The Church that I Wish Was the Actual Church
How Board Games Let Me Escape the Anxiety for a Bit
There's only one activity I've seen in my 40 years of this drudgery we call existence, that's brought people together across ideological lines, political parties, beliefs, backgrounds, race, gender, and age.
Board games.
It's so bizarre. I've played with folks of completely different backgrounds together. I've played around a table with folks who don't have any two beliefs in common. I've played with folks who wouldn't normally look one another in the eye.
And everyone's having a good time.
Everything gets set aside when we gather around the table.
This past week on my Facebook and Instagram, I started counting down my top 25 board and card games, and it’s had me thinking about why I love playing games with people so very much.
So here’s some possibly disconnected thoughts about how playing board games often feels to me more like church than church does.
I've heard sermon after sermon after sermon after freaking sermon about how eating together breaks down walls, and how “you can't be mad at someone when you're eating with them.”
But, like, Thanksgiving dinner being the catalyst for knock-down drag-out fights is a joke based in truth, right?
You can absolutely eat with someone and fight with them. It’s very much a thing.
But that’s not been true at the board game table. Not in my experience, anyway.
For whatever reason, I've seen folks get together in a house that has a statement of belief on the wall; a statement that should, by all accounts, piss off some of the folks playing a game in that house.
And yet, we all happily play together. We hug afterwards as we say goodbye.
Some of us likely go back to despising one another afterward.
But the despising stops during the game.
People play games together across belief lines. Across religious lines. Across any kind of background difference.
It’s so strange.
I’ve seen board games give families a connection point that doesn’t otherwise exist.
A buddy of mine hates board games, but they play with their family because of the bonding they experience when they play games with their kids.
Before I was a pastor, I worked in a group home for people with mental and developmental disabilities.
One of the guys in the house didn’t talk much, and wasn’t a particularly happy person. He liked reading books, but outside of reading he was relatively grumpy
One day, he grabbed an UNO box and held it out to me. I said “Do you want to play?” He smiled a big smile and walked over to the table.
I shuffled the deck a few times as he looked at me, beaming.
I flipped the top card. Blue 2.
I played a blue 4.
He threw his entire hand of cards down on the table and smiled. “I win,” he said. “Let’s play again.”
We played so stinking many times in a row. Every time, he “won” on turn one.
He insisted I shuffle every time, even though he and I both knew the shuffling didn’t matter. He was going to drop the cards on turn one and declare “I win.”
No, we obviously didn’t play according to the actual rules. But it was the first time that he seemed to enjoy being with me.
My grandma was a fan of (okay, obsessed with) Skip-Bo. We played every time we went to her house.
She had as many of us that were willing to play sit around the table.
Each player played a deck of 30 cards.
If you’ve ever played Skip-Bo, you know that starting with a deck of 30 cards is going to be torturous.
It took absolutely freaking forever.
Hours sometimes.
I was a kid. It felt like an eternity.
But she loved it.
We were together.
Some of my extended family members and I likely wouldn’t get along too well these days.
But we could play Skip-Bo. And we’d have a good time.1
I write a lot in this newsletter about how s***ty the church can be.
People act in ways and support things that are entirely antithetical to what Jesus calls us to.
In layman’s terms, church people can be a—holes.
Sometimes it takes a gargantuan effort for me to be kind when hearing some of the things that church people say to and about each other.
But they don’t say those things to or about each other when we’re playing games.
Sometimes for me, playing board games feels more like church than church.
I certainly prefer it a lot of the time.
Finding a space where people set aside all of the things in life that make my anxiety spike, and joyfully staring at some cards on a table, has been good for me.
I like getting together with people of different backgrounds.
I like getting together with people I disagree with.
I’ll happily engage in conversation with them about all of those differences.
But sometimes I just want to hang out with people without fighting over political/religious/generational differences.
I'm sure there are people who are going to read this and say “screw that, we shouldn't get together with certain folks.”
And, yeah, maybe that's true. I honestly don’t know.
But personally, I sometimes need a reprieve from people being mad at other people. I need a reprieve from folks talking s*** about one another.
I’m an anxious person. People fighting triggers my anxiety.
Sometimes I want to spend an hour in a world where people can hang out with each other without the vitriol.
It's probably a fakey fake pretend world.
But for an hour or so, I want to live in that fakey fake pretend world.
So I do.
And I'll continue to.
And sometimes, that fakey fake world around a table with some cards in the middle of it is going to be my church.
Because a lot of the time, it feels more like what I want church to be, instead of how church so often is.
It might be a Jesus-less church (Is Jesus around the board game table? I don't know. I don't know if I even care), but it feels churchy.
There's some cards, some joy, and no vitriol for an hour.
Honestly? Sometimes that's all I want. Jesus or not.
Comment below with your favorite game.
And thumbs up anyone’s comment who commented a game that you love. I'm legitimately curious what people’s faves are.
Also, if you can guess what my #1 favorite game is, I'll give you the biggest long-distance hi-five that you've ever hi-fived.
(You're not going to guess it. I think I'm probably one of only ten people in America who's actually played it)
A buddy in college once said that he wants to name a dog Skip-Bo. It’s been twenty years, and I’ve never stopped thinking about it. It might be the best dog name I’ve ever heard.
I wasnt allowed to play cards as a kid (tools of the devil and all that). That was one of the things that attracted me to my wife: her family were avid Pitch, Spades and especially Nurtz players. They weren’t and aren’t much for board games). I dont agree with much of their politics, but you’re right—when we’re around the card table we’re all equal.
Tsuro!