EP265 - DJ Soto, and Churches Inside Video Games

Welcome to the Church Digital podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than that, we'll protect itself. We'll address deeper questions. Is disciple making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? Oh, and where does the metaverse fit into all this? Whether you're a big or small church, an established church or a startup church plant, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. Our heart is that churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Alright, hey everybody. Welcome to the Church Digital podcast, Twitch edition. Hey, we're in season four here of the Church Digital podcast, diving into Jesus, gamers in church. And so we're doing this podcast, but with season four here, we've been doing the podcast live on Twitch. It's Thursday. I don't even know what today is. The 23rd, 3 P.M. Eastern. And so we're hanging out on Twitch. We've got some people kind of hanging out on Twitch. And so we've been doing this season, I don't know, for a month or so, digging in different conversations. Man, it's we've had some Twitch streamers. We've talked esports. We've talked digital missionaries with some really interesting topics. Family streaming, like some really interesting topics, and talking about how God is moving in gaming and what it looks like to be a church in these gaming communities. So you can go back and check out the rest of season four if you're watching online or on YouTube. The church.digital slash podcast will get you to that. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube.com, the Church Digital, of course. But then we are streaming this Thursdays at 3 P.M. Eastern. And so if you're hanging out on Monday listening to this on demand and it's like, oh, I like Twitch, or oh, I don't even know how to spell Twitch, create an account, get a feel for what Twitch and some of the culture and community looks like here, because it's a lot of fun. And what you'll discover is that we—I'll call out the U.S. church specifically on this one, but probably the church in general—we're not doing a really good job connecting with gamers and nerds in this crowd. And maybe we need to start to think outside the box about what ministry looks like and take some notes here.

Phantom, methos, a Twitch. I think I've heard of that before. That's awesome. Hey, so listen, I am really excited about today's conversation. I typically, I'm a bleeding edge guy. I like thinking outside of the box. I like doing something different. I love change. I'm the guy that's gonna wash up on a deserted island with the machete and just start hacking away at palm trees, paving the way. But when I find somebody that's even more aggressive and more bleeding edge than I am, oh man, that's when it gets really fun. And so we're gonna bring into the conversation DJ Soto from VR MMO Church and Pastor Coco as well. So magic, magician behind the wall, bring him in. Hey, there you go. Coco, DJ. Hey, thanks for jumping on the podcast here into this conversation.

Hey, thanks for having us. It's good to be here.

Yeah, oh, listen, I'm so looking forward to this. And I was talking off air, DJ. I don't think we've had a conversation in twenty-two and twenty-three. Like, I it's been probably six months or so. You and I are running in different directions all the time. It's even busy. And Coco, I don't think we've touched base maybe in a year. I remember doing something with you with Leadership Network a while back, a panel, but I'm really looking forward to digging in here.

Yeah, so here's what we're going to talk about, and I'm explaining this to the audience as well as to the guests here. Um, I really want to focus on the idea of church in some of these games. Like, we've talked about doing church on Twitch. We've talked about being a digital missionary using Twitch. We've brought Jade Earhart in. We've brought Aki. We've had conversations with Mark about Lux Digital Church and Bubba from Love Thy Nerd. And so we've talked very peripherally, if that's the right way to say that, about engaging within gaming culture. But what you guys are doing through VR MMO Church is more specifically doing church in these video games. Like, Pastor Coco, you are, for, um, I started to say Black Desert. I know it's Final Fantasy. And so like, you're literally doing church inside Final Fantasy. This is crazy. Like, could you just maybe open up here a little bit and tell us a little bit about what church looks like in the video game Final Fantasy?

Yeah, so it differs depending on what game you're in because you don't want to just lift and shift, of course, a physical into digital space. You want to take advantage of what's going on in the space. So Final Fantasy 14 is the one that I'm in. It's an MMO. And um, we have every other Saturday gathering at RFC House. Our free company house, which is like your guild. Um, and we will just have a discussion. It's more of a discussion than it is like a sermon. Um, we can't do music in there, so there's no music, but we just have a discussion and um, go through the Bible really in depth, very in-depth. We're going more so than what you would normally expect on a Sunday. And we're just digging into scripture, clicking hyperlinks to other, you know, hyperlinks is a term from Bible Project if you haven't heard of them. Um, but um, and just digging in description and having discussions about it and asking challenging questions like, how do we apply this to our lives then? And we'll hang out. As far as the community goes, we'll um, we play together every Friday night and throughout the week whenever any one of us is online, if we want to do content together, we play together. So it's kind of like doing our life together inside the game and on voice through Discord because we can't. There's no like in-game voice. So we meet in Discord through voice while we're playing in the game. So it depends on the game how you can do that. But sure, DJ, like, what other, you know, so obviously we're in Final Fantasy, what other games are you actively in? What games were you experimenting with? Like, give me some backstory and history here on actually doing church inside these video games.

