EP111: Futurist Churches & The Virtual Reality Multisite Campus

Episode 111 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by State of Church Planning. Jeff here. Hey, with 111, we're going to experiment with a new format. This is going to be interesting. I like this. We're going to feature something new here on this podcast through Stadia. We've got a group of churches that I specifically work with. We call them the Futurist Churches. These are the innovative group, the churches that want to try something different, that are willing to stretch the limits. Yeah, they're recognizing that their mission and their vision doesn't need to change, but the strategy, it needs to. It needs to adapt. It needs to be evolved. We need to do different things to be effective, not only for the future, but honestly, thank you very much COVID, we need to do something different to be effective today. And so these are the conversations that I get to work with with these Stadia Futurist Churches. And it's one of these Futurist Churches that I even want to feature today.

So the first time that I met Lead Pastor Josh Amstutz in a Zoom conversation pre-COVID, Joshua is Lead Pastor at Lakeland Church, a church up in Wisconsin. First time I met him, I'll be honest, he told me he wanted to launch a VR campus out of his church. I was kind of taken aback in shock, maybe speechless for a little while. It was the first time I had a lead pastor not only say but spell VR. Like, I never actually had the experience of a church, DJ, so to aside, actually saying VR. And so I was really intrigued by this, started asking questions. And the more that I really kind of understood Josh, I started to understand his passion to do something in this area. Now, maybe he didn't understand the technical aspects of it, but he was open and he was willing to explore more of it. And so I loved having this conversation with Josh and the team with Lakeland, starting to help them figure out what it looks like to do a virtual reality campus spun off of the physical church.

The conversations just continued to grow and started casting ideas. And then I was like, hey, you know what, the next step we need to do, we need to get you together with Jason Polling. Now, some of you guys may remember from an earlier podcast, Jason is one of these guys that's done it. He's spun off his smaller church, a physical church, not only broadcasting services digitally, but he's also doing Avatar Church. He's doing virtual reality church. So I've got a guy here, a friend to contact from Cornerstone Church up in the Pacific Northwest. Jason's doing this, man. Let's get these guys together and let them dialogue and learn from each other. Let Josh and the Lakeland team ask questions, drill into some of the insight that Jason has from the experience of it. And in the best part of this, as Josh and his team and Jason talked, I actually didn't say very much because there was so much wisdom being passed directly from it that I just got to sit back and not even facilitate, but watch and learn myself. As we're hearing from the guy who's actually done it answering the questions of the people who want to do it.

And so it's a phenomenal conversation here involving one of Stadia's Futurist Churches, getting them connected into this idea of how to be more aggressive with the strategy by doing something new, something that they already wanted to do. So for the conversation, we're bringing in Josh Amstutz and some of the other Lakeland team into the conversation. We're bringing in Jason Polling, Lead Pastor over at Cornerstone Church up in the Pacific Northwest. Of course, myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning, in a conversation that I'm calling the Futurists and the Virtual Reality Campus.

Okay, everybody, here you go.

But no, I see, guys, so I was on a big staff in Iowa. And I know how it's funny because when you have sometimes when you have a big staff, obviously you can do a lot more, but I did find that we ended up talking a lot more than we actually got stuff done because it's harder to get things done when you have such a huge committee. And so I'm at a smaller church now. And so that's probably the only reason why we've gone faster is, you know, I'm, you know, it's just me and another pastor, and you know, we got a staff pretty much part-time. Everyone's part-time except for me and the other pastor. So anyway, you can get, you probably can, you know, just move forward on some things more quickly. So that's the only reason why we probably got in the game quick is not as many committees to go through.

But so I've been in the big church and the small church, so I understand the pros and cons of both. But it's really getting into the VR ministry. It's really surprisingly simple and cheap. That's the beauty of virtual reality is you can have a whole another, you don't even have to have, imagine that you don't have to have a building stewardship campaign. You don't have, I mean, you know what, you can build another church for almost free and have people start coming instantly and preach the gospel to them and develop community. It's crazy. So you know, that's why it's neat that, you know, large churches, small churches, in between churches, everyone can do it. It really isn't hard.

I mean, honestly, for me, it was just getting a headset and diving in. Pastor DJ, so you probably, I mean, Jeff's friends with him, you probably know him. So I connected with DJ. I went to his church when I first got my headset, and I was like, you know, I was hooked. And at that point, it's just a matter of learning the platform you want to launch on because there's several different, or probably three or four like major platforms that you probably would be interested in launching a church campus. Figure out which one you want to start with. Figure out the how that works, you know, just it's like learning a new video game, learning how it works. And then basically just start doing it faithfully. You know, that's the key is launch it and just keep showing up every week. Eventually word will spread. People start popping in. They'll see the event, and you're there.

So I don't want to make it so simple that sounds ridiculous, but it really, you know, there was a lot of other pieces and details in terms of learning the software and how to upload, you know, our video for worship, how to, you know, make, you know, maintain, you know, how to, uh, you know, crowd is a little different because you, you know, you have to mute people. So how do you do that sensitively? Because there can be trolls. You're not going to have that as much in an in-real-life church, or maybe you do. I don't know if you get wild-haired prophets, self-proclaimed prophets coming in the middle of your sermons. But that does happen in VR. So you gotta mute people sometimes. So just stuff like that, or if you're really adventurous, maybe you want them to, you know, the wild-haired prophet just interrupt your sermon.

Can we break it down maybe into some portions of like, talk a little bit? I would love to get your insights on, first off, technology platform. So the technical side of things, like what would you recommend? What have you learned? What have you liked? What have you kind of also perhaps explored and didn't like it for whatever reason? You can kind of like, we can address that as one thing. Then the second thing that I would love for you to address is what have you learned about how to best run a service? Like, are there a pair-down version of what you do from Sunday versus in the VR experience? And then the third thing that I would love for you to touch on would be what's the staffing, time commitment, and people necessary to make this thing happen for the long haul. So does that make sense? I just broke it down. I just created our agenda. That was awesome, man. You're good.

