Welcome back to the Accidental Tomatoes Curated Content feed. Here’s what’s on our radar this week:

Twitch does church better than you (Checkpoint Church)

Checkpoint Church is an innovative online church for the gaming community, focusing on YouTube, Discord, and Twitch as the digital space in which people interact with each other. United Methodist pastor Nathan Webb (aka “Nerd Pastor Nate“) leads the community from his home base in Western North Carolina and is a tireless champion for online communities of all types.

Can you imagine a pastor encouraging their flock to go to the church down the road after worship wraps up just to go and encourage that pastor? Can you even comprehend the possibility of a crowd of a dozen church-goers attending another church in solidarity for the work of ministry being done? That’s my dream, but I’ve certainly never seen it done in my contexts. The church is bafflingly insular.

Nathan Webb, Checkpoint Church

Click here for the video & full article

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The Web3 Landscape (a16z.com)

Metaverse, blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs…terms we’re starting to hear more and more (anyone watch this year’s Super Bowl commercials?). But what do they mean? And why should we be paying attention? This helpful primer from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz outlines the coming landscape of what’s being referred to as Web3 with some broad definitions of some of its basic building blocks and a quick look at how the decentralization of the internet and immersive online experiences might disrupt many of our current institutional paradigms.

Decentralized technologies offer an alternative to a digital status quo that is increasingly dominated by big tech and oppressive regimes. Open, democratized systems can provide the infrastructure to power tomorrow’s economy and institutions. Realizing that potential will depend on collaboration between government and the private sector to develop regulatory frameworks that encourage innovation while managing the risks inherent in different applications.

The Web3 Landscape

Click here to download the PDF

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Dissect the Bird (John Craigie – Video)

This song rolled up on my random Spotify playlist a couple weeks ago and I still can’t get enough. American folk singer/storyteller John Craigie, described as “…the lovechild of John Prine and Mitch Hedberg with a vagabond troubadour edge,” offers a humorous and heartfelt (and not-so-subtly theological) look into our collective existential angst from his “John Craigie Live Opening for Steinbeck” album.

Click here to watch on YouTube

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Feature image by Thought Catalog on Pexels.com