Yeah, so um, you know what we're known for mainly is churches in virtual reality. And then we've been church planting in MMOs as of recent. That's part of a new part of VR church, and our names kind of evolved unofficially to VR MMO Church. So we're planting churches in virtual reality experiences, the metaverse, and we're also planting churches in massively multiplayer online experiences. And we're, I'm particularly drawn to MMOs, and Coco is the team is, because there's some unique particularities when it comes to MMOs. So it's not that you couldn't maybe create a community around like Fortnite, but let's say you're playing a quick Fortnite game. You jump in there with 100 players or so, and then, but that's just for ten minutes. So then you're out. Um, so there is a massively multiplayer element to that, but it's only for a very limited time. A lot of these MMOs, for people who don't know because I get the question a lot, what is an MMO? Are these um experiences that are persistent? Like the sun rises and sets. There's an economy. There's community. Communities, there's clans, there's guilds, there's all these different characteristics. And there's, you know, maybe debate about what is an MMO, what is not, but ultimately one of the elements is that it always exists. It always is there. So Pastor Coco was talking about the guild house. So that's currently active online. It didn't go away like a Fortnite experience would. That is currently there. Players could go actually walk up to the house, look at the um, the guest book, read about what church is like, or or sign it at least. I'm not sure if there's a descriptor there. I can't remember, Coco. You can um, maybe um, remind me about that. But you know, this is a short description, a short description, and you can walk through the house and kind of check things out. And that's where they gather for church. And it's really beautiful there. So um, really VR, the metaverses, and MMOs have a lot of similarities. A lot of these MMOs, if they adopted VR, would be considered a metaverse um, to some degree. So there's a lot of similarities. And oftentimes these MMOs are more robust in community building than say the VR metaverses are. So anyways, that whole vibe or that whole realm of virtual reality, metaverse, persistent universes, that all is attractional to us as church planters. Um, that's what we do. So um, yeah, we would love to be everywhere because we just have such a passion for it. It's just, you know, human power, you know, time, energy, and money to get into these spaces. But right now we have churches in uh, the VR side, Rec Room and VRChat. And those could be considered um, gamer churches if you will. There's definitely gamer elements to those things on the VR side. And in the MMO side, we have churches in Final Fantasy 14 Online, which Pastor Coco leads, and as well as Rust, which is a very unique experience, survival MMO type of uh, of world where we build a church. It's a persistent sunrises, sunsets. There's an economy. It's kind of more of your gritty, maybe post-apocalyptic experience. But ultimately, like when you boil all this down, because I know I'm talking about all the platforms, but when you boil it down, is there's communities that exist online and very compelling, robust communities with deep relationships and deep connections. And those platforms that, for lack of better words, like are screaming, we build community here really well. We're attracted to go plant a church there. So Final Fantasy, um, I was a Warcraft player back in the day, by the way. I would love to do a church of Warcraft if we had time, energy, money, you know, all that type of stuff. Uh, there's so many places we could go. You mentioned Black Desert online. So you know about that. That's a big one as well. But I remember reading about an in-game wake for a uh, a player that passed away. And I saw this community just kind of like get together and come around this tragic event um, very symbolically in game with umbrellas walking um, in a line. And I was so captivated by the community elements of that. And I was like, oh, I think that that would be a perfect place to plant a church. Um, and things with Rust were attractional to us as well. So those are, anyways, to boil it down, those are our four main experiences. We would love to be everywhere. The opportunity is ripe to go other places. So people are listening and um, you know, you've got communities in Warcraft or Black Desert Online, man, it is just ripe for opportunities. So anyways, I could go all day. I better stop and let you ask questions because I could just keep going.

Yeah, so good. I I do want to parallel. I want to talk about VR and gaming and how the similarities and differences, because I'm in the middle of some of those conversations even now trying to wrestle with that. But we'll get there. Hold off on the VR stuff for a little bit. Uh, Coco, talk to me a little bit. I mean, you're trying to launch these games in where we're in games that are community-centric. Um, my fourteen-year-old daughter is obsessed with Final Fantasy, and so I understand the community that's surrounding that space. What does, you know, and so you're talking about Bible studies or studying the word and going deep into that. Like, how is the church really taking advantage of maybe some of the community features uh, within the game? Like, are you, I love the idea. I forget what did you say? What was the phrase? Because it was

It wasn't like copy and paste when you were like you don't want to just do that lift and shift. Yeah, but so like drill in a little bit, let's get dirty here, maybe some practical stuff. Like how are you the church in Final Fantasy?

So we have, we're using the tools the Final Fantasy provides. They provide a cross-world link shell, which is what is their in-game chat that lets you, um, that's like set up specifically for a group. So you invite people to that chat channel and it goes across different world servers. Um, so I'm in one on North America called Siren, and then I can talk to someone else on another server that is also in North America, but um, so we use that. And there's also the concept of the guild, the free company. So we have a few members who are active in our free company, but we're not limited to just our servers. So we have people that attend and hang out across multiple servers that we can hang out together regardless of what server we're on. That's the way Final Fantasy set up. Um, and so we will use that.

