EP040: Daniel Herron & The Robloxian Christians, or doing Gen Z Church in a Video Game

Episode 40 of the Church Digital Podcast and this is gonna be a fun conversation today because I gotta tell—well, let me ask you this question. Let's just back up. I want to ask you this singular question: what were you doing when you were 11 years old? Like, what was your life? What were you obsessed with when you were 11?

I can tell you for me it was Tim Burton's Batman, the first Batman. This is way before the Nolan films, Batman Begins. This is like—what was his name? Michael—Michael Douglas? No, wait, I got two wrong ones. Michael Keaton. Yeah, Michael Keaton running around in a Batman outfit chasing Jack Nicholson the Joker. Good movie, 1989. That was me at 11. I was obsessed with that movie, sneaking into movie theaters at the South Dade AMC Plaza. By the way, if you're old school Miami, you understand the AMC 8 back there at the South Bay. Yeah.

So here's the deal. Well, I was sneaking into movie theaters at 11. Our guest today, Daniel Herron, he was starting a church. He was starting a church in a virtual reality platform, in a gaming platform called Roblox, while I was—and probably the rest of us—from riding our bikes and having fun and goofing off and doing, trying to stay as far away from church as possible. This dude was actually creating a church in virtual reality on his own in Roblox, completely on his own.

Now let's pump the brakes here a little bit. What is Roblox? This kid's 11. Like, there's a lot of questions that I know are popping up here. Here's the deal: the dude's not 11 anymore. The dude's 19. So fast-forward, getting here, DeLorean, eight years into the future, into today. He's still running this Roblox church. There are Robloxian Christians, and as a result of this ministry over the past eight years, he has touched the lives of 24,000 people through this video game platform called Roblox, and he is still going and doing this on a weekly basis. It's an incredible story coming from a—and I apologize here—from a kid, from a young adult, from somebody from Gen Z, from somebody who should be doing anything other than running a church in a virtual reality community. This guy is doing it, and I would love to understand the why and the how. How he got here, how he got started, what was his motivation, all of these things we're asking in this podcast.

So here's the deal. I'm bringing to the table Raid the Armas, online pastor with Christ Fellowship. Mind the course, of course, co-host myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital, and Daniel Herron. I don't even know what to call him. He's not a pastor. The guy who's running the Robloxian church. In a conversation and sitting around the Robloxian church, everybody, ego.

So I am Daniel Herron. I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, Westside, about an hour south of Seattle. Both my parents, they met in college just a few blocks away from where we live, and I sort of grew up in this like diverse, lower-income area of my city that's historically been—has had some really tough—it's been tough with gangs and crime and stuff. So I sort of, growing up, I grew up around a lot of people that didn't look like me, which was, I think, important in the work that I do now. Born and raised in the Presbyterian Church. My local church is smaller, migrated. It's actually funny—my great-great-great grandfather actually started the church that I go to now, cool, in Tacoma, which is pretty cool. So sort of there's in my family there's this building of people that have been in ministry. I sort of has been inspirational to me. I could do this.

Let me ask you this question: do they consider ministry right now? They can serve me in ministry?

Yeah, eighteen year—I mean, they wouldn't consider it ordained because I'm not ordained, okay? But they definitely do consider what I'm doing to be a church and to be ministry.

Well, I know on that note, I don't think I've ever actually run into anyone. I mean, I've shared this with probably thousands of people at this point, thousands of individuals, pastors. I've never run across someone who has like challenged the idea of whether or not it's a church. Hmm, which I know in a lot of other people doing similar work, like they've sort of run into people that have been opposed to it. And in my experience, maybe it's just that I'm a cute, like, younger kid, but I've never experienced that, which is there's been a blessing, I think. But I think a good way to explain what you're asking is just to sort of tell you this story of the church and how it came to be.

Well, I just want to put you, put you into the mindset of what I was in 2011, okay? I was a sixth grader. I was a sixth grader who loved computer games. I would like come home from school every day and I just played these like flash games on random websites or like I'd get like you're probably at malware from it or whatever, but I'm just like, this is fun. So I was playing these games, and one day this banner ad—you know, don't click on the ads—but I clicked on an ad and it changed my life, okay? It was this little ad for a game called Roblox, and it was this—the ad I don't remember what the ad was, but I joined it. I created an account and I started playing these Roblox games.

