Walking in Their World

Some years ago a youth pastor from a nearby community called me. He was concerned about a large group of Vampires that gathered regularly in his town’s park. He thought there were perhaps 300 and some of the churches would show up with bull horns to announce loudly that the Vampires needed to repent. It didn’t seem to be working. I have to confess, other than in films and books I had never heard of any actual vampires roaming the countryside and thought it might be interesting to check it out. We arranged a time to meet and a few of the MOCI volunteers and I headed out on a Friday evening to meet up with the youth pastor. When we arrived we saw several hundred youth, all engaged in something which did not seem to me to be overly threatening so I suggested we swim into the crowd and find someone to talk to. We even took video equipment to record some of the conversations. About a half dozen agreed to sit down and talk and the first question was quickly answered. What they were doing was a role playing game, Vampire: The Masquerade. Each participant had developed a character to play in the acting out of the game: Continue reading …