Let me ask, let me ask this. Go ahead.

Do people come to your guild like looking for MMO church? Are you missional in inviting people into the guild or into the church? Maybe, maybe what is what is evangelism or some of that front door? What does that look like through what you're doing in Final Fantasy?

We have to be careful with the game's rules, terms of service, as we, because think about it like if you were going to be a missionary in another country, you would want to respect that country's rules and laws so that you don't get kicked out or arrested or anything, because you can't do anything if you're kicked out. So we respect those terms of service, and so we have to be careful in how we communicate stuff. So we use outside means to communicate, hey, we're in Final Fantasy, like social media. We use YouTube, we use TikTok, we um, promote that way, because in-game they don't want you. Um, there are certain laws or rules around like religious activity and stuff, so we want to respect that, um, because they're trying to like keep the griefers out.

All right, so um, as far as like, they're, you have to be careful because there's this risk of people coming into Final Fantasy just to, and this is what they're afraid of, yelling out to everyone, you're going to hell, repent, right? We don't want that. And so they've got the terms of service in place to protect the community from that. And we want to, you know, um, abide by that. And so we've got Discord, we've got TikTok, YouTube, and then we have our free company and our, um, that you can find through the community website where the Final Fantasy has a community website. So you can go looking for free companies to join, and we've got our info in there. Um, so it's outside to bring in. Um, mostly very cool.

So tell me a little bit, talk talk to me about the like the one of the things that I've learned digitally is different platforms, different communities have a different target audience. Um, there are people outside of that audience, but as a general rule there's a there's a type of person that that's within that that space. Um, what's the what's the target audience? Who's the persona that the average person that that you're connecting with uh in the Final Fantasy world slash church?

So there's different types of people that play Final Fantasy. There are the people that are just checking it out to see, you know, if if they like it and they'll play very casually. The people that we usually get are the ones who are like in it. They are, that is, they see Final Fantasy as their community. They're coming there for friendships. They're coming there for that relationship because it's a something that they can't get out in the real world or it's different in the real world. Um, and so that is their community. Like, for example, um, there's a certain streamer who is on Twitch that um, she's from the Ukraine, and she, strange, she had to leave Ukraine. And so the community, the Final Fantasy community, watched her life, watch her evacuating. They watched her have to move to another country and get back set up again, and they were with her throughout that whole thing. And there have been like the community hangs out with people because there's like been gamers in Ukraine who have been um, hanging out with their friends online while they're being bombed in their bomb shelter. So this is the type of community that Final Fantasy is, and these are the types of people that we want to be a part, the ones that are there to live right, to be a part of that relationship.

Very cool. Is um, and maybe DJ on your side, like how much of lift and shift are you even doing among like Final Fantasy and in in Rust? Is are there different rules in in, you know, we're mentioning terms of services, terms of conditions, like does it does it change greatly between the two video games as you're looking even at like World of Warcraft? Are you having to reinvent more than replicate? Like what what is what is the idea of multiplying this out among different worlds? What does that look like?

Yeah, that's a great uh point that Coco made about lift and shift. So for Rust, they they are, it's known to be more of a toxic environment just because it's a brutal, like, you know, uh, kill or be killed type of uh experience, a video game. And so uh the rules don't really apply like they would in Final Fantasy because I think it's just kind of everything goes for the most part. There are some basic things about um hate, um, and I'm sure that probably could be connected to religious hate depending on how it's expressed, but um we find we find it to be a lot more relaxed on on the Rust side of things.