Yeah, I appreciate that, John. So first one, technology. So you gotta determine, although I didn't even think through this because I didn't know what I didn't really know what I was doing, I'll be honest. I just jumped in. So now I know a little bit more. I can help you guys perhaps in determining where you like, what target audience perhaps you want to reach. I just jumped into AltSpace because I knew DJ was there, and I was like, well, maybe I can do it there because he's doing it. Really is what I did. But there are multiple other platforms I wasn't even aware of at the time that all have their distinctive pros and cons.

So you know, AltSpace is probably the most tame in terms of, and maybe the easiest perhaps to get into. Um, and so I do recommend AltSpace because, you know, it's kind of a nice entry point. Maybe you branch out from there. We're thinking about branching out to some other platforms, but, um, but it is, I've found probably a little a little bit older crowd, but of course everyone there is pretty tech savvy. So it's older crowd with a lot of techy kind of qualities about them. Um, because VR is still pretty, uh, it's taking shape and capturing the culture, but it's still a small segment of the population. But it will grow. I really believe that. Um, so you're gonna see there are some young people in AltSpace, but you're probably looking in, you know, although I mean, we just baptized actually, he was baptized yes, Sunday, two new believers, and they're both in their twenties. So there's twenties, but then we also see people in the fifties and sixties. They see all the gamut. So that's kind of cool in terms of a diversity audience.

But if you go into a place like VRChat, that's going to be mostly your millennials, Gen Zers, and it's a little bit more wild west. It's a little, you really want to have people that are okay with just getting hammered by trolls and people that there is no respect whatsoever for church at all. They're just going to come at you. But the mission field is super ripe there. In fact, one of my good friends, Pastor Brock in Michigan, he goes on there regularly and does evangelism, just goes into pubs. And it's amazing the hunger these folks have for the gospel. But they, but there's, but they're hardcore. I mean, they will, don't you gotta send in your paws? You don't want to send in your maybe Barnabas isn't ready for this or Timothy. Timmy, they don't send Timothy into VRChat yet. Um, and it's harder to start a church there because the platform just a little bit more wonky. Uh, you just need a little bit more skill in developing worlds. So there's some labor there.

RecRoom is kind of the dark horse. Uh, DJ and I were talking about how we think that's going to really become maybe the dominant player because they're investing a lot more resources in RecRoom as a group than the other platforms seems like. And they're, because they're everywhere, I mean, you can get them on Sony, the Sony PlayStation VR. You can get them on all the headsets. You can get them on your 2D PC, Mac, as well as your phones now. I think you can do it on your mobile. So they're just going all in. And it's, it's actually, if you're really maybe got some, your youth pastor wants to be involved because it's a younger crowd, I mean, you really got a lot of middle schoolers, teenagers. I mean, there's other people that are older, but that's kind of the sweet spot for RecRoom. So you really can reach the young people quick. And it's a little more tame.

VRChat again, why it's wild west is people can be as scantily clad as they desire to be with their avatars. So you might be preaching a sermon and who knows, who knows what's going to walk in on the service and distract everyone. I don't know, it's, I know it's a cartoon, but still it can be weird there. Uh, AltSpace and RecRoom, you're not gonna have that kind of craziness.

So, uh, but those are those are the main. There's another one called Sensor, uh, which or Sansar, which none of us...

Use, uh, I've jumped in. It's pretty well developed. It, they come from the developer that I did Second Life back in, you know what, 15, 20 years ago. They're doing that as their VR, uh, platform. I, that, that's an open. I mean, if you're looking for a place where there's probably no church, I don't know, Jeff. I don't know how much you've looked, Jeffrey, into the. I don't think there's anybody there. So that's a place where there's nothing, uh, a wide open, uh, mission field, uh, but I don't know much about Sansar. So the three biggies are VRChat, AltSpace, and RecRoom. And you're going to reach it. It's kind of like AltSpace is the Facebook of VR, uh, VRChat's probably like the Snapchat and, uh, I don't know, maybe, uh, or TikTok. And maybe RecRoom is a Snapchat. I don't know. It's, you can tell the difference like the crowd and Facebook crowd. Your grandma might be on there, uh, but she's not gonna be on Snapchat or TikTok probably. So so it depends on who you want to reach.

So technology though, um, you know, getting stuff, your video uploaded, each platform, it's hard to really go into detail because each platform has its own mechanisms by which you upload that stuff. And if you get into it, we'd be happy to. I've got a director of operations. She's just amazing, does a great job, and she knows all of that, in the ins and outs of that. So if you get started, we can talk again and say, here's how you upload a video, here's how you put your, your sermon notes. You can put them up there where nobody sees them, but you can see them. Uh, there's all kinds of little details like that that each platform is going to have their own, uh, you know, way to do it.

So trying to think of that answer, any other tech questions though? I'm trying to think those are the platforms, but I didn't really answer your tech. What else did you ask for, Josh, about technology? And how do you think that's actually really helpful to just, and and so then with that though, obviously once you pick your platform, then you're just going to have to be, uh, you know, obviously develop your world or develop your church, yeah, through, you know, that's ideal for that platform.

Oh, and also, yeah, and AltSpace is gonna have some standard rooms that you can use. So we right now we're developing a world, but we've been using for seven months just the standard room, one of the standard rooms, and it works fine. Uh, VRChat, I think that you have to build your own world. So that's the labor there of somebody that knows how to do the, do the design, and you really have to know Unity, which is a type of, or, uh, there's another one that I use, um, Unreal Engine, I think, but I think Unity is the one that they use to develop games, and you'd have to have somebody who knows how to do that. Uh, RecRoom is very simple. Uh, they again, they put so much kind of WYSIWYG type stuff in there that you could, you could probably in a few hours develop a church room for yourself. So RecRoom's pretty cool in that way. But AltSpace, they have standard templates also.

In terms of events, AltSpace is going to be more clear to the general population. It gets on what's happening when, um, VRChat is a little unclear. Uh, it advertises and highlights worlds when you come in, but I don't recall it really showing events. So you have to develop your, your following, right? You have to go in there and start meeting people and connecting and friending. That's what Brock does, and then he has a church service because he knows all these people who he's friended. And then RecRoom, I think is the same way, but you can do it. I mean, there's again, the mission field is, is right. So that's not even an obstacle to me. Don't, don't view that as, oh my gosh, we're not gonna have our event highlighted. No, you'll, you'll, if you go into a pub and you start talking to people, they'll friend you, and before you know it, you've got a congregation. So that's not, that's not a worry there.

