Is Your Faith Pushing People Away or Drawing Them In?

I'm sounding better there. All right. So, let me welcome in Pastor Coco. Welcome in.

Hello. How are y'all?

Yes, it is. It is low. Ukulele saying. Okay, let me adjust that a little bit more. I've got that way up there. I get annoyed by this. Like I said, it is weird that some of my channels OBS will not pick up as a microphone that is actually there. It just will not have it. It'll click on it and then nothing will be there. So hopefully that will fix that and we'll be good to go. Look at that awesome collection of hats.

Hey, Christ made Ben. Welcome in. Yes, I do have a few hats. A few hats is how I like to say that. Pastor Coco, do you have hats?

I have a lot of beanies.

A lot of beanies. I'm a beanie person. You're a flat cap person. I'm a beanie person. Or beanies and bandanas.

Yeah, but I don't display them. You could have a blank wall behind you. You could just have a little—

Yeah, that's a chalkboard.

Yeah. Oh, it's a chalkboard. Oh—

Yeah.

Well, I was going to say you could get a little, you know, sticky tab, whatever those are called, command strips and have little hangers on there. You can hang them all there so that, you know, if you were live streaming, you could have people select to have you change hats. I have that on my regular channel that they can—

Yeah.

They can say it. You've had that one on long enough. You need to switch it.

You like the flat caps as a British person? Well, I have been told that they are much cheaper in the UK than what I'm normally paying for them. So, um, maybe there's a excursion in my future to go and stock up, you know. Maybe there's that. Flat cap tour.

A flat cap. Yes. I will go tour a couple of factories and bring home a bunch of them. You have a chalkboard wall in your kitchen. People always seem amazed by it.

Ah, this is a standalone that I made. It's on wheels so I can move it.

Yeah. It. Uh, well, having those things that can help you block off the space when you're streaming is a beneficial thing. I have had multiple iterations of how the hats are displayed and how I have it and where do I want it, and I like even in this room I have faced different directions. Um, but I don't know. I think it's been this setup since the beginning of the year. So that's been quite a stretch for me to not move things around. Although actually I shouldn't say that. I did move the I did move the tank of guppies back here.

Yeah.

So slight alteration.

Uh, so one of the things that I really think is exciting and fun is to figure out from people the story of how did you end up where you are as far as ministry goes. So, how did you come across and get involved? And I know you're not currently streaming on Twitch, but since you're involved in a church that is connected with Twitch, so I want to still keep that connection there. How and when did you get connected with Twitch? And then how did you decide that you were going to do some live streaming on Twitch? And then we'll come back and talk about the church part of that a little bit after that. So, um, I got involved in VR church ministry first and then the streaming came later.

Okay. Um, so I looked for VR church because I designed for VR IRL as a career income bivocational. And um, so when COVID shut everything down, our local church was in a high school and I'm like, I wonder if there's a VR church. So I Googled VR church and yes there was. So I got involved there and um, never intended to live stream, never intended to do videos or put my face up on stream or anything. Um, I just got involved and got involved on their MMO side because I'm the elder pastor of the Final Fantasy MMO side. Um, I just the intention was to help and um, along the way—

Well, how, let me let me just back up because so you found VR MMO Church in the middle of COVID. How quickly did you decide this was a place that you wanted to spend time and start to invest? What was that journey for you before you before you helped? Like what happened? What did you like about it? What was it that drew you into the space other than I just wonder if there is one?

Well, so it's I, so to back up then, um, I got involved. I am, I've always been into emerging tech. So like I'm the one that wants to make responsibly, of course, things that are in sci-fi reality with you know, um, except for the whole Jurassic Park theory. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. I'm very much involved in that.

Yeah. Yeah.

But um—

So you're working on teleportation devices?

No.

Oh no. Okay.

Oh, but in VR? Yeah.

In VR. Okay. Yeah. Um, so I totally invested all of my career into learning immersive tech design, future tech design, and staked my career on that. Took a big risk, got into that space when nobody else was interested in it and they thought it was just a fad. Um, but I got involved in it because I pretty immediately saw the benefits of the immersion and um, how you really do feel like you're there. You really do feel like when you're there with other people that you are there with other people.

Right?

It feels present. And so I saw immediately the benefits and the future possibilities of that in training and collaboration and all kinds of spaces. And then once COVID hit and everything was locked down, my local church had to shut down because it was in a high school. Um, and so the high schools shut down. And um, even though I'm an introvert and I'm perfectly fine being alone, it gets to you at some point. At some point, you need some kind of human interaction. So VR was a way that I would hang out with the friends that I had made on the VR team at work. And whenever I would hang out with them in VR, I immediately felt like I'm here again. I'm around people again. It immediately felt um better. And for your mental health, that's important. And so reinforcing my understanding of yeah, this is important and this is a possibility. So how can we create this kind of community when we're remote? And so I started looking up, because I also really help, I helped get our local church online.

Okay.

That I kind of spearheaded that to get them online. So um, I was thinking all about okay, how can we get further? So the intention at that point was to get my local church in VR, but that never happened. Um, but yeah, and so I just Googled, I wonder if there's a VR church out there. What are they doing? And then so I Googled VR Church and I watched some of their videos on YouTube, some of their old VODs and saw how they were creating the worlds to let you experience whatever was going on in context so that you could go immerse yourself in that world in that time so that you'd have more context for what you're learning. I thought that was great. Said, "Okay, this is the future." So—

Yeah, there definitely is a coolness to um experiencing the scriptures, you know, and going into a world that is immersed in it instead of sitting in the church and trying to have a pastor describe it to you and you've got no visuals. I'm a visual person. So yeah, you know, and a slide on the screen still doesn't fully help you understand everything that's going on. So yeah, when you can touch, feel, walk around in the space, it's pretty cool.

Yeah, because your brain really does believe you're there if it's designed well. Um, so yeah, and then they had announced that they were starting this MMO experiment side and so I got involved with that with the Final Fantasy 14 and—

Were you already—

Started Final Fantasy?

I started that actually. Some friends of mine IRL had been trying to get me to start playing 14. So I said, "Okay, I guess I need to start playing 14."

Okay. Okay. Because they were in 14 as well. And I'm like, okay, maybe I need to be in 14. So, um, I joined and then I actually never ended up playing with our real friends. Um, but when I got involved with the MMO side is when streaming started. So I would join DJ when he was streaming.

Okay.

And so that, so I was my face wasn't up. I was just streaming in game with him. Um, and we'd stream in game and I don't remember when I started showing my face, but I don't show my face on our church streams. We just stream from game.

Yeah. So in game your character is what's shown and what gets recorded, what gets broadcast.

Uh, which I think is kind of interesting because you are playing that character in game. You've created that character. You've designed the character with all the modifications that you want, and everyone else who is attending also has done the same thing.

Yep.

So it's, I think that's kind of a cool thing. Uh, I still haven't made it to one of those services yet, but I have finally made it to hanging out and playing uh with you. So that was—

That was fun. Um, I have since now have a better sense of what I'm doing. I still have no idea half of the stuff uh because that's not how I play. I like just like do the thing in front of me and not do all of the building up of stuff.

So when people talk about all the different things that you can do, it's like, yeah, I have no idea what spells do what. I just mash buttons and hopefully I win the battle.

Yeah, it's overwhelming at first. Once you have time to play longer and you start doing dungeons and stuff, then it kind of some of it matters. But—

Oh, yeah. At your level, um, it doesn't yet. At this level, you just be glad you have a new skill.

Yes. Yeah, I have a new skill. I don't know how to use it. I don't know what it does, but I have I have a new whatever. And yeah, it's—

Yeah.

Uh, well, I say I think Final Fantasy is still uh one of my son's favorite games, and his brother always gives him garbage about it. Well, if it's a Final Fantasy, then how come there could be a second Final Fantasy and a third Final Fantasy? It's like, dude, you don't have to take words literally, you know?

Yeah.

But it's a brother, so you know, you're going to you're going to rib one another.

You're supposed to be annoying.

