Hello! Welcome to the new and improved 1-Stop Pop Up.
We’ve re-visioned what this newsletter can be and we hope you’re excited for the things contained within. In this monthly edition, you can expect to find:
an example of someone whose life has been changed by the work of Checkpoint Church
an opportunity for you to make your mark on the lives of nerds, geeks, and gamers on our 130,000+ subscriber YouTube channel
an exciting new initiative that you can now take advantage of for yourself or your church community
From discipleship to digital creativity, here’s how Checkpoint is living out our mission this month.
A Story of Renewed Life
Every week on our Discord server, which doubles as our church building, I posit a question to the community that is more spiritual in nature than our usual nerd-themed conversation starters. Recently, I asked the question: How are you intentionally taking steps to grow in this current season of your life?
This was one of our members’ responses:
Isn’t that incredible?
In the world of church planting, this is about as ideal a result as you can hope to receive. This is practical and exhilarating discipleship. We don’t want people to find our community and only think we’re nerds to hang out with. Sure, we love to hear that we’re fun, but the goal of our true Church is to make disciples — we want our members of Checkpoint Church to grow in their faith walk.
Prayer, engaging with sermons, living out faith in a community of people — this is the stuff we’re called to facilitate as the Church. This is good news! If you want to share this good news on your social media feed, you can use this button right below here.
We’re inviting YOU to be a part of our Nerdy Sermons!
We’ve launched our second IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign. We’re aiming to raise $10,000 to fully fund our Nerdy Sermons, the video essays that we’ve now made over 170 of and reached over 1,000,000 people on YouTube. If you’d like to learn more about what our perks are for supporting this, you can watch this video:
We’re over halfway through September and seriously under our expected contributions to this campaign. Please take the time to consider supporting this cause! We need your help to connect the love and grace of Jesus with the world of nerds, geeks, and gamers.
Support our cause here: https://igg.me/at/EK2cWMDA-5M/x/38327436#/
What is a spiritual pilgrimage into a video game? (And how can you take one?)
In 2025, we’ve launched an exciting new venture: the Pixel Pilgrimage.
We started this experiment on YouTube & Twitch with a game called Neva back in January. It was a huge success, leading to some truly exciting work. We offered another into a game called Everhood and, as of September, we’ve now hosted our third official pilgrimage into The Beginner’s Guide. We’ve even had a privately offered pilgrimage by one of our members at a conference recently!
What is a Pixel Pilgrimage?
In envisioning how we can spiritually explore games, I have been developing a practice of engaging with games as if they were a sacred site, one that is explored like a spiritual journey.
With many popular pilgrimage sites, guides will offer questions to their venturers. Ultimately, the goal of exploring a site isn’t sightseeing, it’s self-seeing. So, we’re playing games together with the intention of exploring who we are, instead of just what the game is about.
But here is the really exciting news:
You can now take a Pixel Pilgrimage yourself!
With a group or on your own, we’re offering our first pilgrimage (the one into Neva) on our new hub website that you can find by clicking here. The pilgrimage itself costs $50, but feel free to reach out to me if you’d be interested in a group package or, even better, if you’re curious about what it might look like to have me offer a private pilgrimage for your church or small group.
We’re so excited for this new venture into spirituality and gaming! I genuinely hope you’ll ask me lots of questions about what it entails.
Thank you for reading! We hope you enjoyed this September 2025 edition of the 1-Stop Pop-Up.
As always, the best place to stay involved and aware of Checkpoint Church on a week-to-week basis is our Discord server or on our YouTube channel. We strive to keep this newsletter for those who are primarily curious about the overarching events at Checkpoint, so many of the smaller, but equally exciting, elements will not make the cut for this space.
This newsletter is about showing you the heartbeat of Checkpoint — stories of transformation, opportunities for impact, and new ways to see God at work in nerd culture.
I look forward to reading your replies or comments in the section below this newsletter. I sincerely appreciate your support by subscribing to this newsletter. If you haven’t taken the time to do so, then consider doing so here:
And remember,
God loves you.
We love you.
You matter.
Thanks for the vid! And thanks Brimstar!
So excited for this new iteration of this newsletter!