So, uh, the second question, let's see if I can remember technology and then what was the second question, Josh? You got written down? Yeah, sir, I wrote it down. Service kind of set up. What is the, what, how would you design a service or church differently in that setting? Yeah, so I, to, to keep things simple, because we are, you know, in terms of resources, I mean, we're a smaller church, um, I was like, man, I just gotta replicate what I'm doing already. I don't want to write another sermon. Do it differently. We already got our worship team and we've got that video. Let's just keep it real streamlined, um, and, and other people do it differently. Um, DJ's only on VR. I think Brock, I don't know what he does if he changes his sermon at all. Actually, Brock, Brock has more of a conversational apologetics. I think he does a different sermon for his church in Michigan, um, but for me, I, I basically same sermon. How long is that? My sermons are probably too long. Like yesterday was 45 minutes, 45 to 50. That's probably, I probably shoot 45.

And here's the thing. I thought, you know, this, I was like, man, I probably before I got into VR's like, man, I probably should cut that back because these are, these are gamers. They don't want to sit there and listen. And, and I just, it's a, I don't know which one you preach, maybe all of you do, but it's like a lot of work once you write the thing. You're like, it's so much work to go back and cut it. You're just like, forget it, I'm going to bed. So I decided I'm just going to preach what I, what I do because it'll be easier on my schedule. And, and I'm, I'm shocked. People, they, they're hungry for truth. They'll sit there and listen for 45 minutes straight on mute and just, it's, it's amazing. And they really are. It just shows you that they're ready to hear the gospel, um, so I wouldn't worry about that at all. I mean, if your sermons are short, great, keep them that way. Just do what you do with your worship. Do you do a full worship? I mean, you play your full worship set and people sing along? No, we only, the worship is the hardest part. Uh, that's, that's the one change that you're gonna have for the most part, cause you can do everything else. You can have a welcome team, welcome as they spawn into the, into the facility. Hey, good to have you here, you know, you can have all the stuff. You can basically just take everything you do IRL, in real life, and pretty much do the same thing in VR. The only difference is, uh, is your sacraments. And I don't know what, what, what's your, what's your tradition? Are you guys not a nom or what are you? So I don't know what your views are on communion and baptism, but we're more Zwinglian, you know, symbolic. So for us, it's, it's easy. Like, if, if my, you know, so Brock, he's, he's, uh, Lutheran, and so he's like, I can't, I can't do baptism or communion. So it's just different on your tradition. So for me, I can replicate all that into VR except for the one thing is worship. That is, because the, the lag time, we actually one time open up everybody's mic to sing, and it was like that old, I'm, I'm, oh, I don't know how old you are, the Saturday Night Live skit where you had Frankenstein and, uh, you know, the guys singing Christmas carols? Remember that? Anybody remember that? John, love it. And no, but yeah, it just sounded so bad. Like only God and his grace could appreciate that worship. It was, it was so bad. So we just, you know, muted. So you can't have corporate worship in that way. So you have to mute it, and then you got to show a video because you, you could have, we're working on getting our, uh, our worship director get in there live, and, uh, he's done it a couple times, but there's some setup with software and et cetera where he can go in there and actually play it. They have like talent, uh, uh, open mic nights in AltSpace, and it sounds really good. So you can have a live worship set if you want. You can have just the video of a downloaded worship. You can get Elevation Worship on your screen, whatever, or if you want to do your own, where we do our own worship and put it up there, but we just do one song because, you know, it seems odd since nobody's singing to go too long with the worship, uh, but that's, that's the thing I wish we could. That's the one thing I do miss, uh, but we tell them, hey, go ahead and sing your heart out. You're on mute. God loves it, um, so that, that, that's the only change that I do everything else is exactly almost the same as I do in real life. Does that help at all? Yeah, it is. That's really helpful.

When you finish a service, uh, do you, I mean, do you have a prayer team there? Do you like walk down off the stage and say, I'll be down front and I'll be, I'd love to meet with you? Or, uh, so I do. I always do a Q and A at the end, which again is striking because they stay for an hour, over an hour in there, and then they stay for, it's like another hour. They'll end up being there asking questions. And, uh, you know, we have a small church. I mean, it's probably like 25 to 35 any given Sunday, um, but they're staying there and they're asking questions. We have Q and A, and they ask me all kinds. You can imagine the gamut of questions. Sometimes, you know, you wonder if they're trolling, but most of them are pretty sincere, um, so we do that, and then, uh, we then we go to a prayer world, uh, that one of our members has designed, and they go and they go and pray or fellowship or what have you. See, you can sky's the limit, man. You can go, you can go play, uh, VR paintball after church if you want, you know, you can go to a, you know, VR restaurant and I act like you're eating. I don't know. So breaking bread together, yeah, you can do whatever you want there. But we, we do Q and A for a while, and, and again, this is a very unreached, uh, people group. They're either mostly never been to church or, or de-churched. Like, we've got a bunch of people that have had bad exposure to church and have been so wounded at an early age that they, decades, you know, they're just, they're just barely putting their feet in the water with VR church, right? Because they're like, okay, this is, you know, if they are a cult, I can get out of here quick, you know? So, uh, so you get a lot of people that have a lot of questions, um, so that's the Q and A times pretty special to me, um, that's kind of how you do your, your setup, your service. I love that. Yeah, um, all right. So we probably will spend maybe the most time here, but what's the, like, before you launch it, what's your time commit? Well, like, really at the end of the day, how, how many people are in this thing? How often do you need to be back in this thing following up with people, connecting with this? And then I even want to get into, are there like ideal personalities? So I know you're preaching this thing, um, does it, would you, would it be better to have a, a campus pastor in your, yeah, I don't know, just those type of things. And an apologist or an evangelist versus like, uh, someone who likes to debate? Wow. So that the last question, I mean, that's, you know, I think there's so many obviously gifts that the church needs. So I mean, maybe all of them if you can, if you have them, if you have the resources, they may do different, uh, maybe the preacher isn't one of those, maybe he's, or maybe he's just one of those gifts, um, I mean, because the thing is, like, if you see the different guys that are involved in VR ministry right now, and by the way, we've got a VR ministry network that if you guys are interested in joining on Discord, uh, Pastor DJ, Esther, Brock, myself, uh, Pastor Binnick, I think he, he doesn't really come that much, but he's down in Florida, and then Jay Earhart, who does a sort of an online Twitch Discord gaming church, um, and they're all, so everybody's different. So I'm kind of like, you know, I went to Southern Seminary. I'm, I'm, you know, Baptist growing up. I'm EFCA now, but I'm pretty, you know, I'm pretty traditional, believe it or not, even though I'm VR, uh, just the way I was trained, the way I grew up. So I'm pretty much just just a standard preacher, you know, I just do the message. DJ's probably more of a conversational, just kind of walking through the text.