And what Roblox is, for people that are not of my generation, they label themselves as an entertainment platform where everything on there—there's tons of millions of games that you can play that are all created by different users on the platform. So none of the games that you play have been created by the actual Roblox team, the Roblox corporation. It's all user-created, user-generated content. Then there's also like there's a virtual economy where you can like create and design clothing for your avatar and you can sell it and you can earn virtual currency and can make groups for your games and all sorts of really dynamic platform to make friends and play games with each other, which is really cool. And the little sixth grader me back in 2011 got hooked real fast. I started just eating this stuff. I remember playing a lot of games for a lot of time, and it was really fun. Not gonna lie, I really enjoyed it.

But there was this time as time went on, and while I was on this platform, I was like, there's these different groups that you can join to be in community with one another online, and I kept looking for a Christian community because at the time, and today, my faith is a large portion in my life. It's a big thing to me. So I kept looking and searching for this like Christian community, you know? I found one, actually. I found it was a group on Roblox called the Christians of Robloxia. And the Christians of Roblox, which is a very interesting name—it's very relaxing name. They were sort of just like a fan club for Jesus. So they were like a group on the Roblox site that was just like, join this group if you're a Christian. So it's just a big collection of people that said that they are a Christian. They really didn't do anything about it. They just sort of like put this on your profile. There wasn't much participation, and I didn't—I sort of didn't like that very much. So I was like, huh. And after a while, I decided to actually leave that group.

And some time passed, and I was still just searching for this community that was like, I want people that are passionate about their faith just like I am. So I left this group that was really didn't do all that much in terms of participation, engagement, and some time went by. And I was just like, there's still this like place in my heart where I want to be involved with other people my age and do this sort of work, but there wasn't one that existed on the platforms.

I remember very distinctly it was the day after Christmas of 2011. I just received for Christmas my very first Roblox little gift card to get the Premium Membership, which was really exciting for the sixth grade me. I was like, oh yes, I'm gonna be cool now. I'm gonna be special and I can do things again. So that was awesome. But I got the membership, and with that membership you can create a group. So I created this group having no intention whatsoever what would be called the Robloxian Christians. It started out in the first couple of weeks as just a place where I would invite a few of my friends to come like this flat block, really large block, where we would join together with a little—and we would just pray together online for whatever was going on in our lives. We would just chat and pray through the platform because I was familiar with the platform. It didn't seem weird or odd to me that I was doing it like this.

And really, I don't really have words to describe how it transformed over time. It was sort of just like somehow by God's grace and God's blessing, more people started to show up each week. We didn't fight more people, and they would come, and eventually we were like, oh boy, we got like 50 people coming now. We need to like, should we do something? Should we like make it more than just a base plate? So we designed—or I mean, I designed. There wasn't really much of a staff at that point—but we designed this little virtual church building that kind of resembles like a one-hip one church schoolhouse on the plains. I don't know, it was very basic. I was 12 at the time, but that was interesting.

We started having these virtual gatherings where we would—it was really, it really resembled what my church looked like in real life. So I would look at like the service that I would go to on Sunday, and then I would think about what are the different aspects. So we would have like worship, and then we would have a time of prayer, and you would have a sermon, and then I sort of replicated those in the online service in the afternoon, which is really cool.

Twelve, right? You're 12 at that point in time? Happen? I think people who are coming to this—that's that's actually a tricky thing. Roblox never gives us demographics because it's like a kid's platform, right? Kids gaming platform. So over time, what we've done is for our volunteer application, which is sort of a like an off-site thing—it's like users can choose to give information about themselves, just demographic information—and of the 1,800 application or like staff applications that we've received, we're able to get a picture of demographics, and our average age ranges from I think the range is 4 to 26, like 26, but the average where most people are at is middle school or high school, 14, 15. Yes.

So middle schoolers or high schoolers don't want to sit in an average physical church building, but they'll go and they'll experience a like a virtual service in a virtual building with that's kind of comprised the same way utilizing virtual elements. Like, that's crazy. And I think what's really special about it is that we're not making it challenging for them to go and it's for them to attend. They can show up at really any time and someone will be there. They can participate in our Discord server or on our like our discussion wall on the group page, which is an area for prayer requests and such.

