Who Am I?

I am a Christian. I am also a nerd, a geek, a Millennial, and a conservative. I have dysgraphia, ADD, and I am probably on the spectrum.

I am not a Paul; I have no dramatic "Road to Damascus" story about how my life was completely changed by Christ. I am more of a Samuel, because Christ has been in my life for as long as I can remember and I have always felt a call to not just follow Him, but to serve Him and to minister to others on His behalf. Towards this end I attended and recently graduated from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston with a Masters of Divinity.

One of the many courses that I took during my time at Gordon Conwell was about engaging with Youth Culture; we had to pick one part of that culture and give a presentation about it. As it happened the topic I was able to present on was something that has been a part of my life for almost as long as Christ has: videogaming. My presentation was a brief explanation of gamer culture to non-gamers. All throughout my seminary experience up to that point, I had always given the same answer when asked about what my ministry was: I am still trying to figure that out. But after that moment I now knew what my ministry was, because gamer culture is just one subculture of the much larger geek culture.

There are already a few ministries that do this like Gamers For Christ and Christ Centered Gamer; they do good work and I do not wish to tread on their toes, but much of geek culture still appears largely unreached and so that is where I am positioning myself. I will share my experiences with gaming, yes, but I will also share my experiences with other parts of geek culture. It is my hope to inspire others out there: not just other Christian Geeks, but geeks who have not found Christ yet but who may be looking for Him. 

For my fellow geeks reading this who wish to look me up and check out my geek credentials, my online handle is "Jedipilot24". I first picked this name in high school when I was introduced to the online game "Kings of Chaos", a game that I had lots of fun playing for a time, but I have since moved on to other games. I am currently most active on the English servers of Star Wars: The Old Republic, though there are many other games in my wheelhouse and there's never as much time for them as I'd like. In middle school I discovered Starcraft and couldn't play it nearly as often as I would have liked since there were a lot of Koreans at the school and they practically took over the computer lab with it. In High School I also discovered Diablo 2 and Warcraft III and would often have LAN parties with my dormmates.

High School was also where I discovered Harry Potter, both the books--which were still being written at the time--and the world of fanfiction writing. Fandoms that I follow include Harry Potter, Star Trek Voyager, and Stargate SG-1. In Harry Potter I ship Harmony (Harry/Hermione); in Star Trek Voyager I ship Harry Kim/Seven of Nine, and in Stargate SG-1 I ship Jack/Sam. I used to follow NuBSG (Lee/Kara) but I never got around to watching the whole series.

I have profiles on Quora, Fanfiction.net, Archive Of Our Own, and AlternateHistory.com. I also have a Discord Channel called Twitch's Space; "Twitch" was the nickname given to me in college by my fraternity brothers at Tau Kappa Epsilon, almost all of whom were geeks themselves. Indeed, the TKE Chapter at Wabash College is known--or at least it was in my time there--as "the geeky fraternity. My pledge class comprised a sizeable chunk of the college's "Dork Club" and we spent at least as much time on Magic the Gathering and Halo 2 as we did on our actual studies. The Dork Club introduced me to tabletop wargames like BattleTech, but I was only able to play a few times. I have slightly more experience with tabletop roleplaying games, going back to high school, but more theoretical knowledge than actual playing time.

These are just a few of the things I intended to talk more about on this blog, and in my sharing of my experiences I will also discuss how my being a Christian shaped and influenced those experiences--sometimes consciously and sometimes subconsciously.