Uh, style, uh, Brock is like an apologist, so and that works well. So, so, and then J is really relational, just a relational guy, a very caring guy. So you got the gamut of guys that are doing it, and each one of us are having a lot of fruit. So honestly, I would, you know, you put the word out and say who's interested, see who pipes up from the volunteer resources that you have, and of course your staff. You figure that out as well. And uh, and this role with that, and God's gonna use. So we've got from our in real life church, my director of operations comes, a couple of the teens kind of got us started. Uh, they're kind of they're a little flaky, so they're kind of in and out. But uh, but they got us started. And then um, we got a guy who's in his 60s who does some teaching, small group. We have a small group on Wednesday night. He's gonna lead an experience in God things that meant a lot to him years ago. Um, and then uh, which I think was, but anyway, we got this gamut of all the other guys in the Air Force. Uh, he's in his late 20s and he helps out. And as far as personality there, that the older guy, he's a little more extroverted and teaching oriented. But the rest of her kind of a little bit more introverted, which is great. Uh, you gotta consider why are people on VR ministry via church instead of going to a church? Well, either they've been wounded or some of them are unable to leave their homes. They have some disabilities, what have you. Some of them are socially anxious. There's a lot of social anxiety and social awkwardness that not everybody, but you know, they, they just going to a church is very terrifying in physical life. Um, and then a lot of them, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of geeky uh things going on. I'm a geek, so uh, they will love to talk about VR and the headset and games, you know, you could get on that for a long time. So you don't need um, that you don't need the typical, you know, I don't know all the all the big name guy, you know, Steven Furtick, Judah Smith, you know, cool looking, you know, just normal, just down to earth, maybe even shy. It doesn't matter as long as they're able to have some conversations. So it's really who do you have and just throw them at it, and God's gonna weave the relationships. And I've seen that. I've seen different connections and relationships forge. Um, so yeah, I don't know if that, so I wouldn't worry too much about that piece, I guess. Authenticity, that's a big one. We all know that, right? That's a huge, I mean, that's the kind of lingua franca now. But yeah, you don't want somebody going there just being a, you know, the preacher, you know, uh, that they really want real authentic connections and relationships. So I don't, you know, if I just preach and I head it out, that would be weird. But I stick around, talk to him, I go to the, try to go to the small group as much as I can. And then and then this leads to the next point: Discord. So that's how we stay connected. I don't get on VR that much. Um, you know, some of them are on a lot, but I just don't have time. So I might get on for the two hours on Sunday and then the one hour on Wednesday night, and then occasionally, like this week, I met up with someone who was wanting to talk about the faith and learn more. So I met up with them for an hour. But I rarely get on. So Discord, for me, is like our where they can throughout the week ask questions and talk and chat. And uh, and that that's, I like that personally. I can go quick with that. So you want to have a Discord, you probably want to have a Discord server or something like that. Are you guys familiar with Discord? Mm-hmm. Okay, yeah. In in the millennial 20-something gaming VR world, Discord's the platform. Yeah, I know. Um, in the church world it's not. Uh, but if you really want to connect with those people, it's on Discord. Yeah, that's like the 268 hour, 167 hour a week engagement. Yeah, uh, aside from the what you're getting a couple hours a week in VR. And that's honestly, yeah, Jeff, that's a good point. That's what makes VR really amazing or any digital ministry is uh, I feel like I've actually, that's crazy. Not only not only have I had more gospel conversations in the last six months than I've sadly that I've had in my entire 13-year ministry, like just because it's so much. I mean, it's just so right. But I've also had some even deeper connections in terms of what they share uh in in real life. Not that I have, I've got really close relationships here in the church and one in Iowa. But you do in real life ministry, yeah, it's all Sunday, and you do that few hours, and and you don't really, you might go to coffee with some of your keys, you know what I mean? Like it's just different. Like they're just more open, and you're dialing 167 hours a week. You never know what's going to come up, and it's it's really fascinating. How for all for all the critique of it being virtual, oh, that's not real, you hear that out there. It's it's actually more real than in real life. Bizarre. Uh, I didn't, I didn't believe that until I got into it. When you get into, you'll see what I mean. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or questions, but yeah, that's really good, man. I just appreciate you being able to break down even like telling us how many hours you spend um in there is is helpful because I like, I was just wondering like, do you have to go back every day? Um, or do people only enter in during your event? For us, yes, because it's just an event now. Once we create the world, they can come in and enjoy in our world. Actually, we're creating a lot of cool things. Like we'll have a prayer area. But uh, we've got a stations of the cross. So I'm, you know, I actually, I know that's Catholic and stuff, but I personally think it's very helpful uh, the way if you do it, you know, a certain way. And so we got stations, virtual stations, lacrosse, for them to have, you know, that experience. A prayer labyrinth, again, getting all weird on you, but that's cool. So you can go do that virtually. Campfire, they can hang out. We're going to have our VR counseling center. So we do VR biblical counseling. I'm a big biblical counseling guy. Like I'm just a huge part of my life in ministry. And so we're doing that uh in VR as well. We have VR counselors. So they'll be able to meet in facilities uh on the thing. So we're gonna create a museum that kind of uh, called the Kingdom Museum, that kind of uh, I don't know how much you you guys are into biblical theology, kind of seeing the the the the timeline of the kingdom in in scripture. Uh, so we're gonna we're gonna like have these areas where they can go and experience uh, you know, that's the vision is they go to, they go to the museum, they see the one kingdom era, and they can actually spawn into it and go into a world that deals with, you know, the perfect kingdom, right? You know, when it was first created in paradise, right, Adam and Eve. They can actually experience that in some fashion and learn a little bit of scripture and what God's doing in that. And then they go to different other kingdoms, right, fallen kingdom, et cetera. Um, so that that's that's the thing you can do uh, just sharing all that because in VR for pretty cheap you can do a whole lot of cool things that people will want to hang out in and actually learn uh from because it's so tangible, visual. Uh, it's just a different way of uh, it's every youth pastor's dream, right? It's like how can I make this clear? So yeah, hey Jason, when you move from an event to the world, how will that change your staffing? Will that be 24/7? We got people in there all the time at different places within your world? No, so the world is just open, and people can go visit as much as they like. And uh, and we hope that they'll have some, there'll be places where you can see, hey, if you have any questions or if you'd like to talk, you know, click here, whatever. And just like you do with your website, they'll click there. I need counseling, boom, and it'll get to your staff. But nobody has to be like on the website at that point. Same thing in the world. Uh, there will be maybe special times with like counseling, for example, will have scheduled. So they'll meet in there with their counselor. But no, you don't have, no one has to be in there all the time. I mean, that would be cool, I suppose, if you had, you know, all space or Microsoft, who owns all space, they'll have somebody staffed in their main world, which is called Campfire World, so they can answer questions, kind of. So that'd be that'd be really legit. If we don't have that resourcing, um, so that's a great idea though. Wow, and by the way, the director of operations, Nicole, she puts a lot of a lot more time in than I do. So there are there are other hours required of your staff. So I, you know, I'm the lucky one that I just go in for a few hours, and she she goes in there and uploads this all the stuff. And so there's there's that. And she's actually learning some design stuff. So there are some more hours that would be devoted to that person. So you really need a key digital coordinator, uh, whatever you want to call that role. Yeah, what what do you guess she's putting in? She's probably, you know, how staff, they they're good staff, right? They'll do a lot more volunteer hours on top of their, you know, she's probably putting way more hours than I realize. I'm guessing it's probably got to be, I mean, once you get it down to a science, it gets easier. But she's got to be putting in a few hours every week just to get the stuff in there. And then if she's doing some design stuff, I mean, yeah, once you start getting in, if you have a person that's doing all your design, you know, that that's that's more work, you know, but but you can get down to science and probably five hours a week, you know, you could probably put together a like DJ. He has an interact for his sermons. They'll start in one building, do the worship and announcements, then they'll all walk over to an interactive space, and he's got some builders that will every week or every series change it up so it reflects the topic of the series. Yeah, I saw. So yeah, that might take that that will take some, you know, five to ten hours probably uh each series change. It's kind of like your creative arts team that sets up your stage with different backdrops. So and volunteers, you know, if you find them right, you've got a good pool of volunteers and some techie people, some young people that might, they might just do it for free, you know, be like, man, I'd love to do that. How much of the world building that you did, how much of it was in house where you were training volunteers or staff to create that versus contract outside? Cause I know DJ's got some some contacts. Like what what does that look like or what will that look like for you guys? So yeah, but we did find that it was a little challenging. Um, you know, because it's it's a specialized thing. There's not that many people that are in VR in doing design. And so we're actually had a tough time trying to find even someone to pay to do it. Um, not that they're not out there, and I didn't maybe look as hard as I should. But because we were doing fine, we were like, hey, you know, we got this room, it's great, it's not fancy. Uh, but once we started wanting to build, we actually by God's grace we had a guy who's in our church who does design. He like, he's learning it, but he's pretty good at it. So he's doing it pro bono for us right now. But at some point, you know, I'd maybe like to either bring him on staff or pay him a little bit because he's doing doing work for us. But that just, that was for us. We just happened to have a guy that was in in our church. I think DJ maybe had the same thing where he had some guys that were really good designers that came to his church and then he maybe brought him on staff or I don't know if he pays them. I don't know how that, where he could ask DJ. But it is a little...