Yes. He totally knows how to do that job well.

Yes.

Hey, North Hill. Welcome in.

Morning kids. Oh, you're making us feel young today. I appreciate that, friend.

Yeah. The original Final Fantasy was supposed to—

Exactly. It was the final uh—

Hey, the company is shutting down if we if this doesn't do it. It's the final our final uh attempt to be successful.

Yeah. Well, I'm glad they kept it up because the games are good.

Oh, yeah. I've enjoyed them uh over the years. Um, I think I still like the um not mashing buttons where you stop and pause and you make your decisions about what you want to do and cast and all of that. So I love the turn-based system better, but that's because I'm old and I can't think fast and I don't know what buttons do what and so don't count on me in the middle of battle if we're in a party. Let me just put it that way. It takes a while for people to get used to it.

Yeah. Well, it's what happens with any game that I play. It's—

Yeah.

I know I have a whole bunch more skills than I know that I have and I don't know how to use them. So I just use two or three and I'm not really skilled at those in anyway. So you started streaming um with DJ. Uh, and so were you streaming um in VR at all or was it just Final Fantasy? Did because you said it was VR that drew you to the church and then when MMO was getting started, you're like, "Oh, I want to participate." So did you participate on the VR side at all with streaming?

I would guest teach sometimes in the on the VR side. They don't like me to say I was guest teaching. I was teaching on the VR side.

Okay, um, eventually. I didn't start out that way because it took a year or two for me to start teaching because I was just involved and I was volunteering and I was helping like explore and build up the community on the Final Fantasy side.

So, and we didn't launch in Final Fantasy until soft launch 2021.

Okay.

And then full launch 2022. Wow. Okay. So I'm just backing up this idea here because this really sounds like what you would do if you were going to go in person and start a church. You would start to build connections and relationships in the community before you would have a soft launch of a church that would gather together. It sounds a whole lot like what you were trying to do there.

Yeah, we were planning a church in Final Fantasy. So you go into the community, get to know the community, learn about it, learn about how things work there, and see how the things might look in that game, in that community, and then you design for that. You don't just lift and shift from one to another and say, "Oh, this is going to work everywhere." It won't.

So you have to figure out what's going to work for whichever game you're in or community you're in.

Yeah, that's yeah, I love that aspect of it. And not everyone who is going into digital spaces is going to end up planting or starting a church, but you already were working with the church. The plan was this is a new campus of our church in another site, another game than we are already at.

Um, how did the progress of growing that happen as you were getting ready to start it? Were there any difficulties that you faced in doing that? Were there some challenges you were able to overcome?

Um, consistency. We just we would have issues with getting discouraged from people not showing up. A lot of discouragement, but we'd keep going because DJ had already been through it with VR. Um, he was instrumental in keeping it going on the Final Fantasy side to say just show up. If you teach to an empty room, teach to an empty room. If you're playing by yourself, play by yourself. Just be consistent and showing up at the set times so that it's something that is expected and eventually people will come. And so just not getting discouraged, constantly questioning am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing?

Uh, the thing.

How am I balancing this with income?

Yeah, there is so much of that in church planting and it's still true even in church planting in digital spaces that there's a level of how do we be faithful to what we're doing? How do we establish when we're going to do things and then continuing to stick it out until it becomes sticky in the people's lives you're trying to reach.

Yeah. So we soft launched in 2021 and on the Final Fantasy side, we didn't really start growing really until last year.

Okay.

So it took a while and um, for us it was like I'm very introverted, so of course it's hard for me to build community. So I needed the one, I needed the one person to come that would come and be the enthusiast, that would be the Barnabas for me and would encourage other people and help build that community. So that happened in 2024 and then once he joined then more people joined and now um.

Yeah, his testimony went out on YouTube. That's where most of our people come from. They don't actually come find us in game very often. Although recently one, um, neighbor in my housing district found us that way. It's like she came over and checked out our house. It's like, "Oh, this is the church."

Um, is is there?

That's not the normal.

Yeah, and I've only gotten to where the houses are recently in game. So I don't know enough about the houses and other people who are listening who aren't in game or may not know either. So on the outside of the house, can you advertise it as a church? Can you decorate it? Can you do any of those things though that people walking by in the game would go, "Oh, wait. There's a church there."

It doesn't look like a church. It looks like a house.

Right. But I meant like, can you put a label on it or something like?

No.

Okay.

In some games you can. So in this game, you're just going to be using whatever housing options are available in the game.

And it looks like a house. And when you go inside, it looks like a house. We've designed it to look like a house, not a church.

Yeah.

Although we do have a little prayer chapel in there um that you can go in and it looks like a little chapel. It looks really cool. Um, but we don't have our services there. We have our services in an area that looks like um, it's in our basement and it just looks like a little seating area. Looks cool, inviting people sit around. There's no stage.

We don't want the stage or the pool pit or any of that. We just sit around in a circle.

And we talk.

Um.

Because we don't want that.

Hierarchy. We don't want to set that up.

And that's still a struggle that I'm dealing with because I have the pastor label.

Oh.

That um, still the hierarchy, but I'm trying to get rid of that and I'm trying to get everyone else to step up.

And uh, realize they're also the royal priesthood and it's not just me.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Christ made Ben is saying.

Uh, don't want it stuffy. Yeah, exactly. You want it cozy, inviting, a place that you would want to come and hang out. And yeah, the equality of all the believers there, not just I know everything you need to know and come learn from me.

Uh, I was just trying to get at is was there a way to put like a sign on the outside of it or or label it so that if anyone walking by would see it, they would go, "Oh, what is that?" as opposed to it just says nothing. And you'd have to click on it to find out who owned the house.

So you have to click on there is each house has a little signpost. But you can't see it in game. You have to click on it to read what it says.

Yeah, that's what I and that's the common practice in that game is people will go up into to a house and okay, who owns this house and okay, what's it about?

And so that's how they do that in game. You can't put signage up or anything.

Okay. I didn't know if there was that. Uh, yeah, because I hadn't got across it yet. I haven't made it that far in there. So but that makes it on some level yeah, difficult in game to advertise to let people know that you there is a church that it does exist and that it's in the space.

So do people who are in the church that do you do random plays with random people or do you talk with people in game so that you're in, you know, getting to know other people and inviting them into the church? Do do people do that or is that a possible thing that people could be doing?

So anytime you go into a game, you need to read the terms of service. And the terms of service for Final Fantasy 14 are don't go out proselytizing and evangelizing and stuff. Um, so we go round about and we go through YouTube and so that's how we find people. But we do randomly interact with people in game. It's built for community, so you can hang out with people you just in community areas and public areas and interact with them that way. But we don't like proselytize or anything in those spaces. We just hang out and be nice to people and they can click on our profiles.

Um, for more information about individual people. And so I have set the rule that if anyone has our um, free company is what is the guild in this game. It's called a free company. And so I keep having to say um, if you have this tag on you, you do not act this way. Well, it's you know what that really goes to um, like a reflection of creation of bearing the name of you are an image bearer of you bear the name of.

So if you have the free company image on you, you're representing everyone else that is a Christian.

You are representing this.

Yep. And you do not act because I've had to actually get on people before and because they were wanting to randomly troll somebody and I'm like not with that name on you. You are not.

Well, that's that's just a well, I would say such an early church kind of thing where Paul is helping people to understand you have to abandon your former way of life in the way you treated people in the way you acted towards others and you need to act in a loving manner. Trolling people is not a loving thing to do.

Um.

Right.

It's just it's just not. Now, in some families, ribbing your siblings is a thing to do. It's different.

It's different. There's relationship and there's also boundaries too because there's times you can go over the line and go too far. Uh, and you don't you don't want to do that.

Right?

Um, and it also needs to be that both parties accept and see that it is joyful. You can't just be the person always doing it and they don't like it. That's that's not um, that's not loving either.

Yeah. So there's questions in the chat here. Like, so you're forced to be kind of passive in the game itself.

