APRIL 24, 2020, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A3
Gaming club staying connected online
ministries.
There are usually 30 or so
participants on any given live
stream according to Harris.
“I would say like 75% [of
participants] are local Sa-
lem-Keizer kids,” he said.
Originally, most of the club
members came from Harris’
youth group (Harris is a Youth
Pastor at Lakepoint Commu-
nity Church) but gradually it
evolved from that circle.
With the goal of widening
their reach, Satellite Gaming
Club broke off from Lakepoint
and became its own non-prof-
it ministry. Harris said they’ve
reached from Silverton to Ida-
ho.
“We want it to be something
that is outside of the church
world ... we want people to
know that you don’t have to
agree with our foundation in
order to hang out with us,”
Harris said.
He also said lots of times
By LAUREN MURPHY
Of the Keizertimes
When Jamie Harris created
Satellite Gaming Club for stu-
dents, he intended for them to
physically gather together as a
community. Recent social dis-
tancing measures have called
for a Plan B.
Like many other group ad-
visors, Harris is reaching out
to his students through social
media, amongst other avenues.
The main source of connec-
tion comes through the gaming
platform, Twitch.
Twitch provides a space for
gamers to play games together,
watch other people play games
and more.
“It’s like YouTube of the
nerd culture I suppose,” Harris
said.
The club is hosting live
streams from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
every weekday. They host
events for YoungLife on Mon-
days and work with other local
students engage in the program
and have no idea that the foun-
dation is faith-based.
“We want to keep our rela-
tionship with the public school
system what it should be, just an
extracurricular option for kids
regardless of what background
they have,” Harris said.
Now that they’ve found the
online format to be sustainable,
the club is going to start pro-
moting itself on social media.
Harris had a lot he wanted
to tell the members of the Sat-
ellite Gaming community. He
wanted them to know they are
loved and he urged them to stay
healthy and connected.
“In summary I would tell
these kids, know that you are
loved, take care of yourself
and if you don’t know how to
take care of yourself reach out
to us and we might be able to
give you some advice,” he said,
though he noted that adults are
still fi guring things out too.
File
Jamie Harris (right), founder of Satellite Gaming, has kept the after school club meeting through
a Twitch channel.
He urged people to check in
with one another – through a
phone call, letter, or text mes-
sage – to make sure the people
in our lives are being taken care
off.
“Just show up right now.
That’s a lot of what we need,”
Harris said.
Interested students can fi nd
the club at www.twitch.tv/sat-
ellite_gaming.
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