Challenging maybe to find somebody at first, but once you start developing contacts, then before you know it, this designer knows these guys and so, and I've got some connections too that, uh, like VR Chat, I got a guy. I don't know, Jeff, do you know the architect by any chance down in El Salvador? Uh, a little bit. I've agreed with him on, he's a really, really gifted designer. If you, if you wanted to, uh, do something pretty nice, uh, I can connect you to him and he's pretty reasonable pricing.

So Jason, when you say designer, um, what's the backdrop of that? Meaning, where do they come from? Are they people that have, uh, been designing in other places? Um, you know, Minecraft, Minecraft, whatever that is, uh, Roblox, stuff like that, or designing from the marketplace? Where's what's the background that leads them into designing worlds for this?

You know, some of them just, they learn it. You know, they're just self-taught. Um, some of them may have some background in, you know, a lot of times game design. So the architect, uh, he's actually developing his own game, a pretty, pretty amazing, uh, MMO. But he's doing that. I don't know, I think he's got a back, I think his degree is in computer science, okay, design. So that's a guy who's got some skill, and then there's a bunch of other people that are just kind of learning. Unity is the big platform for design, and then you upload it into all space, VR Chat, what have you. And so there's a lot of people that are now learning that self-taught, but they can be very good.

So the one thing you want to be careful of, this is something to log away. I know I'm giving too many details perhaps, but don't, you don't wanna, you don't want your world to be so nice that it's, it gets kind of wonky and it's hard to up. What will happen is places like all space for sure will not then feature your world because your world's too intense, too heavy on the data. So you want to figure out how to keep it under a certain limit, but yet still be a decent world.