What's beautiful about having a church on a video game platform is it's where young people are already at. I always like to think of the story of Zacchaeus when Jesus was preaching and he Zacchaeus was up in a mulberry tree and he said, "Zacchaeus, I'm going to your house today." Hey, I'm actually going to where you're at. I'm gonna talk to you. I'm gonna help you change your spirit and change your heart. He actually went to where he was. That he wasn't like, "Hey, Zacchaeus, come meet me at the synagogue or come meet me in the upper room or whatever." He was like, "Right here, right now, this is where I'm gonna meet you." And I think that's something that we're replicating and we're trying to do online. It's been really meaningful.

Successful things really special. So 12 years ago you were reaching 50 or so people or so. When you were 12, 7 years ago, yes, 7 or 8 years ago is who's about 50 people. Today we're still doing Roblox Church. Like, what does it look like any given Sunday? We are definitely still doing Roblox Church.

One of the limitations of Roblox is that in the actual virtual world there's like capacities on how many people you can actually fit because of the technical issues. The maximum that we can fit is 50 people at one time, but at our services we always have people joining and leaving. So we're not gonna have just 50. What we consider membership in the church is actually joining that group that I talked about. When someone attends either a service or one of our outreach events or visits one of our outreach—our God, I just love prayer ministry, which I can talk about in a minute—but once they visit that, we encourage them to join the group and get involved in the church, and that's how we track like the total membership of the church. Service is just really the front door that funnels into, yes. And I sort of think of the community group as like the group hub, a hub, a portal to a bunch of other where that where the ministry actually happens. Online it's calm, but like to answer your question, in our community group we have just under 24 thousand youth members. At a given service we might range from 400 to 800 people that would come at some point in time in that given service based on the stats that Roblox gives us.

So you've got you've got 24 thousand names in a database that somehow engaged with a Roblox service, which you funneled into this database. And then with the database, but are you challenging them to do like, what's what's the endgame? What's what's the goal of this?

What we really challenge the people in the group to do is to attend the virtual services, to get involved. Ultimately, our mission statement and the entirety of the church is to share the love and Word of God with all young people online. And part of what we're doing at the services, what we're preaching and what we're talking about, especially in the sermon series that we're in right now, is once you've made the claim, once you've decided to follow Jesus, how do you go out and live out that? How do you live out as a Christian? What's that lifestyle like? How do you respond to people? How do you act around other people, especially on Roblox and on other gaming platforms and in your life? What does it look like to follow Jesus? And trying to equip people to—equipping these young people to live differently and to live as a light in a place where there's not much light. That's that's really good.

So tell me more about like, are you taking them through like a discipleship process? Is there a strategy that you're walking them through? Because that's that's some amazing stuff that you guys have been able to accomplish them and six, like a short period of time. Really, it may feel like a long period of time, but really in the life of a church, short period of time to reach the number of people that you're reaching.

Yeah, but that's actually one of the challenges too. I think there's something that's a challenge on a lot of the larger brick-and-mortar churches as well. As we've grown larger, it's harder and harder to engage people one-on-one and harder to stay connected. We definitely have—we have things that we try to do. We encourage people to continue to attend services, to get involved in our—we have life groups going on. They meet on Saturdays, and when they are in breakout groups, we really—we also encourage them to get into the Discord because the Discord, unlike the Roblox group, we're able to—there's less censorship and filtered chat, so we're able to share more and post more, and it's more active in terms of like being vulnerable and sharing about your life. And it's more of an everyday sort of thing in building community with others as opposed to only when you're only when you choose on the group. On the Roblox group, there's more interaction on the Discord, and that's one of the big things that's important to me in this church is that—just it's amazing to me how vulnerable people are, young people, how much they share about their lives with people that if they were in a brick-and-mortar setting they might not feel comfortable sharing it. Which is—there's that level of anonymity online, which some people might say is like, that's dangerous because people are just gonna take advantage of it. But in my experience, that hasn't been true at all. People have actually used it to be more comfortable sharing which with what is actually going on in their life and being open to support others in that process as well.