Yeah, we want to honor the rules just like if you went out IRL in a mission field, you would want to honor the local laws and work around those however you can while still respecting the authorities because you don't want to get kicked out because you get kicked out, how are you going to do anything? So um, that's how we do it in game.

And so in game, we we can make friends in game. That happens or um, but most of our people come through YouTube through YouTube videos and um, they'll come into our Discord and they'll lurk for a little while to see what it's about and they'll watch a bunch of videos to see what it's about before they start interacting because for whatever reason Final Fantasy 14's full of introverts, a lot of introverts, at least that's what we get here.

Yeah. Um.

Well.

And.

And there's a there's a level of that too that that that just is what you would would do uh in a physical space too, like you're saying is is honoring the rules and the customs. The other thing is you don't want to taint the space for others that come behind you. So if you're the first Christians in the space, the first church in the space, and you're aggressively doing things that are contrary to the terms of service, they're going to be even harsher on anybody that comes after you, and you're going to make it even harder to reach people that are far away from God.

Yes. And that happened in IRL in Japan. If you because I've read Endo's work uh, an old author.

And he talked about the Kakishan, the hidden Christians in Japan um, and how the Christians came in and they just completely oppressed everyone um, it was horrible how they treated them and they got kicked out and the borders got closed.

Yeah.

That's what happens. So you it's like why are you there? Are you there to force your how you do things on everyone else or are you there to reach people for Christ? Because I actually was just listening to that this morning, Paul talking about how he was everything for everyone. When he would go into a phariseaical environment, he would be phariseaical to reach them for Christ. When he was in a gentile environment, he became a gentile to reach them for Christ instead of trying to force them to fit him.

And we need to remember that wherever we are.

Well, and and I think some of it too is studying the culture that you're in. Like you're saying is it seems to be a bunch of introverts that are in the space. Well, if you just start going up to random strangers with questions and they're introverted, you're going to chase them away. That's not a great way to approach people. So.

Right. So so learning the culture within the space, learning the people that are within the space, respecting them.

Yeah, those are all things that missionaries have been doing for centuries and learning from mistakes like going into a country and not honoring the customs and not honoring what was culturally normative there and assuming that you knew everything that they needed is not the way to help bring people to Christ. So yeah, that's right. I'm just I'm just a love there's a lot of extroverts too. There are a lot of extroverts in the game but for whatever reason our church gets the introvert your church gets the introverts maybe.

Well oh that's what else I was going to say. You were talking about how often people are watching multiple multiple videos and lurking in the Discord before they they decide they want to get involved and connected in deeper ways. And honestly that is so true now for physical churches too. Maybe they don't know it, but people that I have conversations with are like before they show up at a church, they have gone to the website, they've watched multiple services or sermons, they've they've looked it out, they've checked you out on Facebook, wherever they can find you, YouTube, wherever you're posting, they're checking you out before they even show up.

And and to think that you can just show up in a space and people are going to be flocking to you is just a weird thought, you know? It's not how anything happens anymore.

And it's also it's like not what we're called to do. It's the great commission's not if you build it, they will come. We keep getting that mixed up with field of dreams. It's not the same thing. We're supposed to go.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not the build it and they will come. That the field of dreams that does not work.

Um yeah. Uh someone was asking for your YouTube channel. It's the VR church one.

I I is it just VR church?

Do you not have it? I can look for it if you don't.

Yeah.

Uh I'm not positive.

That's why I I wasn't sure either. Uh I mean, I know I have it when I open YouTube up. It's it's one that I've yeah.

Linked to, but it doesn't mean I know the title off the top of my head.

It's yeah, because it could be VRMMO. So I'll check. It's got all of our services across all the platforms, not just Final Fantasy. I used to have my own I used to manage the Pastor Coco one, but it got too much. I stopped. So it's VR MMO Church.

VR MMO Church. Okay.

Yeah.

Uh yep, there it is. Yeah.

I'll copy that link. Or do you already got it? Okay.

I already put it in the chat.

Awesome. I wasn't sure if it was going to let you. I think I thought I had it set up to allow anybody to put links in. So so yeah, if you if you are looking and if you're watching the VOD later, uh it's YouTube/VRMMOChurch. So you can go there, watch the VOD. So we will have the VOD. You are over in Final Fantasy 14, but VR MMO Church also has uh a campus in VR Chat and in Rec Room. So there are three campuses currently and then in the past there had been one inside of Rust which and Altspace and Altspace. Yeah. Until Altspace got shut down. So the the one that I I had heard about I think first was um Rust where you had to go and build the the church. I can't remember if it was a one week or a two week that the the server reset and everything was destroyed. Um, depends on the server and you have to go in and it was a lot and we don't we didn't have enough people to keep it up so um they had to abandon it. But it was a lot of work. You had to really love that game to play it. I tried it. Sorry, it's not my thing.

Yeah. Well, and I understand too you, you know, had zombies and other stuff would destroy what you were building. So you had to have people there 24/7 to protect it. And then as people, people would walk by throughout the week, you would say, "Hey," they'd say, "Hey, what are you doing?" You're like, "Hey, we're building a church. The services on Sunday." And so maybe you could come back. Um, so it's interesting.

It was it was cool cuz people would come donate supplies to help build. And it was cool. And yes, we did uh Christ made Ben. We did get attacked a lot as well. So depending on which server we were on cuz they I think they chose they began to choose servers that were PvE with PvP zones. So you could choose um and so in the PvE zones it's not as problematic, but you would still have like the in-game helicopters and stuff that you had to be aware of cuz they would bomb your buildings and stuff.

So I've never been in the game, so that just sounds like uh it's too much work, man. But they loved it and it it made a difference.

Yeah, it feels like a Sisyphean task where it's like you're pushing the boulder up the hill. You got a whole week to push it up and it rolls down and you got to start over the next week and push it back up again.

Um, but yeah, I think it could be amazing that God could be glorified in the space.

And the other thing too, I think that well, I'm going to step back here and say my denomination. I'm not going to pick on the whole church, but uh in some ways what I've seen with church planting in my denomination is the attitude of we want to know it's going to be successful before we invest in doing it. We want to have all of the measurements in place to know that it's going to be a successful church, that it will launch, it will be self-sustaining. And you have to have all of these things in place.

We've lost we've lost the ability to say, "Let's experiment." It doesn't matter if it works or it doesn't. If God's calling us to do it, we can go try it. We can reach people during the time that it's there. And maybe the season of Rust was so vital in some people's lives that it's worth the fact that it's gone for those people to have been exposed to it in that time. And maybe it you wouldn't have ended up in Final Fantasy 14 and going there if Rust was still ongoing.

We were already we were already there. It was a separate thing.

Separate. But you know just just thinking through some of those things where you you learn some things you shift along the way. Uh I love the idea of experimentation within the space of go try it you might reach some people if it doesn't work you're not locked into it for a long period of time. You can adjust things, you can change, which, you know, we've I've been working with you for for a while now with VR MMO Church on trying to help think through some of the volunteer things and adjusting schedules and adjusting rhythms and those kinds of things so that you can help raise up more people from from within. So you got raised up from within. And so when you started helping, did you have any thoughts of being a pastor? Was that something you you thought you could do then? Then talk more about that story of how was it that and I'm just guessing here so if I'm wrong that you got tapped on the shoulder because people saw in you the ability to do that and be that and how was that journey for you of of accepting and saying yes to stepping into being in a more of a leadership role within the church.

Um well, so growing up female, no pastor.

Well, growing up also in the south.

Yes. In the south, female, no pastor.

Um so I had to get over that. I had to do a lot of scripture studying for myself because I didn't want to go against God. So I had to do my own study and say, "Okay, is this actually what God wants me to do?" Um, I still constantly question it, but um I'm here and he's been blessing me. So I had to get over that.

There's plenty of male pastors also who will often be questioning, "Am I really supposed to be a pastor? Is this what I'm supposed to be?" There's there's a lot. Yeah.

So it's not just a female thing, but it's additional. The men the the men don't have people everyone coming up to them telling them to be quiet.

