The Halo 3 church issue part 2: on using video games to reach out to non-Christians

How would you feel if your local church invited non-Christians in for a night of Bungie’s Halo 3? That’s precisely what some churches are doing to help spread the Good News. It’s a sticky issue, though, as you’ll soon find out. For more info on this unorthodox and controversial form of witnessing, turn to the full article after the jump.

There are certain issues that just don’t stay dead for long, it seems. Take the old church issue, for instance. In a nutshell, it was about churches using Bungie Studio’s Halo 3 and various video games to bring kids and teens in. Even now, opinions regarding the effectiveness and moral uprightness of this approach differ.

Proponents have claimed that Halo 3 is full of religious overtones that make relating the game to the Gospel easier. Others, like Mike Matlock and Kedrick Kenerly, have established a group called Christian Gamers Online. The purpose of the group is to use gaming as a Gospel outreach tool. The group also strives to protect impressionable young minds from negative influences at the same time.

Lyle Dorset, an evangelism professor at Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School, cautiously supports this approach. The trick, he says, is to use the games to ultimately point to Jesus Christ, and not to the video games themselves.

We can use all kinds of clever tricks to bring young people in or adults in. They may love it, and they may stay for a year, but they will never become true disciples of Jesus Christ and be born again unless the Spirit changes their heart and somebody gives them Christ.

Nevertheless, there are other Christians who simply do not agree. Al Menconi is one of them. As an expert on the influences of pop culture on Christian families, Menconi believes that games like Halo 3 are just an “adrenaline rush of killing.” In other words, they teach young people to kill without hesitation and without side effects.

So how do you reconcile everything? The experts concur that the key lies in good parenting and love. Ultimately, it’s the care of responsible adults, such as parents and pastors, that makes a big difference in how games like Bungie’s Halo 3 will affect children and teens.