So there's some worlds that are really awesome like Unbelief. A lot of all space is cartoonish because it keeps it at a lower level, and that's just a particular art form that they decided to go with. Uh, VR Chat's more anime art form, but uh, but there's still some like real, like, um, the art form that some people in Unity design look real. Like it actually looks like the world, and you can upload that in all space, but your that world will never be featured. So it's gonna be harder for you to be noticed. And so for churches, yeah, this doesn't make sense to to make a really nice world and then no one knows you're there. So so just be careful that when you get a designer, some designers are like, I want to make, you know, this, I want to paint the Sistine Chapel. You're like, no, that's not what we want.

Now with your church, like your VR church, you said you got twenty-five, thirty people or whatever. Is it the same twenty-five, thirty people, um, or is it always new?

So we have a core. There's probably a core of maybe, trying to think here, maybe twenty, fifteen to twenty, I would say, are like regulars. So they're like the core community. And then then you get, and some, you know, some Sundays it might just be twenty of the core, and then sometimes you get forty. And so I, twenty-five to thirty-five is kind of that general, but yeah, there are, um, a lot of new people that come in and so they stay the whole service. Some don't come back, and maybe because I preach forty-five minutes, I don't know. But uh, but some of them, you know, you've got to consider where a lot of these people, they're like never been to church. But you, so there's, it's a lot of, it's a, it's definitely when I first started, I thought of it more as a street ministry, like I'm going down the street and I'm just preaching the gospel. If somebody stops and listens, yes, I was hoping for one person just to come and listen. And because, you know, if you're on the streets of my hometown and probably yours, if I go out on the street corner downtown and preach for forty-five minutes and one person stops for five minutes, and that I'm like, hallelujah, you know, like Jesus is coming, you know, because no one, no one listens to you on the street. But man, I went into VR and people just come in.

So yeah, you're going to get a big portion, not the majority, but you're going to get a portion of people that are just going to come in, hear the gospel one time, and then some of them will get come back. It's like, it's like Mars Hill, right? A small minority will come back. A few of them might talk. A number of people have, uh, sometimes they'll dabble and come back, but sometimes they'll just say, hey, can I talk to you offline? Usually it's the atheists who are like ready to just, you know, and but those are fine. I enjoy that. This, you know, I have an apologetic, uh, nice conversation. But so you'll get some of those, and then you'll get probably some in Mars Hill who just think you're a total, total idiot. Like this is, this was hilar for them. This is hilarious that the church is in VR, and they're watching, and they're going to tell their friends, you know, why they're smoking pie. Like, can you believe, you know, they got this stupid church? So you're going to get a mix. But yeah, you all every Sunday, and DJ would probably say the same thing. You're going to have like new people that have never heard the gospel. They're gonna come. It's unlike you're in real life church. I know you get visitors, but honestly, in real life, a lot of our visitors, they're probably hopping from different churches. They've already, there's very rare where you get like just fresh, never churched, right? I mean, you got a bigger church, so you might get more than we do, but in VR every Sunday, every, every Sunday. So it's, it's super, you can hear that I'm excited. It's exciting for for ministers, right? You're like, this is why I got into this job. I was one, you know, I was wondering about how do you preach, uh, this is just kind of a like practical question. Do you memorize your whole message?

No, no. So how do you preach with VR on and address your notes?

So you can do that. You can upload the notes, uh, but although the first, when we first got into it, and this is why I would love to help you, because if you can avoid the pain that we went through, where I was like, we were trying to get uploaded and it was breaking down, and there's some, when you get in there, you will find that every Sunday, I don't know if it's like technological demons or what, but something goes wrong. We've been doing for seven months, and every Sunday something different goes wrong. So just get used to that. So at the very beginning, my notes wouldn't show up. So I'm like, I got my manuscript here on my table in my office, and I'm like, you know, you know, for forty-five minutes, you know, staring like this at my notes. Um, I want to help you avoid that. So we'll help you get your notes, uh, on the screen where you can see them.

Jason, I feel like we would put this in the pocket of reaching, um, that like everybody we're going after, maybe everyone that's a part of our volunteer teams in the future, like, uh, that they'd be people that we don't see on the weekend. Is that accurate in your mind? Like, would you confirm that? Like, everyone we're going after, all the teams we're building, are probably people we've never met and are outside of our area?

Yeah, I mean, definitely. That's, we do have some of our in real life folks that come, and I think there was like one person in our city who was coming because of COVID, and her church was shut down, and so anyway, but that's, that's unusual. Usually it's all over the world, right? All of the country and all over the world. In fact, one of the guys that got saved and got baptized is from Estonia, former Soviet Union. So and, and for you know, and I always like to try to connect them to a local fellowship. That's and I try to help them find a good church, um, when they're ready. So you got to consider again, some of them are de-church, and they're just traumatized by church, and this is just a rehabilitation period. And some of them live in Estonia where there just really aren't a lot of gospel, good gospel church options. So this, you know, could be the best option for them to be on VR.

So but yeah, you're right. Um, to get to a mentality where you, it really is a shift for people. Like, people typically when they critique VR church or any digital ministry, they did that with livestream until COVID hit. Is, oh, that's not real. Like, it's not, it's not real fellowship. It's not real accountability. It's not real discipleship. And I, I have totally seen that to be blown, uh, those are just those are the typical historical church responses anytime there's something new, right? We just, we just, we just get all, you know, our panties in a bundle, and I don't know why we do that. We start to eat our own, you know, we get critical of the other person who's doing, you know, it's like I just preached in Luke nine, you know, and they're, they're casting out demons in your name. They're, but they're not with us, you know? Stop them. So it's, it's, it, they're real people. They have real issues. They are really seeking Jesus. They, uh, they, you know, I think, um, I think it's, it's probably even more, like I said, more of a feels more of a real ministry sometimes. Like you're actually going deeper with them, uh, and some would say, oh, the avatar, you know, they got an avatar. They're not showing their face. They got, they got a different name, screen name, and, uh, you know, that at first I thought that was a problem. But the reality is, what is, what's in it? What's in a name? Like, what is the name? Like, my name Jason Polling is just a legal name that, you know, back in the day I might have been Jason's son of Ron, you know? So it, the names, so it's, it's your identity when you're in VR. That that name, it's your identity in that community. Like, and you don't want to, like, uh, now you could be a troll who changes, you know, ads on whatever every, every week. They, you can't change your name that often, but you could add a new account and come in control. But once you get a name and you're a sincere seeker, that's your identity. Like, that's how you're known, and you live out that identity. So, uh, to me, that whole idea of like, well, that's not their real name. They're hiding behind something. I, I just think those are strong men, you know? Go, these people are real people are asking real questions and getting really saved.

