Volunteer says the game is fully contained on the mixer’s tiny touchscreen and has not affected worship, apart from the pastor’s microphone now occasionally displaying “God Mode.”
CEDAR GROVE, USA — A Reformed church’s sound technician briefly became the most popular member of the media team Sunday after successfully getting the original Doom to run on the sanctuary’s digital soundboard.
The game remained entirely on the console’s maintenance screen, church leaders confirmed, and no imagery or game audio was played through the sanctuary speakers. The soundboard still delivered the sermon, psalms, Scripture reading, and announcements normally—provided nobody pressed the newly labeled button marked DO NOT ENABLE GOD MODE DURING CALL TO WORSHIP.
Doom, released by id Software in 1993, became both a landmark first-person shooter and a longstanding target for technical hobbyists who enjoy making it run on improbable hardware. Digital audio mixers are also common in worship settings, where they manage microphones, instruments, monitors, and livestream audio.
“It began as a test of the processor,” said sound tech and amateur programmer Colin Mercer. “Then I realized the board could render a full game while simultaneously keeping the pastor’s mic at a reasonable level. That seemed like a responsible use of church resources.”
Mercer said he had not installed the game for entertainment, but to demonstrate the church’s commitment to technological stewardship.
“God gave us minds, hands, and an audio board with more processing power than the computer used to put men on the moon,” he said. “It would be poor stewardship not to use at least 0.4 percent of it to defeat pixelated evil between sound checks.”
The mod reportedly includes several church-specific settings. The Mute All button instantly pauses the game, allowing Mercer to handle urgent microphone issues. The Scene Recall menu contains standard settings such as “Sunday Morning,” “Psalm Sing,” and “Easter,” alongside one unauthorized option titled Knee-Deep In The Fellowship Hall.
Mercer insisted the last title was merely a technical reference and not an invitation for anything unwholesome.
“It means the fellowship hall had an unusually ambitious potluck,” he explained.
The church’s elders initially expressed concern when they noticed a small message on the console reading, IDDQD ENABLED—the famous Doom cheat code for “God Mode.” Mercer reassured them that this did not mean he was treating a video-game setting as a theological claim.
“Obviously, only God is sovereign,” Mercer said. “This is just an old code meaning the player cannot be defeated by the enemies in the game. I thought it was a fitting reminder that evil has a limited shelf life.”
The elders accepted this explanation after Mercer promised never to activate “God Mode” while mixing the offertory.
Further complications arose when a deacon accidentally pushed a button labeled IDKFA, a classic cheat that grants access to the game’s weapons, keys, and ammunition. The modder quickly explained that, in the soundboard version, it had been repurposed as “I Do Keep Faders Adjusted.”
“It gives me access to every channel, every monitor mix, and every muted microphone,” Mercer said. “Which is considerably more dangerous than the original cheat code.”
The greatest difficulty came when Mercer experimented with Doom’s higher difficulty settings. During the final rehearsal before worship, he selected Nightmare mode on the tiny maintenance screen, only to discover that the setting had somehow linked itself to the guitarist’s distortion channel.
As the worship team began a restrained arrangement of “A Mighty Fortress,” the guitarist struck the opening chord and produced a wall of distortion powerful enough to cause three elders to look instinctively toward the sanctuary rafters.
“We normally use ‘Hurt Me Plenty’ for contemporary worship,” Mercer explained, referring to one of the game’s difficulty settings. “It gives the guitar just enough edge without making the congregation feel as though the sound system is fighting for dominion over the room.”
The worship leader said the unintended heavy riff was “surprisingly majestic” but requested that Nightmare mode remain disabled during communion.
“That is reasonable,” Mercer said. “The Lord’s Supper should be handled with reverence, peace, and significantly less overdrive.”
During the sermon, Mercer reportedly completed a level while seamlessly lowering the piano during prayer, unmuting the pastor for the benediction, and preventing a single instance of feedback.
“That is what Christian liberty looks like,” he later told the media team. “Orderly worship, no distractions, and the complete defeat of evil occurring silently on an auxiliary screen.”
The pastor later praised Mercer’s careful work but asked him to remove the game before the following Sunday.
Mercer agreed immediately, provided the elders could first explain why the soundboard’s Ultra-Violence setting produced the cleanest livestream mix.
At press time, the church’s IT committee had begun investigating whether the nursery printer could run Doom, while the elders unanimously voted that nobody should find out.
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