And so um, fundamentally, like when we look at these different communities, and I know this sounds kind of like weird, it's not meant to, but the the platform tells us what it wants it to be like. This is how church should be in here. So for us to, and we did in early VR church days, is try to replicate the church, and really that created a lot of pain points. Um, when we realized that we were supposed to reimagine and not replicate. And so as we learned that lesson through VR church in a really grown by leaps and bounds as a ministry, that trans, that mindset was already in place when we came to Final Fantasy, when we came into Rust, where we weren't trying to replicate. We were going to reimagine. And so as we church planted uh the, we took uh we looked at it through the eyes of the strengths of the platform, like uh Coco was talking about the link shell, uh the uh I forgot the guild's name, the fellowships, and um they are the other free companies. And so uh for Rust, it has its own version of things that are attractional to those types of players. And we'll get a lot of like reaction online, like TikTok, people like, you have a church in Rust? That's crazy. And we've had a lot of people come and visit. And what you're you're hearing about kind of like the the bird's eye view of the experience, but really when you get down to the nitty-gritty, like uh and you know just keep it generic because you know some of these are like pastoral conversations, but I've seen Coco, you know, one-on-one with people who are part of her community and shepherding them and joining a VC late at night to be with them uh with whatever they're going through. So that avenue of ministry, you know, perhaps there's people that would eye roll at it, but it's opened up unique opportunities for people who might not otherwise have been ministered to or who otherwise might not have attended a church. And we've seen that in Rust. A guy came in uh to our experience in Rust and wanted prayer because of um uh his wife was going to lose uh lose her baby or something was going on with pregnancy complications. Uh we didn't see him for like eight, nine months, and then he popped in our Discord and he said, guys, baby's doing well, thank you so much for praying. I remember going into the the church in Rust and praying. So those examples of like Pastor Coco ministering the the gentleman who came into our Rust church and many more are I think if people are adverse to gamer church, if you will, they're really missing out on unique opportunities to connect to, minister to, encourage where many of these individuals would not have stepped foot into a physical church on at nine AM on a Sunday morning. And that's not anti-anti physical church, Sunday nine AM. I think that's that's great and that can be great for who it is for, but for millions uh they're going to be in Final Fantasy, they're going to be in Rust, and there is power there in creating these experiences in churches, and they are churches. They're it, that's one. Also uh that's one value that we've learned early on is that church in Rust, church in Final Fantasy is no different than you know the church in the corner here in town. Um, and that mindset really has empowered us to minister where otherwise I think we'd have been limited and not have had the impact and the outreach if we had a limited mindset. But to approach it as this is real, just like anything else, has set the foundation for us as a church here into the future.

Yeah, and so because it's a real church, because there's you know expectations uh for for the spirit to move, because you're because you're trying to create an ecclesiologically stable church, you're following after what the Bible calls us to um, you're and especially in in gaming environments, you're dealing with a lot of messy situations I would imagine. Coco, you've got you know I'm just even thinking uh pastoral care, um, you know, mental health issues, counseling issues, um, and even beyond, hey, my baby's sick, just like you know, even personal issues that people people are going through. You forgive me, I'm I'm not, I don't spend much time in Final Fantasy at a personal level, but like I said my daughter does. It's it's text-based communication in Final Fantasy, right? Or is it voice?

Yeah, it's text. It's text.

So how is it pastorally counseling people, diving into deep issues, getting into the the mud and the dirt of of people's lives, all with a keyboard? Like what what does that look like? Is that difficult? Is that frustrating? Or what does that experience look like?

Um, the those kinds of conversations do happen in the chat, but that's more rare. More often it's in Discord.

Okay, Discord voice. So your Discord chat, DMs, direct messages. Um, talk to me a little bit here, unpack the relationship between uh the Final Fantasy and Discord. Like what do you do in Final Fantasy? At what point do you try to connect them to Discord? What do you do in Discord? What is that that process look like?

So lately our new people that have been coming in have been coming in through Discord and then we'll meet in-game. Um, that's because they're coming in through Discord, through social media. Like we're, they're finding out about it some way, somebody's telling them or they're seeing something, and um I'm terrible at marketing, so I need to do a better job of asking people how they found out about us, but I'm not doing that. But um, that so that's mostly how it happens lately is they're coming in through Discord and then we're meeting a game. Um, and then word of mouth in game uh will bring more people, like like other, because it's not just RFC. We've actually started um aligning with other FCs to free company, guild, um to like do stuff together. So then their FC come check out the church service. So and we'll do stuff together. So the Discord is where we do our um like deep conversations most the time. We get in voice. Our church service is we'll meet in the game with our avatars and then I'll have Discord voice going where people will just come into the Discord voice and listen. And then they can either speak or they can type. So that's their option of, because some people don't want to be on voice and they'll type but listen uh with uh yeah voice, and we just give them the freedom of whatever they're.

Comfortable with and don't try to force them to do something they're not. So yeah, and then there's no idea. Okay, I'm sorry, I had no idea you flipped the script. You flipped the script where you were recruiting people from Discord. Like, what are you? Like, if people search for Final Fantasy on Discord, you're one of the servers that pop up and people get connected to you that way?

Um, no, it's through social. Through immediately we want to avoid because we want to avoid like promoting ourselves loudly inside the game because we don't want to get banned. So it's outside social media, um, word of mouth, and um, and then sometimes there will be people in Discord joining for VR church and then they'll look at the channels and they'll say, "Oh, I didn't know you played Final Fantasy," and then they'll come join Final Fantasy if it's something they play.

So extreme, go ahead DJ. Uh, that was about to say there is kind of a network effect there. Like, as people come into the VR MMO Church experience, they like, "Oh, these are different ways that you can experience church, whether it's Rust, you know, FF14, you know, VR." So there's kind of like a network effect and some people have crossed over, you know, I mean, like I was doing VR but let me go to the, let me commit to the MMO Church experience, and you know, vice versa. And so it was kind of like this community that's being cultivated. Um, you know, Coco mentioned social media and I think there's a powerful kind of uh network effect there too because of TikTok, YouTube. People like, "What? There's a church in Final Fantasy?" And so I, so I noticed at least in Rust and I'm not sure if FF14 feels has the same network effect, but um, you know, that seed planted early in social media and experience will bear fruit later. Like you'll see people come like, "I heard about this like two months ago. I'm here now." Like, so there's like some time uh between that first interaction to when they start to experience or visit.

