Play Is a Means of Grace (So We Made a Podcast About It)

Announcing Means of Play — a new podcast with Cozy Tea Pastor

Reading a video game like it’s sacred text sounds like one of two things: pretentious, or heretical.

I believe it’s neither. It’s Wesleyan.

For six episodes now, I’ve been sitting down with Cozy Tea Pastor to do exactly that — read games slowly, seriously, and out loud, the way you’d sit with a text you actually believe has something to say to you. We call it Means of Play.

Two Pastors, One Save File

Cozy Tea Pastor, real name Ian, is a fellow United Methodist planting a church for nerds — specifically the folks drawn to cozy games, the ones who find their people on Instagram, Twitch, and YouTube instead of in a narthex. We’re reaching toward the same kind of person from two different corners of the internet. So starting something together just made sense.

But there’s a more honest reason.

For most of my ministry, I’ve done my thinking in one direction. Me, a microphone, and you on the other end of it. That’s not nothing… but it’s not a conversation.

I wanted a conversation. Two people who are actually pursuing something, thinking out loud together, disagreeing in real time, catching things the other one missed. Means of Play is my attempt at making that happen.

What “Means of Play” Actually Means

In the Wesleyan tradition, we talk about the means of grace — the ordinary practices God uses to pour grace into us. Prayer. Scripture. Communion. Fellowship. Plain, repeatable things that quietly become holy conduits.

We think play belongs on that list.

A game isn’t just a game; it’s a means of grace.

Back in December I wrote about the Gaming Quadrilateral — a Wesleyan way to read games as texts instead of just consuming them as content. Source material, tradition, experience, reason. Four legs holding up a game the way they hold up scripture.

Means of Play is that idea put in motion. Every episode is the Quadrilateral in practice, live, two pastors doing the work instead of me diagramming it from the front.

What We’ve Read So Far

We’ve sat with Fields of Mistria. With Coffee Talk. With Unpacking. Cozy games, mostly — games that look like they have nothing to say until you slow down and let them say it. (An Everhood episode is coming, and there’s more in the feed than I can list here.)

That’s the whole promise of the show. You come for the game you love. But perhaps you leave with a new love for it.

Press Start

Means of Play is live right now on YouTube and Spotify, or you can find more information on our website. Five episodes deep. Subscribe wherever you keep your podcasts, and the new ones will find you.

But don’t just listen.

Pick a game you already love. Run it through the Quadrilateral. Ask what it’s been trying to hand you this whole time — and notice how much of it looks like grace.

Play can teach you. Play can heal you. Play can hand you God right when you’d stopped looking. Come pay attention with us.

(And if reading culture like this is already the work you’re doing, the Digital Missional Network is where a room full of us keep doing this together.)