Sorry, I catch off there. In a previous episode we talked to a DJ Soto, and one of the things we talked about the seasonal insertion VR, which has a lot of overlap in terms of your experiences. We talked about how this serves almost like a digital confessional, if you will, that having that layer in between really helps somebody to kind of open up. And you're seeing that right?

There's this one example. I don't use it because it's a dramatic example, but I use it because it it really was powerful in my own life to see what the work of the church is. It was actually a really hard, hard time in in the life of my faith actually. But we had three young people who were battling with depression and anxiety. We had three attempted suicides in the course of three weeks, all unrelated. I'm so we're so blessed that everyone survived and is doing better today. But there's there was this in one of them, there was this awesome beauty of seeing the interconnectedness of the online church. But because they had—because Sally had built such strong friendships and relationships through the church and through the Discord ministry, she had actually talked about what she was going through before she had attempted suicide. She communicates so frequently that when she was actually doing it, it was someone from the church, several states away. She was in Alabama, and the person that actually called 911 or emergency services to rescue her was calling from Wisconsin into her town.

So the friendships and relationships that were built through the online church and the level of what was shared in those relationships, I think is incredibly powerful. And I think that this is only three people. Just imagine what's happening. I don't I don't know what's going on and with everyone's relationships, but I know that there's—these are pretty common, these sort of strong relationships that are being built.

Let's let's park on this for a second. That great story. But so you've got somebody in Alabama and somebody in Wisconsin. And even though they're in different time zones, even though they're on different sides of the country, even though they're not breathing the same air, there's a friendship, every relationship, a comfortableness that in that desperate moment of need to reach out isn't to mom, isn't a dad, it's not to a schoolteacher, it's not to anybody within the state. It's in Wisconsin. The church today would say that doesn't—that doesn't happen. That you can't have community. They can't have relationships that tight, that intimate online. Yet strangely, this the story here with with Sally and whoever has—so what as a young person, what about online helps that relationships connect when you're 19 and you're making connections with someone through Roblox Church or through Discord or whatever the platform? How can you connect with someone like that that may be us as non-20, 30, 40-year-olds, as an older person, maybe we struggle with that? What's the younger generation looking for that they're getting online?

I think I think to answer that question we have to consider the fact that to my generation at least, I don't think that technology is—I wanted to say that's not seen as a tool, but it's not like something special. It's something that we've grown up around, that we've been surrounded in. It's like second nature to us. So like communicating online, whether it's on Discord or to Roblox or Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or any of those things, and building relationships with people all around the world, it's not—it's not foreign. It's not hard.

I think the way that I've been able to build these relationships with people they've been a part of my church and people out of it, part of my church, is just the ability to communicate with them and the willingness to have the trust that they're taking it seriously and that it's a real relationship. Because I know—I know that my friend gave over in Texas. I know that he's a real person. I know that he has real emotions and he's really caring. So when I talk to him, I don't feel this level of disconnection because of technology. I feel this greater level of connectivity because without it I wouldn't know who he was and I wouldn't be able to talk to him.

And as a—I'm not a millennial. What am I? A Gen Z? Gen Z born past 2000? Yeah, no offense. So just categorize you earlier. I take it back. That's our groups. I fell by Jeff. I was like, I'm a proud lazy millennial. Just kidding. Yeah, anyways, like I like what I just said is that technology—since technology is not foreign, it's like it doesn't feel much different to text someone on Discord than it feels to talk to them over the phone. Right? In fact, I think talking to them over the phone might even be slightly more uncomfortable than talking to them with one of the other platforms. And I think that a lot of people on these platforms feel the same way because it's just we've grown up around it. It's it's what we're used to and it's what I'm more acclimated to.