So and then discipleship, actually church discipline, which no one's like to talk about, is sometimes easier to do in VR. Like on Discord, if somebody's being, you know, we've had, we actually kicked a guy, so we excommunicated a guy from Discord because, and we, and we, I ministered to, I said, hey, bro, you can't be saying that kind of stuff. Like, that's not godly. If you, you know, be a part of this fellowship, like, you can't say those things to people. So we gave mourning warning, almost followed Matthew eighteen. And we know we have elders at our church and pastors that come in and preach and stuff and know the guys. And so finally, I kicked them. So there's excommunication. How often, you know, do we actually do real church discipline in our in real life churches? It's super hard, right? Um, I don't know about you guys. Maybe you guys are like every week we excommunicate. But anyway, I know that's a tough, that's a tough discussion. But people talk about discipleship. That's part of discipleship is helping people know that this is how Christians live. We want to help you live that way. But if you're choosing not to, and you keep defiling the community, like, you can't do that. And so there's repercussions. And we'd be happy to, after we, and I'm talking to him now trying to help him see what he was doing because he wants to come back in. So that's discipleship. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that's good. So yeah, we don't see him. The guy lives, and I think he lives in like New Jersey, um, so I'll probably never see him. But I'm having real scriptural accountability discussions with this guy. But what a Christian is supposed to be like.

What's the impact upon so you've got your three hours, you know, that you're in VR, then you've got Discord and you're talking about discipling a guy who's in New Jersey who's just being a bonehead and ruining your Discord. You know, so my wonder, and you said you're on that like all, you know, all week long. So how much of your time doing discipleship happen? How much time is that over a week? So three hours on VR, but add up all the other time that you're investing in. I don't know. I mean, because so there is a personality type that you, I mean, that's when you ask about personal personality types, you probably do need. If someone's going to be doing the Discord, I mean, ideally it'd be great if you had a Discord pastor like that was just their whole job. That would be great. But for us, we're not there yet. So you have to have a personality that can multitask quickly. Like, by God's grace, I'm just, I'm just, I mean, you can see it. It's not just the caffeine. I'm just really hyper guy. And so I, I'm quick. I type really, really, really crazy fast. I don't know. I took a class in high school back when they taught it on the typewriters and I just got really good at it. So I can move quickly, respond quickly, and move on. So that does, so yes, if you put somebody in there that's maybe a little slower on the typing, a slower, on a slower processor, not, I'm a verbal processor, so I can just quickly respond and that can be bad, but in this particular case it's actually helpful because I can move on more quickly. If you've got someone who's too slow on the right, they're just a process that will eat up their time dramatically. So I don't think I spend probably if you add up all the times I'm responding, a few hours a week. So, and to me that's a willing, you know, it's a good sacrifice. But I still have to minister to my in real life congregation too, so I got to be careful. But it's a personality and skill set. So just put in your person who's the most hyper, the most quick to respond, but yet hopefully not gonna be a jerk. And, uh, I don't know. I don't know. Is that, I wish I could help you there, but that is helpful though because even hear you say yeah, I probably put in another few hours. It still is. It's time. Still time. I would love to have a digital pastor. That's probably, we actually put some, we just voted on our budget on Sunday and we actually have some money set aside because I think we like to, you know, where I can come in and just be on a teaching team. We have a teaching team, but even more sporadic, and have like that campus pastor. He's just a digital shepherd. Whole nine yards. That would be pretty legit. So Jeff, Jason, you got any other questions? I'm curious about building teams a little bit, Jason. Uh, so you know, people come into VR. They're excited about what you're doing. Hey, how can I help out? I've heard both ways in the digital world. Either our bidding goes way up on that if they're speaking on our behalf, or we're gonna, we're gonna make that bottom shelf and they're gonna come in. What have you learned in VR? If someone's championing or you know, joining a volunteer team representing you, uh, what would your advice be on vetting?

Yeah, so, uh, you know, it depends on the role. I mean, same thing with in real life. Uh, so my counselors, I mean, I like hardcore vet them. There's a lot of stuff that goes into that. Um, you know, my teaching team is primarily the pastors and elders, and so that's, you know, that's already that one's easier. Um, so I don't just let anybody preach or teach. Um, let's see. So you know, a welcome team, you know, that's obviously a little easier, and really we don't just immediately ask somebody to be on that. We, you know, they've got to show some consistency of coming, and we we talk quite a bit in the VR, so you get to know kind of their personality. There's one guy that comes and he's, he's pretty, he's pretty surly. He's got his real persnickety perspectives, and uh, and I'm like, nah, that's not a no, no, because there's a lot of different people there. There's some people that have some gender identity, uh, gender dysphoria type stuff, and a guy like that, you know, now so just gotta be careful. Um, but as far as like getting their doctrinal sound to be on a welcome team, I'm not too concerned about that. Um, there's not that, I mean, there's prayer team that's more concerning. Uh, but it's not like we've got, it's not a mega church, right? So like me and Nicole is my director of operations, Tom who teaches and he's in real life, and I trust him like we can handle all that. So it's that one's almost like it just was easy. But uh, yeah, I guess it depends on scalability. Like if you're, if your VR church becomes like a mega church, and I don't know if it's even possible because of the limitations on how many people can be in a facility at one time digitally, I think there's some hard limits. We've not come up against those limits. I think we have an eighty limit capacity, so we're we're half of that, so we're fine. Um, DJ is a little bigger, but I think that he was able to figure out a replication situation. These are details that if it gets to that we can talk to you more and DJ be more helpful where he can actually mirror the world and people can be in another world but see him kind of weird, but but you're not gonna have, you know, yeah, your volunteer teams aren't gonna, you're not gonna need as many volunteers as I'm guessing you guys probably have it at a sizable church in real life. So but vetting, yeah, it just depends on the role on how intense I vet them. But yeah, I'm pretty, I'm a little bit probably a little loose, maybe too much on, on definitely a lot of entry level. I'm kind of like, well, if they, if they totally blow it up, we'll, we'll have to clean up the, you know, clean up the mess. Um, but I'm putting him in roles that I don't think that's gonna, you're not gonna blow up the church. Yeah, so that's good. That's helpful. Thanks. Yeah, can I ask, it is a little, a totally different really question, but in regards to VR, you've probably heard of people who are doing, or like NBA, who will sell their seats along the, along the, you know, front row, and everyone, you know, one hundred people who reserve that seat and watch the game. Is there a VR platform where you can do that as well where you can put a 360 camera in the front row of your church during a nine a.m. and people can go VR and watch your church from the front row?

