Being A Missional Gamer Part Four: Life Outside Gaming

It may seem odd when talking about missional gaming to talk about what we do outside gaming, but in many ways it's even more important than what we do in the game in our quest to give glory to God and bring gamers to Christ.

This starts first and foremost with our personal walk with Christ. We cannot lead people to something we ourselves haven't found. We need to have a growing and personal walk with Jesus in order to lead others to that same type of relationship. The Word and prayer are our main source of empowerment for our evangelism. To cut ourselves off from the Word or to ignore prayer is to eliminate our main source of power, and the main source of all the life change we wish to see in people. Our walk with Christ is critical, and the growth in our walk is directly related to the time and effort we put into it (as well as the work of the Holy Spirit). This relationship is our number one priority over everything else: including our gaming.

Our life outside of gaming also has a bearing on our witness in game by giving evidence of our regeneration. Gamers (as we ourselves know) are not the basement dwelling hyper-introverts we are so often made out to be. We have lives outside of gaming. We talk about it and in a lot of cases share in it with our gaming friends. This means we cannot ignore our lives outside of games and the negative effects it can have on our testimony. Regular church attendance, missional activity in the real world community you live, keeping your family a priority, and being a person of Christ like character and productivity speak to the reality of the change you have experienced in your life. Likewise, substance abuse (In any form. Even food can be a substance abuse problem.), lack of church attendance, lack of productivity, and ignoring family obligations speak not only to the mixed up priorities we have; but of the lack of real life change we have experienced in Christ.

As briefly mentioned above, involving fellow gamers in activities in the real world can show those whom you are trying to reach the depth of your love for them. It's easy to play video games with someone. It's not easy to invite them into your home, take them out to lunch, or involve them in other ways in your real world-real life. It shows people that you don't just care about their skill in a particular game but that you genuinely care about them as a person. The love of Christ is our biggest tool in sharing the Gospel and it can be shown best in the way we interact with people in the real world.

So as Christian gamers we need to recognize that just as important as our actions in the game world is our actions in the real world. We need to examine our lives to make sure we are having that growing relationship with Christ that He so desires for our lives, and that empowers us to greater evangelism among the people we come into contact with.