What we're finding is it's not—it's not just a generational thing in that you know, but but it is becoming more and more common in your age group. And you know, Jeff and I got kids in you know, they're better Gen Z. So what's coming behind this is folks who are growing up into this you know. Now I was introduced to Roblox a few years ago, and so at first when Jeff told me, hey, we're gonna be talking to Dan, and you know, he's got this Robloxian Christian group, but first I thought it was a denomination. I was looking Doug like I never dead serious. And then and then I was like, oh, this is the game. This is awesome, you know. But it's but it's become much more than that because it's become this platform for interaction for people, which is where so many people are finding connections because of mutual interest, which then open doors for ministry. And so I think what God has enabled you to do as a sixth grader, I mean my gosh, as a sixth grader, man, is powerful. That you recognize, hey, I'm gonna leverage this platform that God's given me, and I'm just gonna bring my faith here along with me. And then you know, the seed was planted and God caused it to grow, which I think is amazing.

Again, I can you take me through—can you take me through what a service looks like? This is the question that everyone asks, and it's really challenging to describe if you're not like showing them the actual video. However, let's call do my best. You have you have an avatar, which is like it's like a little blocky Lego guy kind of across between if you know what Minecraft is, it's a cross between like a Minecraft avatar and like a Lego minifigure. And you can dress it up however you want. So you have this avatar, and when you click join into the virtual church space, your little guy spawns in like in the middle of our lobby in the church. You can come in, you can explore the different rooms. Our main worship area is where a lot of our services take place. It's it's basically just a small little amphitheater. It's a lot of little avatars in it at one time. There's like we have—

Pews or benches that you can actually come and sit your little avatar on and it'll look like you're sitting in it, which is pretty cool. And then we have a little stage where our coordinators come and they sit up there and they're able to help lead the service. Where the services actually look, for the most part, they're pretty standard to what you might think about when you think of as a typical church service. We have we open in worship, we have our announcements, we pray together. Everything on Roblox though is text chat, so there's no voice aspect of it. However, with that said, we are able to play MP3 audios in the background. So during our worship time we'll be playing worship music that's actually been recorded and played by our worship team prior to the service.

Well, you guys are recording your own music and then playing it in that? That's a different level of innovation. Our church, we were talking about, they were playing like videos from like YouTube and stuff. You see, we used to do that. We used to do that and it was so much easier, to be quite honest with you.

Sure, it was so much easier. But then into that late 2017, Roblox crackdown on all of the copyrighted material and the Dr. House. It, yeah, yeah, they reached a point where it was like people started to care. Now we are unable to upload copyrighted material, even if we have like licenses that allow us to have it, which was like, what are we gonna do? We're either gonna play like some open-source like organ music from whatever they had, whatever's available, or we play the same songs but we encourage like members of the church to step up and record it and we play it that way. So that's what we've done.

Wow. During worship, so while music is playing, I feel like since it's all text to type, sometimes it can be a little bit boring or like people will lose interest. But I think when we have the music playing in the back room, that sort of engages people and continues to draw people in, which is really special.

Anything also, when I say text chat to people that are not on Roblox, it sounds like that would not work. It doesn't work. But that's part of the idea of reaching people where they're at is that we're reaching people that are familiar with the platform. They know how Roblox works already. So when they enter the church, it's not some crazy foreign world. It's like, this is what I'm used to, and this is like an actual community on here that I can engage in a little bit more.

Of our services, usually after a few songs of worship, we enter into like a time of learning or the sermon. And usually on Sundays I give that. On our services throughout the week, our other volunteer leaders will lead that. And usually it's thinking about scripture and how it applies in the situation that we're facing. So it's really oriented towards a younger audience. So it feels like it's, uh, you mentioned earlier like Presbyterian, raising you're basically executing a Presbyterian service style church, right? Or somewhat?

But we call ourselves a nondenominational church. Mistake. Yeah, we're a melting pot. Lots of denominational traditions. With that said, the services also feel semi not Presbyterian. They feel, it feels very mixed. Like when I think of the Presbyterian Church, I think of hymns and pews and the frozen Chosin. Nobody raised their hands, you know? Our church, the church that we have online, is not like that. We listen to them. We played the modern worship music that larger churches play. Our services are more engaging and there's a lot of that like call and response, not calling response out to present the whole like say Amen. There's a lot of that. I myself am Presbyterian and clearly it wears in. But when other people, other leaders are also leading, I think they reflect some of their traditions as well into it. So sure, that's sort of a good mix.

What you're talking about, the volunteers and the leaders, like what's the leadership structure of this? You got twenty-four, twenty-five thousand names in a database. You're trying, your goal is to create the services as an evangelical arm. So like, what, how are you pulling this off? What are the volunteers like?