We don't have you're not supposed to be in the right. Right. We don't have outside people telling us to not be there.

Yeah. Um so I had to get over that. I had to do and interestingly enough of that had started a few years before me actually joining VR church. So once he did tap me on the shoulder, there was less of that to do.

Mhm.

Um cuz I'd already been working on it. Um but then I also had to like talk to my family, my mom and people and like what do they think? But and and then have to decide whether or not um I want to go against my family and have to deal with that. But surprisingly enough, even though we all grew up in the same background, mom's like, "You can come live with me. I'll take care of you. You just do what you need to do." And I'm like, "I'd want to be independent." But but um she's all for it. It's like she she'll support me however she thinks if if I'm following God, she'll support it. So that was very surprising and um so I had to get over that hurdle first. But as far as what DJ saw in me, um I guess just conversations like I have with you, I'll just, you know, I'll share whatever I'm thinking and he saw whatever in that. And also I was showing up consistently and I was there at all the things and I was playing the game and I was um consistently play sessions whatever streams whatever I was there. So Sammy just showing up just I guess um you'd have to ask him for more than that.

Oh that's okay. That's okay. You know, it's but but I I do like that I don't know if you've heard it called that way and I see a new conversation. Um and and it's kind of one of those things where like I feel that this has happened for me a few times where other people saw me doing something and thought there was more that God could use me to do. So they saw in me where I was already being faithful. So the showing up is a faithfulness part I would say. Uh the conversations about the insights that would seem Holy Spirit given that you were able to share um and and those are the things that if people are paying attention you begin to notice those things and then you you're right you need a Barnabas sometimes to encourage you to come alongside of and say hey I think God might be calling you to something more than you think uh or have you thought about this uh maybe you can consider stepping into a new place. I think he would be good at this. U so yeah. So whatever it was that he saw doesn't mean that you have to remember all of that.

Uh I don't even always know what he saw. I don't know what people see in me. Yeah. I don't know. I don't I don't go around asking.

So but um was that all of the question?

Well, I just was kind of like trying to walk through that. So you did have some wrestling with it. So how did you then uh move into the position and the role of saying okay I am going to do this. So um, because some people might might want to know and and even some people in the community who are going to watch this later from VR MMO Church might not know of any training system or setup to be able to get you to the point where you're equipped so that you could take on the role because just giving you the position doesn't mean you're equipped to do it. So there needs to be some equipping piece to make you feel confident that you can handle uh the role that's being given to you.

Right. So we have our own internal training that we put people through before they become a leader because we need people to know the digital space is different and you need to get rid of those paradigms for physical church and get rid of those hierarchy setups and this is a different thing. It needs to be done diff like completely. It's not going to look like physical church. Um, so we have to get past all of that, past all the tradition and just get to how does it look to spread God's love, God's love in this space.

And so we have our own internal training we go through and DJ s put me through the training and we had conversations and all that around that training and which is not uncommon.

So he sent me I was going to say it's not uncommon. There are there are some denominations that do it that way. Some like mine send you off to seminary. Others do internal training to to give you the training that you need and then you know checking in vetting making sure that you're grasping it all putting into practice and then certifying that you have the qualifications that be able to be in the role.

We're yeah we're not a denomination. We actually call ourselves decentralized because we're are multiple people from multiple churches, multiple backgrounds coming together under the banner of Christ. So we don't actually have a denomination. Um, we are not even non-denominational. We are decentralized Christocentric and nobody knows what that means because we're all stuck in a denomination setup. But, um, it means we're all just under the banner of Christ. Yeah. Yeah. Agreeing to disagree. Um, and he also sent me like a little write up that he'd have on these are the expectations that we have of a leader. So I could read it and say, "Okay, I think I can do that." And then he came and he met me in person. Um, he came here on his way somewhere else and met me in person and got to meet him and his wife and cuz he he also wanted to build up that. Oh, yeah. Trust. Well, there there's a level which I I know some people don't know or don't feel like you can fully have a digital only expression of the body of Christ. Uh I I think that you can, but it doesn't mean I don't want to connect and be in person with people. It takes the relationship that's already established and it's like this infusion of mass amounts of building forward the the trust the relationship. Uh the same way that if you spend all week at uh any kind of mission project, you develop a deeper relationship with those people you might have known in the church for years. It's just infusing the Holy Spirit in a way that's compressed and you come out even deeper than you were before. I've I've had that multiple times.

You and I haven't been together in person yet. Um but it's one of those things that's like it's on my radar. If there's an opportunity, I'm I'm going to say yes to it even if it's a little bit inconvenient because who knows if it'll come by again.

And that's how all of our people are who trust each other. Of course, we're not going to ask people to tell us where they are if they don't feel safe. Um, we respect that. We don't ask people where they come from. They volunteer it if they want. Um, but yeah, it takes a large amount of trust to be able to be willing to meet someone in person who you've met digitally. So, yeah, it's a risk. And my and my mom lived uh I lived with my mom at the time and she was up waiting for me when I knew. Oh yeah. Yeah. The the fears of some strange person on the internet that's gonna has come. Yeah. She's going to get kidnapped and I'm never going to see her again. Yeah. Uh that's I I remember those those kind and and the thing is is there is that fear because there's a reality. Um but there's also how and where do you share information and one of the things is within uh Twitch and other platforms the sharing of information or even a discord service there's a public level of it. So there's other people in the space who are also hearing it. If it if all of your communications with a person are direct message only and that's the only way you know that person, then I'm going to be a little bit more uh yeah uh yeah, a little bit concerned about, okay, is this person really telling me what they're telling me if I've never seen a video uh with them if I haven't brought someone else in to verify anything. So yeah, there is there is a little bit of that. Uh, yeah. And you also tell other people in the community that it's happening.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. You turn up and it's a guy wearing a flat cap looking shifty. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Thank Thanks, Ben. I appreciate that. Um, just kidding. It's all good. I love theestic. I love joking around. So, uh, ukulele. Yep. Your husband has me take someone with me. Uh when you're meeting internet friends, too. Yeah. Flat cap. I Yeah, I met I met with ukulele. Um we just went I was in Orlando. She drove over from where she lives and we were able to take and go for a meal. Her dad came along. Yeah. Uh everybody felt safe, felt good. Uh we've known each other for um I don't know over four years now. So, it's it's it's kind of an amazing thing to get to meet people that you know online after you've known them for a long time online of getting together. But I know that that's not going to be the reality for everybody that I know. And so, I don't diminish the those relationships if there's a chance that it will never happen cuz I have people this side of eternity.

Exactly. This side of eternity. So, we just continue to build the relationships working with people. Yeah. And I I don't tell anyone where I live, I go meet them in a public place. So, I'm not uh saying, "Yeah, come to my house. I don't know you." Right. Right. So, yeah. Uh Ben, what are you talking about there? You signed up for the the digital ministry thing, the thing that was scrolling. You could have the EDM. You could have put your whatever name you wanted in there. You could have put Christ made Ben in there. That would have been fine. We don't care if it's a real name or not. We will call you. I put Pastor Coco and everything, right? No, that's not my real name. Yeah. So, it's it's all up to you what information you give us. If if it's Pastor and I know your real name. If it's Pastor Coco online, I'm going to call you Pastor Coco all the time because it's easier for me to keep straight. And if all of a sudden I'm changing names to someone else, you don't realize who I'm talking about. So, uh I try to do that. That's how good your credit scores are. My debt. Go ahead. Take my debt. Um, we were So, we were I'm trying to get back to where we were. I love the side conversations and all that. I just every once in a while, let's go keep driving the conversation back to what we were talking about.