So uh, there you can do that now. The platform is currently in the VR. They don't, it's not really wired for that. Um, those, the ones that I mentioned, you can show, um, no, I actually, actually take it back. You could. I know uh, still photography, you definitely can do a 360.

I have not seen anybody do a video, a live video 360. I'm guessing it's possible, but there are still some limitations on all the platforms, so I don't know about that. But Life Church, 2021, the gears installed, COVID just slowed down execution. They're going to start. Life Church is doing that. They're going to start um, executing that in the future now. But they will have, they probably are going to have their own. They're not going to be on all space or VR Chat with that. It's probably going to be their own thing. Coupled with that, one of the rollouts, I'm probably not allowed to say this, but even Chop Church online platform, um, they're rolling out to encompass a virtual reality photo video type of thing. So um, and by doing that, um, you know, you're gonna get, you're gonna get your church ninety-nine, and then I think that's really the difference between the photo video VR and getting into like alt VR. The photo video is going to help you get your ninety-nine. The avatar world that Jason lives in is going to get you a whole other person. It's going to get you more to those, those ones. So it really does come down. Life Church, I don't know that their priority is to get down to that one level of what kind of the world that Jason's describing. It's coming in 2021. Whether or not that's the right thing for you and how you're trying to do ministry, you know, is up in the air. But you will have options there next year. Are you guys really talking more like AR stuff now at this point?

Well, AR, it would be a little bit different and really cool. Like, that's what I would love to do. That's that's a goal. I saw Jeffrey. Jeff, you have a comment on that because they are, it's a little bit different?

Yeah, so augmented reality is I'm wearing glasses that are inserting information data layered in front of the world. So I'm looking at a road. I'm physically seeing the road. Turn right, and the GPS, the arrow is telling me to turn right. There's two different types of virtual reality. One is going to be more cartoon avatar vector based where it's the drawings of avatars in these, in these made up elaborate worlds. Uh, the second one is more in line with like, okay, I'm gonna put a 360 to crayon camera in the room, and we're going to allow people to see that camera. And so I mean, the uh, illustration of basketball, I've seen churches do this where they put it in the, in the, you know, row five, so you're seeing in between people, and as the audience member looks around, they're experiencing everything that's happening in that, in that venue. Um, the early traction on that has been that that's more getting people that are already engaged in the church and giving them a unique experience. Those types of experiences are not as thick in the community as necessarily the avatar world. It's more of let me come. My daughter the other day she watched um uh Russian Bolshoi, whatever the Russian ballerina crew do, um, Nutcracker. Uh, it's a great experience. My daughter is not engaging in community and is not looking to have long conversations. She just wanted to go see the show. And so that's really what you're going to get with this photo video realism type of VR. That's good. That's a good summary. Yeah. Eight, one thing that we're thinking with AR, and I don't know when this will come or how it, just depends on technology. Technology is there, but it's just a matter of figuring out how to merge that within real life because so we, we're uh, one of the things that's distinctive about us is that we've got our in real life congregation and this VR campus, and they're actually, we consider them together. And so for the baptisms we had, so we had our uh, our annual business meeting at the same time in the afternoon as we have our VR uh, church campus service. So we actually showed, we we show, um, we stream our services on Twitch, and so we displayed the Twitch feed of the baptisms in our in real life congregation, and so they actually got to, you know, see me up there in VR baptizing these two new brothers. And and actually we caught some footage. Somebody caught some. It was really cool. You're watching this uh, this screen with the uh, the Twitch feed, and then you hear all these people clapping from the in real life church. So right now that's where that's about as augmented as we can get. Uh, but that's cool to me, and I would love to get to a point where it's possible that the two congregations can be at the same time and somehow interface with one another. So uh, you could actually, if you have, if you had the technology and you had the glasses, again, all that's there's a cost part of that, but they could see an avatar, somebody that's part of their congregation in the VR right next to them, sitting next to them, augmented, sort of like Pokemon, Pokemon Go. Uh, and vice versa. Then there'll also be a camera where the uh, the VR person can can recognize that he's sitting next to an in real life brother and sister. So anyway, those are kind of dreams. I think that could happen. I don't know. Jeff, you would know better if that's even a possibility. But let's let's see how 5G goes and then the developers will have fun after that.

Hope that's been helpful. I don't know if I can answer your questions, but yeah, good. You answered a ton. I appreciate all this. Prom, yeah, thanks guys. Any help you ever, if you ever just want to chat again or if you have questions, you can email me, Discord me, PM me, whatever.

DM me. Um, are you guys anybody on Discord? I'm just curious. Okay, yeah, they would love for you to join the virtual ministry group server and also our Cornerstone server. You can kind of, you know, see what's going on there. So thank you, Jeff, for setting this up. Jason, appreciate it, guys. Yeah.

My pleasure. I'm sure it'll be more conversations going on, but there's certainly a lot for you guys to process with today. Jason, man, thanks for jumping in once again. Um, love what you're doing. Keep pushing. Um, even yesterday I was speaking to Exponential, um, or a conference for Exponential. I was talking about what you guys are doing out at Cornerstone. So phenomenal. Keep doing it, and uh, we'll keep singing praises and hopefully changing some culture. So hey, Josh, Richard, uh, Jason, man, I feel like I haven't seen you in a while. I hope things are going good. Uh, Jeff, always good to catch up with you. On if there's anything else y'all need, just let me know.