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Mike Perna of Innroads Ministries and Game Store Prophets joins us to talk about a complex problem in both faith communities and geek communities: Gatekeeping. Mike’s joined us before for Episode 33 (“Our Origin Stories”), and he was a perfect fit for this topic in many ways. He previously wrote an excellent article on gatekeeping, and has a lot of wisdom and experience to share with us. We hit on a lot of small details—’controllers’ vs. ‘facilitators’; gatekeeping in church and in geek culture; comments on “pastoral customs” by Pope Francis; and others—but our focus is on solving the problem when you encounter it, not just documenting it. It’s a rather thoughtful episode, so enjoy, and tell us what you think in the comments!
Scripture: Ezekiel 16:49-50, 1 Corinthians 12:21-27, 1 Peter 3:8
2 thoughts on “Episode 66 – Gatekeeping (with Mike Perna)”
Very cool to hear this, and at the same time, stories like the church greeter story bother the snot out of me.
It happened in my own family. I’ll probably write about it at some point on my blog.
Being relatively new to the gaming hobby myself, I really enjoyed this episode. I’m getting to introduce new games to some of my friends who have never played these next-generation board games or roleplaying games, and seeing the reactions on their faces when something clicks is so cool to see.
And last weekend, I won a tournament playing Doomtown Reloaded, and it was my first time playing. The game store has christened me “The Ringer”. I’m cool with that.