Earlier this week our church collaborated with three other churches for a summer kickoff event. All of our groups gathered together for a great evening of fun, food, worship and God’s word. I love the opportunity to collaborate with other churches and further God’s kingdom together. We all have our own local churches but we can never forget that, as followers of Christ, we all belong to the Church – the universal body of Christ.
To help us remember our need to collaborate as the body of Christ, here are some of the most fruitful nerdy collaborations.
Voltron
I loved Voltron as a child. Voltron was the first giant fighting robot in my life and I will always prefer him over Zords, Gundam and even the Kaiju from the upcoming Pacific Rim. Not only was Voltron a great cartoon, but the toys were the absolute coolest. I didn’t have all five lions that formed Voltron, but I had a friend who did, which made him my best friend. I know the show was formulaic (a formula that has led to decades worth of Power Rangers episodes), but I still loved it. I would get goose bumps every time the lions would jump into space and form Voltron. The five lions were powerful on their own but no space monster could stand up to the collaboration of the Voltron Force.
The Last Starfighter
The Last Starfighter freaked me out when I was younger. I was a bit of a scaredy-cat when I was younger and wanted nothing to do with any aliens. I was especially scared of Beta, the creepy white dude who turned into Alex’s doppleganger. The Last Starfighter gives birth to every nerd’s childhood dream: to become a hero based off a video game. I would love to get transported to Skyrim because of my superior dragon slaying skills or sent to Reach to help defend humans from the Covenant. As awesome as Alex was, though, he wasn’t able to defeat the Ko-Dan Empire by himself. Alex needed Grig for training and to help pilot the Gunstar in their battle against the Ko-Dan mothership. Alex needed to collaborate in order to be victorious, even if that meant collaborating with a long lost relative of the Silurians.
24th Century Baseball
“Take Me Out to the Holosuite” is one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I always loved Sisko’s appreciation of baseball, not only because I like baseball but also it seemed to make him more human. Whenever anyone on the Enterprise had free time they seemed to play the violin, recite Shakespeare or read books on archeology. I understand that humanity is very advanced in Gene Roddenberry’s view of the future, but I’d hope that we’d still want to have fun. In his spare time Sisko didn’t compose symphonies, he liked to watch old baseball games and even throw on a mitt. In “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” Sisko is reminded that baseball is a team sport and that winning isn’t always the most important thing. Sometimes doing something well together is reward enough in and of itself.
The body of Christ is supposed to collaborate with itself. I love partnering with other churches in order to further God’s kingdom and his purposes. We can see the benefits of collaboration in many of our favorite nerdclinations and, more importantly, in our own lives. We all have experiences in which we benefitted from collaboration. We should strive to collaborate with other Christians because we can do so much more good for this world together than we can apart.
And we just might take the Ko-Dan Empire with us.
What are some of your favorite nerdy collaborations?
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