We got to the church early. The pastor was still going through the sermon for the first service. We sat at a table. We talked. We read. It was good. My wife ended up leaving earlier than I did. Empowered by the conversations she’d had, she wanted to get a jump on some what she she needed to do. I stayed, but I didn’t go into the service. Apparently I needed to learn some things, and while the congregation was singing out to God in the sanctuary – I was going to meet with Him in a different setting.
A whisper swirled in the back of my head. Mike, I think you need to stay out in the lobby today. I disregarded it – wondering why I’d driven the thirty five minutes up the highway just to sit in the lobby- but it wouldn’t go away. Not usually being the sort of person you’ll hear say “I feel like God telling me to [x] right now” – when it turns out He actually is, I do my best to listen. After all, if God was changing the script, it had to be for a reason. I settled into my chair and got ready for whatever was about to happen.
At first I just sat. I took my bible out and read through the same chapter in Lamentations I’ve been reading off and on for weeks now. “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” Here I was – waiting for God to do – what? I still didn’t know. I was just waiting. I’d put myself in a weird place under the auspices that God was telling me to do so. I could ponder aimlessly what was happening, or I could just ask.
“So, God, what’s supposed to be happening here?”
You still have the games, right?
I did, actually. The previous day was the first of the new monthly gaming events at the church. It had been good, but not great. It was the sort of turnout one would come to expect from the first outing for something the church wasn’t used to. After an hour of setup, four hours of leading games, and a long car ride home, I was spent. That morning I still had about twenty or thirty games in the car that I hadn’t felt like unpacking.
I think you should get one.
“I mean, I can. But everyone’s in the service. I don’t have any solo games with me.”
Get Onitama.
“But … why?”
Set it up. You’ll see.
Onitama is a two player abstract game. Played on a five by five grid, each player has a master and four monks that they move across the board, choosing from a limited selection of moves displayed on two cards in front of them. After making their choice, the card with the move they used is switched with a card off to the side of the board. The game continues until either the opponent’s master has been removed from play, or the player’s master has been moved into the opponent’s temple.
I set them up, dealt out some cards, and started playing both sides of the board.
“What’s this?”
The young boy looked curiously at me as I moved to take a piece from the blue player. A small group of kids had apparently come upstairs from the children’s ministry. “It’s called Onitama.”
He looked a bit closer at the pieces. “Is it like chess?”
“Kinda. But instead of having different moves for different pieces, the moves you make are on the cards.” He was still watching me move pieces across the board. “You wanna play?” He nodded, and I reset the board.
He picked it up quickly and was giving me a run for my money. Other kids circled around us to watch and ask questions. I started to field their questions over the game, but soon my opponent was the one describing what was going on. He pointed to the cards and showed them how to read what the moves meant. Right before he was going to make his final move and take me out, the pastor told them it was time to go in and see what they were there for.
I had a number of moments like this. Some of them stopped to play a round. Some just wanted to talk. Others had questions about what they were seeing on the table. I wasn’t pulling people over to the table. Wasn’t trying to grab their attention. I just moved some plastic monks across a board and shuffled some cards around.
It turned out that it wasn’t a usual Sunday for the kids I’d been playing with either. The reason they had come up was to see people get baptized. Standing before the congregation, people were talking about how God had transformed their lives, and how they wanted to declare that before the church. They were inviting people to see what God was doing in their lives. I remembered another baptism. One I went to decades ago. It was the first time I’d been to church in a while. The first time I’d sat in a pew with people who went out of their way to show me what God meant to them. When they told me that God loved us, I knew it was true.
That was pretty fun, right?
“Yeah. I love Onitama. Folks looked at me weird for playing here, though.”
You’ll get that every once in a while. Most of them didn’t, though, right?
“That’s true.”
Some of them said they’re looking forward to the next game day.
“Well, yeah, but they said that for this last one too. They didn’t.”
Doesn’t mean they won’t. You can’t make them show up. You can only set it up and show them why you love it, answer their questions, and ask them if they might love it too.
“Otherwise I’d just get a ‘that’s great for you’ response without any real impact.”
Exactly. You can’t share what they don’t think is for them.
“… That’s why I’m here isn’t it? To show people and invite them to give it a try so they can see what I see?”
Pretty much. They might not accept it, but at least they’ll see it.
“… instead of talking about playing – it’s about actually playing.”
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
I stayed a while after the service, playing a couple more games of Onitama and talking about why my ministry looks the way it does. I packed up my game, grabbed my bag, and headed home. A friend of mine, the mother of one of the kids I’d played with, was getting into her car. “Your son’s a natural. He beat me his first time playing.”
“He’s already adding that game to his Christmas list. The second he got done playing with you he wanted to get it himself. He really wants to play again.”
Amen.