A friend of mine runs a board game ministry called Innroads Ministries, and today he wrote about something he has started at his Sunday morning gatherings called The Sunday Morning Experiment.

The experiment starts the same way each Sunday. Our church is big enough to have two services, so I arrive right around the time that the sermon has begun for the first. I claim one of the tables we have set up in our lobby, and empty the contents of my bag. My bible, a book (currently God With Us by Glenn Kreider), and a handful of ‘small box’ board and card games from the collection. And then I pray. I ask God what he wants to do that day and who he wants to talk to. The tools are there on the table for quiet devotion, conversation, or gaming. More often than not – all three happen as the day plays out.

What I love about the Sunday Morning Experiment is the opportunity it creates for a different kind of engagement to happen within a church service. Sunday morning worship can often be a passive, consumeristic affair. You show up to listen to the music, to hear the sermon, and then go home. What gaming with your church can offer is a way to interact one-on-one with other church goers, and welcoming those on the fringes into the community in a way that’s much less threatening than asking them to sing songs or sit silently in a room full of people.

You can read more about The Sunday Morning Experiment here, and Innroads Ministries here.