There is no steeple or stained glass at this house of worship. Tyler Arnold doesn't need such things to practice his faith in this quiet, unassuming corner of Spokane.

“I’m a registered Jedi Minister and Jedi knight,” Arnold says while standing between a Planet of the Apes costume and a life-size Darth Vader lit by a red light saber. His church, the Jedi Alliance, serves many purposes. It is a Star Wars church at its core. With equal parts arcade machines and memorabilia, the Jedi Alliance bears witness to sci-fi, fantasy, and punk rock. At this church, joy sticks and switches are holy relics that parishioners use to sing in a chorus of eight-bit hymns. How Tyler Arnold became a Jedi minister, why he grew a congregation of memorabilia, or how Johnny Ramone’s guitar is partly responsible for it all (yes, really), began during a pilgrimage to a thrift store. The testimony of Tyler Arnold Arnold grew up against a backdrop of arcades and movie screens. Pop culture boomed in the 1980s, scattering relics from movie posters to toys and pinball machines. Many did not survive through the years. So when Arnold first saw a Return of the Jedi lunchbox on a thrift store shelf in the ’90s, he didn’t see a mere toy anymore.

“That lunch box just took me back. There was a lot of nostalgia in it,” he said. It was as if an occult hand had reached down and placed the $9 Star Wars lunchbox in the path of this 16-year-old padawan. He had a revelation – pop culture relics such as this should not be collecting dust in the back of a thrift store, knocked around half-operational speakers and used exercise equipment. “I bought it,” he said. “Now it’s not a toy; now it’s a collectible. As a teenager I realized that these should be cherished. Now I’m buying this stuff. I’m cleaning it up. I’m trying to get the most mint specimen possible.” He began collecting, trading, and peddling. He stored away the most coveted pieces. He was so good that he eventually achieved a childhood dream – owning a guitar played by one of his heroes. “Eventually, I did find one and was able to buy one of Johnny Ramone’s guitars,” Arnold said.

Like a nerf herder tending to his flock, Arnold continued to find and give shelter to lost toys. But things took a turn when he stumbled upon a Star Wars arcade machine. “Now this is something you are definitely not supposed to have,” Tyler said. “We stumbled into a vendor in 2007. The games were not making quarters at the time. They were not out on route. They were just in his giant warehouse. He was trying to sell them for about six months and he couldn’t get $100 a piece for them. We went in and bought a few games. We go back again and he was smashing the games with a small tractor.” Arnold pleaded with the vendor not to strike down the machines. “I was like, 'Dude! Please don’t smash another game,'” he recalled. “'I will take every game you plan on smashing.'”

“We went and got the biggest truck we could rent and came back and rescued 140 machines from his warehouse.” Which is a lot more than most hobbyists can fit into the corner of a garage. His flock would go on to spend years wandering in a wilderness of backyards and backrooms. “Where did we keep them? Everywhere," Arnold said of his growing congregation of video games. "We literally had them everywhere. We got code violations for putting arcade machines in yards. We didn’t have anywhere else to put them." Eventually, Arnold found himself living on one side of a duplex and storing arcade games on the other. No inch was spared. Many games were stacked on top of each other.

“People all the time would tell me ‘you are hoarding ’80s memorabilia.’ I’m not hoarding ’80s memorabilia – I’m cherishing ’80s memorabilia. I’m preserving it. That’s what this place is becoming – a preservation rather than a collection … it’s outgrown me.” Tyler Arnold, minister of the Jedi Alliance Credit: Dyer Oxley | KUOW

“People all the time would tell me, ‘You are hoarding ’80s memorabilia,’” Arnold said. “I’m not hoarding ’80s memorabilia – I’m cherishing ’80s memorabilia. I’m preserving it. That’s what this place is becoming – a preservation rather than a collection … it’s outgrown me.” He knew there had to be a better place: A promised land where video games could be free to glow and bleep in all their glory. Finding religion The solution happened very quickly, as Arnold recalls. Around the 10-year anniversary of Johnny Ramone’s death, he decided to put the guitar up for auction.