So, u moving in into a role uh doing Final Fantasy. I don't know if you did this right away, but I know perhaps one of the first places I connected with you is when you were streaming on Twitch and you were doing sermon prep work that you had on on there. So that's been a few years. Yeah. Um because that was me studying for Altspace. Oh, it's for studying for Altspace. Oh, okay. So that's why you ended up not continuing to do it when you stepped away from Altspace or when it closed. I mean, no, I I ended up having a family emergency had and had to stop. Okay. So, Okay. Yeah. Well, and then I just never picked it back up. Okay. Well, I'm just going to encourage you if there's an opportunity for you to work and pick it up to get that to do it again. I loved it because the way that you think through things is not the way my brain thinks about things at all. And so yeah, simply by the process that you were using of like I mind mapping it out, that's my word for it. I don't know what you call it. You were mind mapping out the passage and all of that. It was visually uh, you know, intriguing to me that I wanted to spend time listening to you process through it. Uh, cuz I was going to learn something about your process of thinking it through that I might arrive at the same conclusion, but I took a different pathway of thinking about the scripture. So you were opening me up to thinking a different way. Even though we would agree at the end, you took a different journey of the process of thinking through it. So I just if anyone's looking and wants to find those, they're out there. You can find those. You can find those. They're really They're on that YouTube channel. Yeah. Yeah. There's a playlist of them on the YouTube channel. But anyway, I just thought that was a really cool thing so that if anyone was going, "How do you how do you think through and process?" Because that's how I got started doing Twitch as well was doing sermon prep. So, when I found someone else that was doing it, it was like, "Oh, this is fun. I can see how you're doing your sermon prep." There's two or three pastors I've seen do that. Some just do Bible study and others did the sermon prep. There's a different level of thinking through the sermon prep. It's not only the the study, it's the process of what will I share? How do I make decisions about what will I share? Uh what are important fun things that are not going to make it in the sermon, but they're they're cool little things to know and to think about.

Yeah, a lot of pastor GPT a lot of pastors get help from pastor GPT. I have never used uh chat GPT for a sermon. I'm not even thought about it. Not that I'm opposed to anyone using it because you can use it as an intern. It helps summarize and you can get ideas from it. U but I'm not going to trust it from the standpoint of, oh, it said this, so I will just accept it. I'm I'm going to look for the source behind whatever I would ask it to do.

Yeah. Use it to break down passages for your own notification. That sounds great. That sounds great, Ben. Yeah. My way of studying has evolved since then. Um because that software that I was using, they upped the price and got rid of the tier that I was using, so I dropped them. And um I do have a Logos subscription though. Um and I use I have a ton of notes in Logos and the Bibles are all different colors and it's fun. I like that too. Um, and I might if I ever go back to doing the stream, um, it, uh, I'll have to figure out a different software to use for that to do visual. Um, I have one in mind and a mind mapping one. Okay. Um cuz I like being able to see the v seeing it visually um helps you make connections that you wouldn't always make if you were just reading.

Yeah. So, yep. Yeah. To totally agree with that. One of the things that that and I think this is a fun thing for me that I get to do in digital space that I did not get to do so much as a physical church pastor. I didn't get to know the other church pastors in my communities on how they taught on what they did because they were having their service at the same time I was and I wasn't pulling up to watch them later. Uh we might get together once a month depending on where I lived and and know them on a personal level but I didn't know them on a pastor level from the standpoint of what they were teaching, how they were approaching those kinds of things. So I've just found that piece fascinating to be able to get to know other people in the space. So yeah, some are using logos and bring in that approach. Others are more systematic of you start at the beginning of the book and you go through and that kind of thing. Others will be thematic. Um and and my approach is is a little bit different. I love to make connections between chapters that have, you know, books that have nothing to do with each other. And so, uh, you know, when I do my reading through the Bible in a year approach, one day you're reading the Torah, the first five books, another day you're reading wisdom literature, another day you're you're, you know, it's it's like every genre has a day of the week. And oh my goodness, one of the most uh amazing things I ever saw in scripture was when, and it was probably always there and I never noticed it, but reading through the book of Esther and realizing she's from the tribe of Benjamin.

And the tribe of Benjamin is the tribe that Saul was from. And Saul is disgraced. And Saul is a disgrace to the tribe of Benjamin.

And now we're in exile. And we've gone far away from God. And who's the one that's going to help rescue the people? The tribe of Benjamin.

There's a redemption of the tribe of Benjamin through the line of Esther from an unexpected tribe in an unexpected place through a woman no less.

Um, like how I mean like if you pull those threads together, it's amazing if you if you if you're not reading Saul's disgrace at the same time you're reading Esther because that's what ended up happening.

I was reading Saul disgracing himself and Esther humbling herself at the same time. It was just like you couldn't have a sharper contrast between people and then go, "Oh, wow."

Right.

Yeah. The tribe of Ben.

And there's a ton of that. There's so much of that that we miss in scripture that it is masterfully hyperlinked.

I I am really loving that term hyperlink. I keep hearing it in some podcasts I listen to. I haven't worked a project Tim Mackey.

Oh, well it's he's not the only one. He's not the only one that uses that. I probably you probably got it from someone else.

Well, and it could be everybody's going back to Tim Mackey, you know, but but I would say I probably have five or six different podcasts that I listen to regularly that are all using that word hyperlink, hyperlink, hyperlink.

And to begin with, I knew what he meant, but it's now almost become part of my vocabulary of, oh, this is a hyperlink to the other, but I haven't quite adopted it yet.

But I it's like I love the word to think that through because I think in digital space it just makes so much sense.

Like for instance right in the middle of the chat there there is a hyperlink to go to the website of so you're reading it and the hyperlink takes you to the place that I want you to be able to go.

So we do that constantly and the New Testament writers knew that. And there's so many hyperlinks that you can't even see cuz you don't know they're there.

Yeah.

They're allusions. They're indirect quotes. It's part of the culture. Uh for instance, half of the things that I will say that are cultural references to something in my stream.

Uh like if you are not of the right age group, you do not know what I'm talking about.

Exactly.

Badges. We don't need no stinking badges, you know.

Yeah.

You know, I like I like pulling, you know. Or you know what you talking about, Willis? You know.

Yeah.

You got to be old enough to know them. If you grew up in the culture, you understand them. Yeah. Emoticons, too.

Yeah.

I don't understand all of the emoticons.

No, I don't. Um I I do get some congratulations um from from my kids when I started streaming and I started using language in a new way, like, "Oh man, this guy came into my stream. It was so sus." And I was like, "Dad, you use that properly. That was quite impressive there. I'm I might have to come check your stream out." And I probably won't my dad.

But anyway, these trolls were showing up and yeah, reading the the Gen Z Bible. Yeah. I I won't understand half of it, but uh that's okay.

Yeah.

So, so you you you start you're doing it, you're you're in it, you you do Twitch for a while, you're not doing that.

How how have you as a a person trying to help within a church um face difficulties that come? Because I know there's some regular difficulties that that churches in digital space face.

Uh how do you help overcome some of those difficulties that the church faces or that individuals in the church have faced? And if you got stories you can tell, that's great.

Uh if it's just generalization of of some approaches that you take, either way is fine. Are you talking about difficulties of running a ministry in digital space?

Uh, it could be anything. Any difficulties that might come up. The difficulties of having volunteers, the difficulties that trolls bring in, the difficulties of of people who are far away from Christ suddenly becoming Christians and having to so it doesn't matter what what you want to talk about just, you know, some difficulties that you have stepped in to try to help work through.

Well, we have the um current challenge of multiplication of because we keep falling into the trap of oh, we don't have a volunteer for this or um the volunteers not doing it quick enough, so I'll just do it myself.

Um and I'm having to remind myself and I'm having to remind other people. It's like, nope, let them do it. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen.

And then people see the reality of when people don't step up. This is what happens when people don't step up. And sometimes I can be a little hard-handed on that.

I'm like cuz like we'll have issues with one of the platforms. Nobody is scheduled to teach because our teachers are burned out and we um don't have anyone to step up.

And I'll just say, well, just don't show up. See what happens because I'm to that point.

Well,

but let them see what happens when the volunteers don't show up.

Right.

Well, and and I think part of that too is is to go back to breaking the mold of the mindset of it has to be pastor-driven to have a successful church.

It really needs to be owned by the community. Uh, I think I think that's I think that really is going to be the model of of the next century is it needs to be community-driven to have a community that's focused on Christ.