Um, I know people like to watch um the Final Fantasy 14 sermons and discussions, if you will, and I just think they find it very unique and it's a really a very unique service. Like all of them are Rec Room, VR Chat. Now we know we've seen Alt Space, Rust is super unique, and Final Fantasy 14 is, it's a very beautiful service. You go in, the decorations are just, you know, immaculate. Um, you know, Coco says no like worship music per se, but there's like an ambiance of music. And so the whole um, the whole vibe or the uh, the aesthetics are so just calming and inviting. And then just to go in there with other avatars that, you know, we're all dressed up and who, because Final Fantasy is known for its wardrobe, that's like one of the major elements of Final Fantasy 14.

And so going in there, seeing everyone dressed up, we grab a seat. There's creatures because we have pets. They're all running around and Coco is delivering a message. We're doing discussion. People are doing emojis like, you know, pumping their fists, giving thumbs up, you know, um, and so yeah, it's very unique and special and something that should definitely be experienced.

Very cool. Is the spiritual temperature, are they spiritually seeking? Are they called to Christ and coming in to make a joke? Are they uh already Christian and just wanting to check out this unique thing? Like, who spiritually, how are people when they first come into uh to Final Fantasy Church?

So I have a mix. Um, some of them already Christian and they're just coming in because they're already, they have a life in Final Fantasy and so why not join a community of uh Christians in there? So there we do have that. And then we also have Christians who can't find a local church because they're having a really hard time finding a good local church that they can get involved in. And so I actually have people from that um group. And then there are people who were in a long time ago in church but left and then they'll come and just listen and hang out and um, not say anything, but they'll listen. And then we have um, it's mostly right now Christians. We do have, but they're like Christians who have kind of not been involved in local church.

Interesting. So we're able to reach people that haven't been able to find a good local churches or that they've kind of like stepped away from those local churches or and uh walked away a long time ago and or come into like maybe rediscover. Um, so I'm not really setting a true target audience except I want to reach the people that think that this is their, they come to Final Fantasy community, they come to Final Fantasy to have relationship. Those are the people, regardless of whether they're Christian or not, um, because that's what I'm looking for.

Now, as I remember, um, y'all have been around twelve months, eighteen months? How long has Final Fantasy been open? The church, we've unofficially since 2020, but um, oh wow, we officially launched. Did we officially launch last year or the year before? I've lost track. My time frames are awful. Um, I don't remember. It's it's been a cup. It's almost, I think maybe officially launched in January of last year. Maybe.

So I mean, you may not have the answer to this. Yes, figured out when I asked this question. Most people don't have it figured out. Like, is the end game to keep them in uh Final Fantasy church? Is the end game to help them get connected into a physical church or to to grow them to VR Church like in in Rec Room or something like? What's the the long-term spiritual development?

I get that question all the time. And so that's the thing. I don't care about whether or not they go to a physical church. What I care about is whether or not they're growing in Christ. So that's my goal is to get them in a relationship with Christ and get them to know the real Christ and the real God, not the one that they've been shown by hateful Christians that push them away from church in the physical world. But and I could go on about that, but um, my goal is to help them grow.

That's Michael. Yeah, we all can go on about that. Yeah, yeah, it was interesting because uh, we think of, we've kind of, we're having conversations because there's a lot of evolution happening with church and one of them is being more genre based. So uh, and this is like early conversations. We haven't like, you know, declared or been definitive with this, but like with Rust, you know, there's going to be a shelf life to that at some point, whether it's five years or so. It's gonna come. Rust 2 is going to come out. Arc 2 is coming out. So these these different survival experiences. So we're thinking about re, I don't know, for lack of better words, rebranding Rust Church into survival church because it's a part of the survival genre. In Final Fantasy Church into MMOs, you know, so it's more about like the broader terms so we can shift into whatever is new, whatever comes, you know, down the line. Um, so there's a kind of an evolving branding or, you know, terminology that we're kind of experimenting with. And then also like, what do we do? What what's our end goal? Do we, are we, because yeah, it's a great question, do we are trying to get them into a physical church? Are we trying to get them into VR church? I think what Coco's answer has said uh just, you know, hits it on the nail. That's our focus. That's our goal. Um, someone asked me recently about, "Are you trying to get me in a physical church?" And I was like, "Well," because and I told him earlier, early on in the interview, that we view ourselves as a church. I said, "Well, we view ourselves as a church, and if they want to get connected physically, certainly, yeah, let's let me help you do that. But that's not necessarily our goal because that's what we are."