Yeah, so actually we're in a time of transition right now. Previously, well, I guess I'll just gonna start from the top. So there's myself who sort of oversees everything and does a lot of my work. Really in the past couple of years has gone to a lot of the administrative behind-the-scenes funding and all that sort of stuff, as well as the pastoral stuff on Sundays. The next tier of level of leaders is like we have our director of hiring, our director of like facilities, our development people for likely building the people or building the places and all of that sort of thing. And then we have a tier of coordinators that are all hired and trained so that they really understand the functions of the church and what to do when like a troll comes in or how to respond to prayer requests or all these sorts of things. They're really trained across all the different parts of the church and they are mentors to a subgroup of volunteers.

So we have a volunteer staff then that's like the next tier down that really makes up all of the different ministries of the church. So we have, this is where the transition is, that actually we used to have these formal teams that we would place volunteers on, like our prayer team, worship team, outreach team, music team. But we've sort of gotten rid of that and just made a large pool of volunteers that are able to be assigned to different tasks at different times until they're all trained sort of equally. And we have this hiring process where our hiring director, there's this really, we use Google Forms for our staff applications and people can just fill that out. And then our hiring director reads them and makes decisions on placing people and aligning the skills that they list on their application with which team might best, which tasks might best suit them.

So how many, how many volunteers roughly are we talking about in this?

That's a good question. I have to think about that for a second. Um, I know that we just graduated our new class, are like new cohort of coordinators. So I think we have eight. Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, when I was nineteen I didn't even know what the word cohort meant. You've got you just launched a new cohort with eight coordinators. We have about fifty to sixty volunteers right now, really sort of, which is actually, it's not where I want it to be. It's challenging because I want, I want to have an opportunity for if someone wants to serve in the church, I want to let them. That's good. But we also want to have a system where we're able to train people and show them how to support other people in the church. So my goal, hopefully maybe by Christmas, maybe by Easter, is one hundred twenty volunteers. I feel like that's a good number. But we're at about fifty right now. And those different coordinators are the ones that are managing all the activities of the volunteers.

Well, the tension you feel is the tension that every pastor in America feels. There's never enough volunteers and there's ever, there's always a desire and a passion to do more in ministry. So but, but it sounds like you're doing it right by getting the coordinators up top, casting the vision to them, letting them break down and lead. You know, an organization with twenty-four, twenty-five thousand, you know, names, obviously that's more than a nineteen-year-old college kid and on this finance the Pacific Northwest can handle. And so kind of spreading that out and letting some others join in, this is awesome.

What's the one thing? And I've been thinking about this question. I'm not sure how to ask it, but let's just see what happens here, okay? What's the one thing that Roblox Church can do that a physical church can't?

There are so many things I could say to this question that I think there were really good answers to. I think the thing that's most beautiful to me about the online church, and it's sort of is two things in one. When you're constrained by brick and mortar, your walls, and you're restrained by your geographic location, I think what's most beautiful about our online church is how we are able to create community, real community, vulnerable community with young people across borders, across nations, across states. How our church represents every continent and every US state. It's beautiful when we are having a worship service and my friend from the Philippines is online at the same time as my friend from the UK. I think that's beautiful, even though it's like way different time zones, but it's still I think it's awesome that when you're in church and you're singing a song and you're singing praise to God, your language doesn't matter because you're singing one song of praise to God. And that there's that sort of, when we when we look at the church, we're supposed to be one body united together. And I see, looking across all of the places where this church represents, all the situations, all the circumstances, all the backgrounds of everyone in this big diverse melting pot of a church, how we can still come together and honor God and love people on Roblox and love people in the outside world. I think that's beautiful. That isn't necessarily available in brick-and-mortar churches.

Also, our online church is cheap. There's always that.

I was gonna ask, how much does it cost?

What it was a year, a year up until 2017 and 2018, I started like, we had some people that donated so that I can do this for my like job during school. So the cost of the actual church by itself was under five hundred dollars for the first six years. So we were reaching tens of thousands of people for like less than the cost of a new iPhone. So that was, there's always that.