You're accountable to each other. It's not top down.

Um, there certainly doesn't mean that the physical church is going away. I just I think there there going to be some changes made there and some people are figuring that out and working towards it.

But I think cultural shifts are causing some of that. The the idea of you need to collaborate that it that you need to have participation.

I think some of the reason that that the younger people are leaving is because we do not give them anything to do in the church other than to show up.

We don't invite them in. They're not ready. We think, well, you need to start small and you need to start sooner and you need to allow for mistakes.

I don't what if you're going to label them that

Well, I was I was just I'll just give an example. For instance, I I was just down at the artisan marketplace and one of the musicians was there and I'm not really paying attention to the to what he's playing, but every once in a while he'd hit a wrong note uh on the saxophone as he's playing. Now, I don't know well enough to know, oh, does he have a bad read and it's not his fault?

Is there a problem with the with the the mechanism in the saxophone or did he just play it wrong? I don't know enough to know the difference.

Someone with expertise would. But if you never give that person a chance to be out there and do it because oh, you made a mistake, you have to be perfect, we never let people step up and and do anything.

And the tendency, like you said, my wife has this this problem too, is that I could do it faster. I'll just step in and do it.

It will be done right.

Take me two seconds. I'll do it.

Yeah. And I it's it's a mentality I think the church has as a whole too of we can't let go and let God's grace cover the mistakes, cover the learning curve, cover the growing in faith.

It's either you have to be perfect in your faith or you can't step up and do anything. I don't know if that seems true for you or

um people seem to think that they aren't qualified.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. So it's it's the same kind of thing. It's it's the if you've experienced only the perfect get to step up and and do it.

I'm not perfect. I will make mistakes. I will be judged poorly. So there's a whole cultural setup that you've inherited. You're trying to fight against it of no, we can we can we can be who we are and God can accept us and we can love you when it doesn't turn out to be the best it could be. But it's still your best.

Yeah. And people, this happens in career as well because I teach um in career as well.

I'm a teacher. Um and people will be so intimidated by me. Like I'll never like they want to immediately be like me and it's like I've been doing this for over 20 years.

Give yourself some time. It's like

Oh yeah. So, um, and I wasn't always this way. I and I hope that I will be better in the future.

Um, and so for the we're working on getting the HEAR method introduced so that people and you're helping with that, getting the HEAR method introduced to try to make it less intimidating for people cuz my method of teaching is not probably anyone else's method.

Um or many other people's methods.

Well, my method is not anybody else's method either. I'm not like I would not teach people my method for for doing things because it's so ingrained in my thinking and my processing that it's no this is this is not how I was trained but it is what works for me and I wouldn't teach it. It's maybe not the most efficient way to do things, but I will process through hours upon hours upon hours of information that will never make it in the sermon.

And uh I won't script. I learned how to do scripting of sermons, but my problem is a theater background. I would memorize the first draft and then I would make changes and then I couldn't I I would get stuck in my own head between versions that I had written and scripted out and I would be stuck on version one even though I know I had version three and I couldn't. So it's like I have to do no scripting.

I have to like if if I showed you I don't even know if I have a copy. I'm just looking here. The last time I preached, I have the slides that just have scripture on it and I probably have five words written.

That's my sermon outline is five words.

Mine's not

that that are like and it might be just like the name of someone that I'm going to tell a story about or an illustration point or make sure this is an emphasis of a word.

So, it's like that's not really teachable. Uh you're not going to duplicate what I do because that's how I've I've learned it. But yeah, the the HEAR method.

So the HEAR method wasn't even mine to be able to to bring it. It's um highlighting. So that's the first step. So I should say pray.

You pray when you're going to going to read scripture and then you read it and then you just ask people to highlight it.

What is the Holy Spirit speaking to you? What stood out in the passage we just read? There are no wrong answers. Uh if you have long-winded people, you you need to make sure that they just say a word or a verse from the whole thing that stood out to you.

That's it.

No, don't have to be complicated. So if you're reading through the whole passage of John 3:16 and world is the word that stuck out to you, then that's what you say, world.

That's it. Or that God loved. Wow, that's the word or the phrase that stood out to me. You just share that all all good answers.

Um, and maybe you're just like perish. I don't know what it means. So, it stood out to me because I need to understand that.

Great. And then the next one, the E is explain. So, explaining what's going on in the passage, explaining what it would have meant to the original audience, explaining the circumstances of why it might have been written.

Uh, there's there's a whole bunch of levels to do that. And then A is apply. Uh, I like to think of apply. How would this apply to the original audience?

How would they have put into practice? So, they've just heard it. They they've just had it explained. How would they apply it? And then R is response.

So, in light of everything that you've heard, everything that's been explained of the application that they would have used, what's your response to it?

And everyone sitting there might have a different response. And so yeah, this is a way of taking it and putting it in the hands of the people, which by the way, I've said this a few times in my stream. I've said this in direct message conversations. I don't know if I've said this on stream. So this is me. I'm just making a caveat here.

This is me that I'm not representing the church digital in this thinking. This is my own. I think the church needs a new reformation. The first reformation took the Bible out of the hands of clergy and it put in the hands of the people. And I think we need another reformation that takes ministry out of the hands of clergy and it puts it into the hands of the people because we were all supposed to be disciples that were making disciples. We weren't supposed to give certain people just the role of disciple and the rest of us were just attenders.

And so I think that shift needs to happen. I've actually been saying that for years, but I usually say it more privately than in a public space. But our conversation has gone in a direction of that's what the church needs is people to just realize whatever you have and wherever you are in your faith journey, you can begin sharing the faith that you have. You don't have to have some special revelation from God that's uniquely yours that's brand new. You don't need to go and spend four years in seminary like I did before you share the gospel with a person.

And maybe maybe I needed to go to seminary for different reasons and I think I did, but it doesn't mean that everybody needs to follow the same path that I did. Paul was totally different than Peter. Peter's a fisherman. He didn't go to seminary. He had time with Jesus. Yeah. Paul first century wise would have done the equivalent of seminary. Like even way more intense in seminary. Way more. Way more intense like. Paul's level of understanding is still like. His doctorate level stuff I mean. Post-doctorate. Post-doctorate I mean yeah it's it's multiple doctorates in every different field and it's like okay, they both reach people for Jesus. Oh yeah and so did the deacons that were appointed in the book of Acts they just jumped in and started sharing the scripture so yeah and the Final Fantasy version of church does it differently than the VR side.

The VR side's trying to get the HEAR method, but on the Final Fantasy side, we don't. So on the VR side, they'll read a chapter or a half of a chapter each Sunday and they'll just go through that scripture going through the entire Bible. So we're not like trying to avoid any scriptures that are uncomfortable. We just read it all. And we're and they've been doing that for years now. There's still some books left is going to take a while going through the entire thing. So that's what they do on that side.

So it's really easy to apply the HEAR method because you're just reading scripture straight and letting and getting people to share whatever it is that's standing out to them. And on the Final Fantasy side, we don't do that route. We do more thematical with Bible studies. And so applying the HEAR method is a little bit more difficult on that side.

Yeah, but we are still trying to do something. So on my side, we have our we'll go through either a Bible study plan in Uver and we'll discuss that. And we're trying to get it less of less sermony and more discussiony. So it's not me doing a sermon anymore. It's me having a discussion with someone on stream and then talking to the people in the chat while we're on stream.

So we don't have in-game voice chat on Final Fantasy 14. So we'll meet in Discord in a voice channel and discuss that way. And then we'll also stream on Twitch and so we can have conversations in voice and also with whoever wants to type and not speak on stream.

Well, and I'll give them this I'll give them a study two weeks in advance so they can go through it and then they'll be prepared for our discussion.

Yeah. Well, I was going to say even in Discord for those that don't know Discord you can have people who are just typing in the chat as well. Some people can be in voice and and you've pointed out before while you can turn on video in Discord that most of them are not turning on video.

Yeah, none of them are. None of them are. And we've actually disabled video on the Final Fantasy channel.