Yeah, as long as they're growing, if they're not growing in a physical church, which many don't, um, I'd rather them see them grow. And we have met each other in real life. It's like I've met just recently one of my Final Fantasy people in real life because they were driving through on their way somewhere else. And so it's, we're still able to connect in the real life when we can, but it's that relationship.

Unpack that for me. That's that's interesting. So video game, digital goes physical. Video game, somebody's driving through, stops by, coffee, lunch, whatever, house. Um, was it weird? Was it awkward? Was it like you've known each other forever? Was it different than a digital? Like, I just I would like to know what that interaction was like.

It was weird but good. It's like I enjoyed meeting the son, getting to know them, but better because there are things that you talk about in game that you're not going to talk about real life and vice versa. So just getting to know um, it was actually two people that came through and um, we met for lunch. And it's like I've always associated them with their avatar. So what do you mean you're not a dragon girl in real life? What? So you look completely different. That's right. So it's just that weird. Your brain associating your, because we identify people by how they look, right? Um, I know DJ by his face. That's DJ. Um, and you by your face, you're Jeff. Um, so whenever, but whenever you're all digital and you only ever see people's avatars, that's how you identify them. And then so making that mental connection is weird in real life. It's so good.

It's it's interesting, you know, there there's been several digital ministries. You know, I'm even thinking Jason Polling up at uh Cornerstone, he's at Cornerstone Yuba City, but they do VR. Like they've they've had a physical meet up for the digital church where they were their virtual reality church where uh people fly over from all over the country, all over the world. They fly into uh with San Francisco, I guess, and uh to Jason's physical church to meet up. And so I do, I love stories when that goes, when that happens. But but it's interesting. There's because you're so comfortable in digital space, oftentimes there's some awkwardity. I don't know if that's a word, but some awkwardness uh in that first physical uh interaction. I've heard that uh quite a quite a bit. So very, very cool.

Um, DJ, tell me, one hundred, not a word. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate that. You know, also, it's not a word. How I pronounce your last name, Mark. Your name is not pronounced the way that I say it. We're gonna just say call that out right now. How to pronounce a four-letter word that I should be able to say easily.

Okay, so here's the question I wanted to ask um DJ. Like, so you've been in these two worlds and I'm not calling you out. You're a very aggressive guy. Um, but you've been in these two worlds for a while. Uh, have you experimented with with other games? Uh, why are you just in these two? Is it resourcing? Is is it people? Is it like, what's what's been the bottleneck for you to get past the two?

Yeah, so uh, you know, short answer is we're always experimenting. Um, since I think, you know, a lot of us are gamers, we're all in and out of all different types of experiences, even if we're just checking it out. We had a very strong uh, you know, movement towards Black Desert online early on when we were thinking about MMO Church. Um, and it really, I think one of the answers is it does come down to resources and you know, manpower. Do we have the the hours during the week to you know maintain a ministry well? Um, do we have, you know, at least some fundamental finances to you know uh establish at least a central experience so that we could support these ministries into VR MMO churches? So um, unofficially it goes through like a little bit of a curation process. Like, is the platform good? Uh, does it cultivate community? Um, do we have people for it? And so ideally, when it came down to us, for us at VR MMO Church, our community's passion for Rust and then our community's passion for F of 14 really was the kind of like deciding factor, even though we would love to be in Warcraft. Um, I think there could be an amazing Arc experience with the dinosaurs that you could do on a PVE server. I would love to.

We were also experimenting with the GTA online, Grand Theft Auto. We would have loved to plant a church in Los Santos, but at the end of the day we were limited, so to speak, and not necessarily in a bad way, but just what's good for us to plant the churches where we did. Always keeping an eye on what's in you, what's coming. When New World came out, we were eyeing that up, you know, just as a generic evaluation like, what does this have to offer? Is this any good? And so I think at our core, at the heart of our leadership, for the elders of your MMO Church, were experimenters. We're gamers and we like to explore. So we're always looking at stuff. And I think there's a lot of wisdom with the team to know what our limits are. And Coco is a good job of kind of counting the, you know, the how many energy points we have to do something. And so, yeah, I think if we had unlimited, you know, resources, manpower, we would be in three to four, three to five experiences by next month. But we're just taking it one step at a time. Only get that it's good to focus on one and build the community in there too, because you could spread yourself too thin and then also not do a good job of building the community in the ones that you do have. And something DJ said a very long time ago when I first started meeting with him was, if we can't serve two people well, how are we going to serve twenty to two hundred people well, right? We need to be able to serve the few that we do have before we start expanding anywhere else. Good call.

If this may be too personal a question to ask, what's the operating budget like? How much money does it, how much does it cost to run Final Fantasy Church? I mean, you can set aside salaries or I don't know how any of that works, but would love some insight.

