in Jesus Christ dating someone who is a non-believer. I’ve personally seen relationships where missionary dating has worked well for the non-believer’s salvation, but I have also seen relationships where the believer becomes a non-believer. Either way, this is not a blog about missionary dating, nor is it to discuss one’s personal theology on the subject. This blog is a proposal for a new type of missions that connects people interpersonally, missionary gaming.
Meredith Gould wrote a book called The Social Media Gospel and in this book she states that virtual community is real community. This is true among online gamers as it is with people browsing Facebook, meeting on Twitter, or creating a video forum on YouTube. Online gamers meet people online in a number of ways. If a person is playing an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), typically there are guilds that people can join. A guild is a community of players that meet together regularly to accomplish desired goals within the games. These are games like World of Warcraft, Eve Online, or The Elder Scrolls Online. This community is about as true as a person can get. When IRL (in real life) friends get together to hangout, it could be to play card games and talk, watch a movie and just sit together, laugh together or cry together, hear about each other’s day, talk about problems at work, the big game last night… these are typical things friends discuss. This is no different with online community within online gaming. Friends meet new friends or sometimes even play online with their IRL friends. These friends, and I have experienced this personally, discuss the same topics described above, in real-time. Instead of playing a board game together, they’re playing an interactive online game. I have even read about people developing intimate relationships with others they have met through online gaming. See the picture below to get a sense of an online gaming community from Eve Online. The next picture is gamers from Korea where video games are a legitimate sport with real money. You can see a study here showing that gamers are not anti-social.
This is where the term missionary gaming comes in. A lot of youth pastors go to high school sporting events to create a sense of community and to go out on missions. The same can be done with a bit of a gaming geek pastor that happens to enjoy online community. While some people have a fake personality while online, the people at large tend to be as genuine amidst online community as they would in real life; introverts may even be a bit more genuine with an online gaming community. Anybody with a heart for missions and a heart for gaming can practice missionary gaming. All a person needs to do online is the same thing one would do in real life when witnessing to others… stand out as someone different, act like a person following Jesus, and don’t be afraid to disclose your relationship with Christ. In my experience, people online are more willing to listen to the thoughts and opinions of others than people I would talk to in real life, in person. Try it out and let me know what you think in the comments below.