Oh, I did not realize that.

Unless you're a volunteer, you can't share video and because it became disruptive.

I could see that. Yeah. Um for share services and stuff, it became disruptive so we disabled it on in our Final Fantasy.

Yeah, that's sorry. I'm just I'm just getting visions of when I've seen churches try to do Zoom meetings and they don't automatically mute everybody when they come in and somebody who doesn't know it is talking and and you can't get their attention to stop talking and and those so yeah, I can totally see the disruption. Yeah.

Um or people will come in, they will say we're in the middle of a service, but they just do whatever they want. They'll start sharing the game they're playing and start talking and sharing their video and it's like, "Okay, they're not doing that anymore. We're turning that off."

That's part of the learning and growing.

Um yeah. Um so I've told the my community, you can do whatever you want if we won't stream. So you're not afraid. So everyone's intimidated for streaming. I understand. You got to get over that at some point. But until then, we won't stream the but once a month or every other service or whatever. We need to decide. But it's at least once a month. Somebody else is doing it. I'm not.

Yeah.

So y'all decide amongst yourself who's doing it. Do what you want. It still has to be approved. You can we can watch The Chosen. We can watch a video Bible study and read scripture. Whatever. I'm not doing it. I'm just going to sit back and watch you. But even and we won't stream.

Yeah. And even that's another approach methodology of taking good content that is beneficial to the body to study and have conversations around and and just allow that to be the I mean like think about you know 50 years ago what did you have accessible for teaching? Uh you had some scholarly books that were out there that were really expensive. Uh you might have had uh the beginnings of some VHS tapes, but there was not a way for the average person in the church to have access to good sound biblical teaching.

The most you might get would probably be people teaching on TV and they were not necessarily doing uh they're doing a whole worship service. It would just be whatever for their church. So it that would have been all you would probably have access to or it'd be evangelism crusades that you would get access to. So not a lot of hey I really want to learn and understand these concepts. I really want to understand the Bible better. There wasn't any really good resources out there for people.

So now there are so many resources out there that any given thing that I might talk about, I could point to 10 other people that know way more depth than I do that I'm the one that's filtering those all through. So why not just go straight to the source and we all have a discussion about those types of passages, those topics that are coming up.

Um, I think that's a wonderful approach to help empower the community in leading the community forward.

Yeah, we've had one service so far like that. Um, and we just people just shared their testimonies and one of the other people facilitated it and I still had the issue because um I'm very serious about my day off and that was my day off but some of course you're still going to have pastor can you pray for me for this? It's like and and I said yeah sure but there's this whole community here that could also pray for you. It doesn't just have to be me.

Um yeah.

Yeah. Sometimes uh ukulele saying sometimes we're the bridge between excellent resources and the people who need to hear what they have to say.

Exactly. But other times now we can just point people straight to the resource and we don't have to always be the go-between. But you're right. Sometimes we are. Um, but I think there are so many nowadays that I I don't have time to filter all of the excellent resources that are out there of people that are producing wonderful things to help us understand the first century better, understand Old Testament settings better. We keep learning more and more and more. And to just be able to go and say, "Hey, I trust this source over here. Go dive in and have fun learning about that because you are really excited about it, but maybe the whole rest of the community isn't is is a fun thing to be able to do, too."

Yeah, I'm notorious for sharing resources.

Yeah. Uh just to take a shift a minute here, uh we've been talking about some struggles and trying to overcome them. Can you have two or three uh stories of impact that have happened that you've been witnessed to or maybe you were involved in uh with VRMO Church in the time that you've been there?

Um well, we've had people who are atheists come to Christ. We've had people who are Satanists come to Christ. We've had um people who would come in and barely say a word, one word together in um four weeks. Talking a lot now and laughing and sharing and having transformation in their own lives, getting over like certain mental health issues and trauma and so forth and being able to have a voice.

And we've had people who um feel called to we have someone who the Barnabas that I mentioned um called to create video games that elevate Christ and bring light into the world. But trying to share that with their own local church. Um they said, "Yeah, that's great. That's interesting. Come over here and play in our worship team. And instead of empowering them to step into whatever it is they're called to do. And so coming here the first time he shared what his what he thinks he's called to do and I'm like yeah duh. It's like go do that.

I actually know how to do this. I can I can connect you to people. I can help you with this. It's like and here's these other people who have experience in this field in our community. Here you go. Um, so that was actually transformative for him and uh, so he's got he's had a lot of transformation since then and he co-hosts with me now on stream and he wouldn't before.

So I don't know if you're hearing the train.

Yep. Yep. I can hear the train. You can't you can't do anything about the train. A train's going to do the train's going to do. It's very loud.

It was a little bit louder than I was expecting.

So, I will say that like, "Oh, yeah."

Because it honked it honked right by my window.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Um, so that that's really cool. So, they were feeling a call from God. They went to their local church to to share what they felt God was calling them to do. Their their local church, Rose the Wolf 30 just followed. Thanks for the follow, Rose the Wolf. Uh, so they went there and they did not get any encouragement. U, basically everything they said was like, "Hey, that's nice. That's good and all that, but what we need is this position here. Can you do that? Fill in here."

And almost almost a nonrecognition that God could call them and it be somewhere outside the church.

Wow. Uh, I mean, not that not that I haven't seen that or heard that.

Um, but it's it's so encouraging that hey, in that space in VR MMO Church, they were able to find people that were uh encouraging and also knew and understood what that would look like and how to be able to do it.

So, where are they at in the process of being able to make a game? Have they started on that? Are they connected with a team to be able to help them or how is that part going?

Yeah, there's there's multiple projects going on with different people um in their various because one of my I'm I'm the apostle teacher uh five-fold uh apostolic teacher and so my wiring and calling is to pioneer and then teach others.

Um, and so a big part of my drive is to help people identify their calling and step into it and how can I help equip them to do that.

And so we've got multiple people and I want to continue to encourage that. Multiple people making things and some of them are doing it together, some of them are doing it on their own.

Um, but creating content that um, they feel they need to do. Um, and part of this particular person's is I see from a game maker standpoint, you need to be able to communicate with your audience.

You need to be able to do these different things. Here's how you can gain that experience. And so that's what I'm working on doing.

And so he's helping teach now. And so he's learning to communicate and at some point I'm gonna have him teach without me.

He he's aware of it. So yeah. And and I the approach I think you're taking and you might not not label it this way, but there's there's the I teach and you watch.

I teach and you assist. You you teach and I assist. You teach and I watch. You go do it and find someone else to do the same with.

It's it's that progre it's the mentorship idea that you know like we went to an education-based system instead of a mentorship-based system where you bring someone alongside of you and you help them to grow into the role of what it is that you're doing and and then you no we go off to a building we have someone who's an expert stand in front of a whole bunch of people teach them uh in one of the least effective ways of doing monologues of uh just you okay.

Lecture monologues. Lecture monologues. Yeah. Exactly. U so yeah the having well and I think that's it's so valuable in so many places to know there are others doing things to have encouragement in what you're doing and what you're called to.

I I just posted I'm sure you probably heard of them the digital Christian game developers community. Um I went to the Christian game developers conference last month.

That was was in Michigan for the first time. I went there, hung out with a bunch of people that are doing game development and the value of knowing other people are doing it, knowing that other people uh see the same value for it so that we can elevate and grow and encourage.

Uh I got a whole bunch of different uh people that were sharing games and I like I went and wishlisted a whole bunch of them.

Uh not that I will end up playing them but by wishlisting them I support them and saying yeah there are people interested in what I'm doing so that when they are trying to work on it they can show there are people interested in this now I'm going to promote them even if I don't play them um as I'm going to say as long as they're really good games no is there I'm going to promote them anyway but there's a level at which how much I promote them is going to be based on how much I'm excited about them yeah uh I'm I've joined a different group called the Emlidris, which is I've heard about Christian game uh creators, but it's different. It's a I don't know much about this specific one, but on the emitter side, um they want um they want different people.