So there's a couple ways to look at it, and because it's an evolving conversation about finances and be our church, because at one point we were there, we had a fairly funding element where we could stipend to a certain degree like teachers and stuff like that. As things have dived off the cliff, you know, economically, you know, for tech companies they're cutting back. You can imagine if they're having trouble, the metaverse gamer church, this is certainly having trouble as well, economically. And I'm speaking very generically. So for us, we're really running on like ninety-nine percent volunteer-driven ministry. So there are no costs associated to it except, actually, people are putting money into it. So, you know, like Coco, I'm assuming you're paying for your obviously you're paying for your subscription to, you know, that's something that, you know, one day the church hopes to cover as she's the pastor of the experience. So as it looks, I probably had a different answer for you last year. This year, your MMO Church is going to be a volunteer-driven ministry. So when it comes to how much is it going to, if a leader was going to ask me how much is it going to cost to plant a church in this gaming thing, we're going to do our answer would be nothing. Just go do it. But I know maybe sometimes churches want a line item behind that. So, but that's not something that I think we would get because we've even kind of dialed in our ministry to be volunteer-driven, which I think is very unique. It could be better, it could be for worse. It's just what it is at the moment. So yeah, there's certainly opportunities to go. You know, we talk a lot about bivocational ministry where you've got somebody who's got a nine-to-five job and ministry on the side. They're not getting a salary from it. That actually is a growing trend that we're seeing, especially among new churches and new church planters. Where the idea, I mean, listen, we're at borderline recession. There's economies about to crash. Artificial intelligence is everybody wigging out. You know, what the economy, the business models of tomorrow, you know, donor-based churches are going to struggle. And so even there's conversations among church leaders on how to become multistream. And so the more that multistream of incomes, and so the more that churches can start to move towards a bivocational, towards a volunteer-driven model, that is going to be so much more effective and so much more. I mean, money's not the lid. In many ways, money becomes the lid. But if as you're able to cast vision and recruit more leaders to expand more, like I love what you're doing to me, that's the most encouraging thing that I've heard is, yeah, we can do this and we're doing this with volunteers. We're casting vision and getting them to buy into it. And so that's, I would rather if you have said that, then yeah, we've got like a two million dollar budget, that would be discouraging. So yeah, um, yeah, no, it is hard. And we've had we've had a lot of tough conversations all around that. And I think we're really proud of the team for where we're at right now because we've created a sustainable rhythm for the foreseeable future, whereas before it was really reliant on a particular like outcomes and monetary giving. But now that it's styled in a certain way, if you are MMO Church, will never go away. You know, it won't close that because of funding. It would always exist. And so I think that's super unique. I don't, I don't think there's a part of it that's uncomfortable because you do want like some good funding. But like you said, the recession, giving is down. If the tech companies are having a problem and they're for-profit, can you imagine what nonprofits are going through? Can you imagine what non-nonprofits are going through? I'm talking about us over here at the bottom end of the pool, you know, we're gamer church, metaverse church. We found like people are lining up to, you know, you know, the nominations aren't light enough to give, right? So, so I think it's hard and I also think it's beautiful. So it's about, it's a bittersweet. And we've had to make that acknowledgment that we're gonna have to get our income somehow some other way. Like, yeah, I saw your stream on bivocation versus fabrication with, I don't remember who it was, you were talking to Jeff. But, um, I saw that one and it's like got me thinking about this. Yeah, we're gonna have to accept it. This is not a staff-driven thing. We're gonna have to work outside of the church to get our money.

Yeah, there's, and that's a cold reality that even like successful large churches are wrestling with at this point. The ministry model for funding is changing right before our eyes. And the ones that can adapt towards it, and how that works, but the other aspect of bivocational is how to be really in this. In DCN, like my nonprofit, the church planting organization, is, I mean, we gotta, I'll just be blunt right here. We got a twenty thousand dollar grant last year, and then we had donor giving, which was helpful, but it was minimal in the grand scheme of things. And so like, we're not, we're not rolling in cash by any stretch. As a matter of fact, I probably have five jobs that pay for the ministry of the church, Digital Church Network, and my house and everything. Like, I'm paying a lot out of my pocket. But how to be successful in bivocational, as I talked with planters and pastors who are successful and bivocational, it's not slowed down. It's recruit more leaders and disperse more and break out more and release more responsibility. And so that's really has been the challenge for us as we're running DCN. It's not, you know, there are seasons where I feel like, oh, Jeff just needs to work harder. Yeah, let me go and put in that eighty hour week. But that's not sustainable. That's not helpful. And instead, it's been, okay, maybe we need to slow down, but maybe I need to recruit some people, cast vision, train them, and release them. And so for me, I just, because I love being aggressive, it's been, how can I recruit and train and develop apprentice people to release that? Man, this has been a good, great conversation for occurred by. What I'm seeing, hey, DJ, I want to ask one question, and this is weird. So let me set it up. In my, in my re, and actually, this isn't even me. This came out of Sprout Digital. I think you talked with them, Jared, Jared and Ann Roth, their research company, talking to digital churches in virtual reality churches, one of the few, although it's increasing, really research reports coming out on what's happening in digital-only church and vetiver's church. And according to them, they came up with five different categories of digital churches. Social media churches, influencer churches, virtual reality churches, metaverse churches combined kind of there. They did, um, gamer church is a new category that just came in. And then the fifth would be a physical church doing digital ministry. So what I'm saying is that they separated VR and gamer church into two separate categories. It's interesting. Like, this has been actually a source of contention recently as we've delved more into gamer churches and working more with virtual reality churches where there's a lot of similarities, there's a lot of differences. And I just, I just wanted to ask the guy that literally is doing a church that is across these two right categories. Like, do you see them more as similar? Do you see them?