That's unbelievable. So Roblox is just, it's a relatively free platform. We said something about like advanced membership, something, get the membership, you can get that for five bucks a month.

Well, if we didn't have a website to upkeep, we could be doing this for five bucks a month. So it's really encouraging to see with all of the platforms that exist, this thing now, all the different places, these are all places that have the possibility to have other ministries and such hop on there and people passionate about this.

Yeah, so let me ask this. When you were eight years ago, whatever, you're eleven, just starting this thing, eleven and twelve, did you know? Did you have a picture in your mind of what today would have looked like? Or are you figuring this thing out as you're going?

Yeah, I had no idea. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was just making a place for me and my friends to pray together online. And God took it and ran with it, which was pretty awesome.

That's not pretty awesome. That's amazing. That is ridiculous in such a great way. God uses and you know, to think that something that started as just me and my friends online playing this awful game that I had no idea what I was doing would be something that has been used to inspire and motivate pastors around the world and would someday lead to be my job during college. I just think that that is not only an incredible story, but it's just amazing to see how God is working in this online church and also in people that are passionate about doing similar work, just to show that God moves and it's really incredible.

So we've talked about this recently about how churches are often, they're afraid to experiment with things. And the reason that they're afraid to experiment, we talked about this in episode twenty-six. I actually went off on Apple. Like just want to get into it. I'm unearthing like painful stuff.

You mean we were going off on Apple a few minutes ago?

Yeah.

It's, it's, it's, it's there's always something go off an apple on well done, but hey, I'm number one fan. But here's the thing, like, like church, when they look at this technology and especially because they're not native, they're not like grown up in it, it's still this outside, it's still this external thing. They're not like you Gen Z kid who has grown up with this as just part of normal life. They're afraid to experiment, and as a result of times they're afraid to try something until they figure out where the finish line is. And one of the things that I love, love about you, Dan, is at age eleven and twelve, man, you're just playing around with the kids, you're your friends, and you see something and, oh, let's build on that, okay? Let's build on that. Let's try that. Then all of a sudden you got twenty-four, twenty-five thousand names in a database that you've touched at some point, and now you've got fifty plus volunteers with a vision and a passion to double that number, you know, by the end of the year. And so you didn't know that when you were eleven and twelve, and most people don't know that, but the fact that, I mean, honestly, you've stuck with this idea for eight years. Wow. That's, I'm just gonna, I'll tell you right now, I've in my life I have never had a job eight years. I got issues there's other things that we can talk about that, but I've just, I've always bailed ship, going this, going to something else. And so yeah, you've reached twenty-four thousand and eight years really quickly, but at the same time, tool in jeopardy, I just want to praise you, man, compliment you with this. The longevity of you to stick with this idea through the fruition to where it is today and still have passion to drive to run it even further, man, that's that's awesome. Well done with that.

I think real quick if I want to add, I there have been lots of people, real, real quick, there have been lots of people that have done similar work on Roblox, not necessarily to the scale that my church has grown to, but have sort of off, I've like, shoot it off from our ministry to try and do their own sort of things. And I know that there have been other attempts by other organizations to do similar work. I just think in my experience the number one thing that has allowed for the success, other than God's grace and God's blessing, has just been staying committed to kept showing up. Because I remember in 2013, 2014, there would be times when we had one or two people show up to a service, and you're like, should I cancel this? Should I? Should I not? Should I just keep going with it? And we would have the service even with those one or two people there because we are still being able to, we're still able to be a blessing to someone and say to offer a space for someone who might need it. So yeah, I think that staying committed in whatever, whatever ministry or mission or career that you're in is super important.

What advice would you give to somebody who's starting up? So maybe it's not roadblocks, maybe it's bla bla bla video game platform. They want to start a church in PlayStation, do whatever. I don't know your, I don't know that world. I confess. But somebody wants to, somebody, some kids got some idea. What's your advice?