They want gamers to play the games. They want um aspiring developers, aspiring designers and so forth in the community, the experts in the community that can mentor people and the sages who are the teachers, the scriptural teachers.

And so they you don't have to know how to make games to be in that community. Um so it looks like this one's a diverse community of developers, streamers, missionaries, and gamers.

So yeah, same thing basically. Yeah, the uh the gamers is more of a new uh aspect of it that they're realizing that they need um or they've been to play your games.

Well, yeah. Uh and you need people to promote your games and get excited about your games and do all of that stuff. So, um yeah, actually when I was at the conference, I met a couple of guys that were from South Africa that were there with a game, a couple of people that were from um France that were there with a game. So it it's kind of fascinating to see the global aspects of gaming and then globally Christians feeling called to be in gaming.

Now some um are go and some are working in secular gaming industry and just a Christian in the space and so there were some talks talking about those things.

Others were uh Christians trying to make Christian themed games. And then some were trying to be Christians making um games that would have Christian themes without being a Christian game.

So there's that whole spectrum of of where you fall along those lines. And I I kind of think I like that middle gap there of like if you think about the Christians making Christian themed games, but they're not overtly Christian.

To me, that's like Tolkien. He creates a whole world. It's a it's Yeah, C.S. Lewis Tolkien. They create entire environments. They create entire worlds that are totally Christian themed.

If you're not Christian, you still value it because it's well-made, well well thought out, well processed, and there's themes of light and dark in there.

You can see those. But you might not know all the Christian themes if you're not Christian. If you're Christian, you see all the Christian themes.

So you can see and appreciate it from both the beauty of what's created and the enjoyment of what's created. And then the theme that you know is in there as well.

Uh as opposed to just doing something overtly Christian which I see sometimes in the film industry and it falls flat of really being enjoyable because you only wanted it to have Christian theme and Christian message and it had to be the conclusion you wanted it to be and you forced the conclusion without the story actually you know leave things unsaid at times I think is better. So that's where I I would go with those things.

And I'd certainly I can go and enjoy just great beauty for beauty sake of something that somebody creates. And it has nothing to do with uh Christianity.

In fact, some of the music I listen to like I will like I I I I will often say like here are top ten, you know, lyrics in music or or sayings and songs.

And most of those aren't Christian, but they cause my brain to pause and think. And for me, that's a beautiful thing. So, uh I'm going to I'm going to share these and some people will know what they are and some won't.

That's okay. You can you can Google them. You'll figure it out and then you can laugh at me for what they are. Um, finished with my woman cuz she couldn't help me with my mind.

I love that phrase. I I love that thought there. Um, another one is um uh terminally pretty. Um, I can't remember what the other part of that is.

A brutally handsome and terminally pretty. Like that is such beautiful word play uh of a phrase to be able to talk about someone uh along those lines.

And it's like, why can't we do that kind of beauty within Christian music and and Christian art and because sometimes we're so focused on our message, we forget that beauty is is also a part of what we need to bring people.

Yeah. And there's this conversation on a podcast that I watch that where they were talking about how formative literature is to people's belief systems even if we don't want to acknowledge it.

I would say games stories are also formatives. Yes. Especially nowadays because I will watch non-Christian gamers on stream talking about life lessons they've learned from a video game that they've played.

And so we want to make sure that when we create games um that we bring light and life. And it doesn't even have to be a specific Christian theme.

It can just be let's teach them an important life lesson to guide them where they need to go. Well, there's um and yeah yeah there's wisdom and beauty in a lot of things and finding it and and like you're talking about here of of people who are bringing that from games that they have. I love videos that people are talking about of watching a movie or a game and then trying to play out a theme that was in that story line.

Uh, you know, it's one of those things where I have seen Bible studies on the Andy Griffith Show, um, that you watch an episode and do a Bible study there.

I've even seen Bible studies that were on The Simpsons. Uh, and you go, "What? What do you mean The Simpsons?" Well, The Simpsons are the longest running animated on TV.

They've they've surpassed a whole bunch of other things. But you know what? They still go to church. They have not neglected going to church.

So, while some of the some of the episodes surely probably have no lesson to be learned, um, and and they return back to where they were at and and and you reset.

Each show, each episode is totally different. You don't have to rely on the past to know anything else. In that, you can still end up finding lessons to to to find and see either here's a an object to avoid or here's something to duplicate.

Uh, I I I think that's fascinating when you can do that. Now, I wouldn't want to force it and say I have to come up with a lesson for every episode.

Uh, you know, that would be that would go too far cuz that's not what they're they're made for. But when you can see and find a story of beauty in there, I think that's like Paul when he goes to the Areopagus and he says, "Hey, I know your stories and I know your unknown god over here and let me tell you who he really is. I can meet you where you are and bring you to Christ from connecting things that you already appreciate and know.

Yeah. I put a book in the chat, Dawn of Wonder, the Awakening. It's the first book in a series that he hasn't written the next book yet.

Okay. Jonathan Renshaw. He's a Christian. The book is not, but you can but it's one of those books that brings light and it's like on the Tolkien scale.

Uh of it's not blatantly Christian, but you can see it if you are Christian. Uh if you know what to look for, you'll see it in there.

And it's pretty cool book. And this is the kind of content that can go out there because there are a lot of people out there who if they knew it was a Christian book would not touch it.

Right. Right. And so we need um to be more inviting and to meet people where they are. Well, on some level that that reminds me of the passage where Paul talks about that.

Um, you need to was it Paul or is it Peter? Now I'm trying to think. Oh, now I'm confused. I think it's one Peter 3.

I think it's one Peter 3. I want to look it up because now I'm going now I'm questioning myself in my head. Uh, I think it's verse 5, but I'm just going to put one Peter 3 and find this.

No, I'm in the wrong Maybe it's second Peter. Yeah, that's definitely the wrong passage. Maybe I'm in entirely wrong place and I just have the wrong thing stuck in my What is it that is the point?

Uh, well, always always be ready to give an account for the joy that you have. So, I was I was trying to look that up.

I must have the wrong reference stuck in my head. Um, but I wanted to make sure I was I was looking it up or quoting it right.

But it's like if I don't have a reason to make a defense for the joy I have, then it's because people haven't seen me having joy.

Uh, it might not. The word might not be joy. That's why I might be getting it mixed up. It could be hope or something.

Yeah, it's first Peter 3:5. No, it's not. That's not it. Uh, yeah, it's hope.

1 Peter 3:15.

It's 3:15. Okay. Not 3:5. Okay.

I just read it wrong. I missed the one.

That's that's what I was like, like I was like, I don't want to quote it wrong. I was missing it. It's 3:15. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope you have. To me, that's what you do in digital spaces. You show up in them and you exude hope in places where people are lost and lonely without hope. And that, I mean, that's that's what I see so many people in VRMMO Church are trying to do, or the heart behind VRMMO Church is have people see that you have hope.

They may not have hope.

What, why do you have hope? How can I have the hope you have? I mean, that's yeah, that that's what I see. And uh, anyone who doesn't know, I have done pulpit supply for VRMMO Church. So I have preached in VR Chat. I I have preached in Rec Room. Um, I have not preached in uh, or or or even attended the service in Final Fantasy yet. And part of that's my life.

On Twitch.

Oh yeah. I did on Twitch. Yes, I did. I did attend on Twitch and watch there. Um, but I I want to uh attend fully in the community and experience the way the community is. So I haven't done that piece yet, but you.

Made it to a play session.

I made it to a play session. I made that far. I'm like making progress.

I.

Yeah.

I've been hanging out with you guys for for over a year now. And um, trying to be active as I can and all like in so many places that I am, you are are one of the ones I'm most active in. So it's it's not the top of the list but uh.

Thank you.

Uh, but it is because of the of the community there are and I I'll just add to this. So.

I don't think I've talked about with anyone else. So let's just shift to the community aspect of it because you have three campuses so to speak. I'm calling them campuses just so that people can think that in their mind. There is one community though and that community is Discord where everyone is gathered together to be able to have conversations and so often.