Oh, yeah, one hundred percent. Talk to me a little bit. Um, actually, all four, four of the categories are all the one same. It's about influencer, social media, VR, gaming. You could put all that into one because that's essentially what we do. If we're, I don't want to use the word, if we're doing it well, but that's a great model. If we're, let's just use that language, not despair, not being disrespectful to anybody else, but to do it well would be to be an influencer on social media who's doing, and then you can combine those gamer and VR because there's essentially the same. Like, when you look at AltSpace or VR Chat, it's basically a game. It's like, let's take VR Chat that's on Steam. That's considered a game you download, but we, it's a VR social experience that you could call it metaverse. So those two categories, I think, are one. And then as a ministry, we're doing the social media and the influencing, and that's a powerful kind of effect. So to me, it's all one of the same, at least for us and how we express it. It's all one of the same. I wouldn't have separated this, but that's just me, my perspective.

Yeah, yeah, I was having conversations with a global missions organization. We were talking about this, and, um, he was very, no, no, it's one. I was like, no, no, it's two. And so it was interesting. And it's all, it's all new. It was funny. They just came out with a report. Well, it's like November of last year. Like, gaming, gamer church was not on the radar of anybody of this research in twenty-one. Like, it didn't even make the report. And they released an updated on it was more discipleship in twenty-two. What avenue was talking to discipleship? And that's when they're like, hey, we've discovered this fourth category that's gamers. And, uh, which really kind of brought this opportunity of explosion of awareness of what's going on in gamer churches and what Mark and Bubba and Jade and all these guys are working on and Chan, you win, what's your championing even in your worlds, even in these specific games. Like, it's encouraging me to me because as a general rule, we reach different people by doing these different things. And so seeing, and, um, I keep wanting to say Black Desert. You guys need to launch into Blockbusters. That's your sixth job, Jeff.

Yes, actually, now that you describe it that way, like, so let's say for us in the metaverse, deep in deep, let's just...

Say we're deep in web3, deep in the metaverse. Those are all the same, but I think now when I hear you talking about it, it makes a really good point. When you're communicating, let's say to the older generation, to the older church leadership, I think perhaps using the term "gamer church" as a distinctive could be helpful. And yeah, maybe like you said, bring awareness, connecting them with the vision that there are people in their church who are ripe to start these ministries in Minecraft, Roblox, Rec Room, all those types of things.

So at first I was like, "No, they're all the same. That doesn't make sense to me." But I go, "Okay, I can see how at a communicative level, for those that were not birthed in this"—like, you think of our current church leaders. Without disrespect, they were birthed from seminaries who were void of any of this, any of this topic, like "Jesus Gamers in the Church." I look at this title here. That was not a class that they took in seminary, right? It might be. I guarantee in the near future, so they've either had to evolve or grow into it. So I think that language could be helpful, even though at first I was like, "I don't know about that."

Yeah, yeah. I long for the day when church can just be church and we don't have to call out physical, digital, micro, metaverse, and gaming. Exactly. When we're all accepted and we're all working towards the Great Commission, that will be a great day. And until then, we have to have these labels to educate. And so that's my hope through it.

So hey, listen, this has been a great podcast, Pastor Coco, Pastor DJ Soto, the Bishop of the Metaverse. Thanks for jumping on this podcast and this live stream and joining in. We're going to be doing this next week, Thursday, 3 p.m. Eastern. For the love of all that's within me, I cannot remember who's gonna be on next week. You know what? I think we're digging into mental health and gaming in church. We're bringing in the American Association of Christian Counselors, coming in and we're talking about how to deal with neurodivergent issues in gaming and in Discord in digital communities. And so really, listen, we're like we're digging into the deep end next week. It's going to be a great podcast, great stream. We're looking forward to being a part of it. But we're gonna land the plane. For Pastor Coco, for Pastor DJ, my name is Jeff with the Church Digital, Digital Church Network. Thanks for jumping on the stream here. Appreciate y'all. Y'all have a good day. Bye.