I would not necessarily recommend going the route that I went, starting with something that you don't know what it, what you want it to be like. If you have a goal in mind of what you want to accomplish, that is excellent. I think it's significantly harder if if you could went the route that I went, that was like, I don't know what I'm doing and I'm just gonna go and go with it. Yeah, it has shown awesome rewards and spend a beautiful blessing, but with that, like, I don't know mentality, it's also presented a lot of challenges. So I would recommend talking to your friends, talking to your family, maybe a mentor, and figuring out what do I want to accomplish? I'd also, I can't, I can't echo enough how much having mentors and adults in my life that have been supportive of it, I've made it easier and taking the burden off when some days you just, some days you get off of this and it's just stressful because people are just being crazy and you just want to scream or you want to cry or whatever it is. And you get off and you're just like, you're able to talk to someone who maybe they've been through this sort of thing before or they are just there to listen. But having someone that you can talk to and pray with and who's willing to support you through the work you're doing, really important.

I think there's hard coming, there's hard times in that, right? The service for one or two people show up. I mean, I'll be honest, when I have kind of conversations with church planters, it's the same than what you just said is the same advice, you know? Stay committed, stick through it, have people around that can mentor you, have people around that give you advice. You're not alone. And then really, I mean, there there have been times in my life doing ministry, especially in online circles, we've talked about it in past episodes, but I felt alone. I felt like nobody was thinking the way that I was, you know, and I didn't have that support base around me. And so Dan, you know, well done getting that support base around you to help out, to coach you as you develop this idea, eleven year old to now a still a young nineteen year old running this, this, this thing, this organization, this church online. So that's great.

Hey, hey, Ray, is for wrapping up. Any any thoughts?

Yeah, you know, as we look to innovation, you know, in the future, um, then I love how you just followed the string of curiosity. And even though you know it's been riddled with questions that I'm sure have bottled your mind, and I'm sure it's been tough, and I just want to encourage you and I want to encourage others, man, to you know, stay curious and stay hungry, man, and keep, keep finding new paths for people because you know, Roblox is your way, Dan. I don't know what what Jeff's daughter, what my daughter, what's gonna be their way to reach good for Christ. And so it's just a powerful thing to see people utilize this. So thanks, Dan, for being part of this.

Yeah, yeah, I I can promise this. There's gonna be more Dans out there as technology gets more and more in the hands of individuals and not companies and organizations. And I do believe this and I blog this historically. I think innovation is not going to come from the church. It's going to come from individuals like Dan who are driving innovation for the church. And when you look at innovations historically, even like Billy Graham using his message and satellites, the bouncing to a million people, that wasn't the church. That was Billy Graham in a ministry to help the church in that context. Even Paul writing the letters that he did, maybe that was the big seat church back in back in the New Testament, but it was really Paul taking the time to write the letters and then mailing them off to individual churches. So oftentimes it's the individual who stands up. And Dan, thanks for you know, being that twelve-year-old kid instead of you know, doing the stupid stuff that I was probably doing when I was eleven or twelve. I'm trying to think what movie, you know, what it was. It was Batman. It was the, was the first Batman. The, the was Michael Keaton. Jackie doesn't know. He doesn't know what that is. He knows the dog. You know, he doesn't. I'm just saying, oh no, no, listen, I watched Batman forty times in the theater. That was him. Know the guy that they make fun of the watch in game like eighty-seven times? That was me with with the the Batman, the first Batman, before Batman Begins. So waited like not be that guy and actually like accomplished something with your life and make the rest of us look back. So Dan, as well, and in the plane, man, if somebody listening wanted to get more information or wanted to find out or volunteer, help or support you guys, where should they go?

Yeah, if they want to get involved or learn more about us or see some media about us, they can just go to our website at the Robloxian Christian dot org. And there is plenty of information on there to help you out.

So awesome. So we'll put that in the show notes. Robloxian, the Robloxian Christians dot org. That's awesome and very clear. So hey, listen, this has been a big great podcast. I love hanging around kids that I, forgive me, Dan, what young adults are doing. Listen, I am not one, but I love hanging around young adults who you know, embrace this technology piece for the kingdom and do phenomenal things as result in the the community, the connections. I mean, I'm just even thinking back to Sally's story, man. There's just a phenomenal engagement of technology that the younger generation is seeing that the older generation has yet to realize. And so Dan, man, thanks for being on the cutting edge of this. For Ray, for Dan, my name is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks again for being here, and we'll see you next time. You all have a good day.