A Tabletop Stop

Story by Elizabeth Anderson

Scott Kabel, who currently resides in Hawaii, has ties to Pennsylvania Conference’s Blue Mountain Academy where he taught a class—and played tabletop games with his students—while doing dissertation work for his education doctorate.

These days, playing games with the community in Hawaii is his passion. Kabel owns a trove of tabletop games and started hosting a weekly game night at the Hawaii Conference office in August of 2022 “with mostly church friends,” Kabel says. “But then I started playing in more areas around town. Now maybe [only] a third of the group is Adventist. Sometimes fewer.”

This past April, with support of conference leaders, they hosted a gaming retreat at the conference campgrounds that included a library of more than 100 tabletop games.

“We ended up getting 65 people out there on the weekend. I think of that 65, there were five Adventists. Two of them were the cooks,” Kabel says.

Their tabletop gaming community also consists of different types of Christians “who have initiated conversations with me about ministry,” Kabel says. “There’s ministry there just in getting people together!”