EP257 - Metaverse Church Takeover

So, hey everybody, welcome to the Metaverse Church Summit. My name is Jeff Reed, and I'm founder of the Church Digital, founder of Digital Church Network, but in this context I'm excited to say that I'm director of Metaverse Church Next for Leadership Network. How's that for a job title? I love it. Hey, I love the fact also that Leadership Network is leaning in to this idea of church in the metaverse or the metaverse mission field, and really that's the heart of what we're going to talk about here at this online summit. We're going to explore number one, what exactly is the metaverse? Number two, what is the church currently doing in the metaverse? And number three, what is the potential for what's to come? What should we be doing? What could we be doing here in the metaverse?

So hey, you know what? I have probably said the word metaverse half a dozen times already in this conversation. That may be number seven right there. So let me do this. Let's go ahead and define it right now for you, listening audience, viewing audience. What is the metaverse? The metaverse is, well, let's back up even historically a little bit before we get there. Hey, remember the days of the World Wide Web when we put www in front of everything in the web browser, early in the 90s, 2000s, in the AOL era of the internet? The Web 1, Web 1.0 technology was really this beginning era back in the 90s and the 2000s, and at that point we really defined that as the information age. The coolest part of the internet in the 90s and 2000s was that all the information, all the encyclopedias, all the atlases, all the commentaries, everything that we needed from an academia standpoint, from an informational standpoint, was on the internet. And it was that massive push to get all of the records online, and that was awesome, by the way. Graduated from college 1999, Texas Christian University. Never checked a book out once in the four and a half years, honestly, that it took me to get my college degree. Four and a half years to get a college degree. Never once checked the book out from the library. Not bragging, but maybe if I had checked books out I would have graduated quicker. Another conversation.

Hey, so really in the 90s and 2000s, Web 1 was centered around this idea of an information age. Web 2.0, Web 2, is when that information transitioned more towards community. Now we see social media coming in. We're seeing the Facebooks, we're seeing the MySpaces, even in the early times. We're seeing things expand into Instagram, and now there's oh so many different. I just joined the new social media network called BeReal. There's so many new opportunities out there where people are creating, where communities are being created in digital space. And really this is the heart of Web 2, is where we're now entering into this idea of social media age or the age of communities operating in digital space. And we see that in the 2000s, 2010s, maybe even still here in the 2020s. But now with Web 3, 3.0, this is where we start to bring in some of the metaverse technologies. We're talking virtual reality. We're talking augmented reality, artificial intelligence, mixed reality. We're starting to see these technologies come together as part of Web 3.0, which is giving us an opportunity to create not necessarily communities, but a community is a part of these massive experiences that we can build. And really that's the heart of what we're trying to do with Web 3 is to start to create massive experiences utilizing virtual reality, creating entire worlds and universes that have never been seen or done before. Or in augmented reality, we're able to bring together the physical world but insert new objects and new learnings and new opportunities and new experiences in even our existing physical realm. And so now as a church, the question we're really asking is what do we do with this? How do we, the church, influence the metaverse? And reverse from that, how do we let the metaverse influence us, the church?

So really this is what we're going to explore today. We're going to start to talk about the metaverse as a mission field and define the opportunities to reach and engage an entirely different type of person utilizing these different tools. But in addition to the mission field, we're also going to explore the theology, the ecclesiology of what we're doing, and how a church operating in the metaverse, how can they do this while still holding true to the biblical standards that are in place? And we've got over a dozen speakers lined up for this summit. I'm excited about it. But you know what? That means we got to get started right here.

So in the first session, you're going to hear from three different people. You're going to hear from Adam Graber from Faith Tech, where he's going to define the metaverse. A specialist. He's literally a specialist in digital theology. I love that. He's going to be explaining exactly what the metaverse is, and he's going to go into better detail, deeper detail, on those Web 3 technologies. You're also gonna hear from Michael Usda Venice, one of the few people here in America with the job title Metaverse Pastor. That's right. His job is literally to pastor people in the metaverse. He's from Cornerstone VR, and we're going to be talking a lot with them today. But he's going to share his experiences about the different virtual reality communities and on top of that, how he transitioned from a physical church ministry mindset into now doing ministry in the metaverse. What's the differences? Some of those differences between the physical and the metaverse. And thirdly, we're going to talk here in this first session with Mindy Caliguire from SoulCare.com, one of probably the strongest voices right now when it comes to mental health here in America, mental health and soul care, how it connects to the church. Mindy is going to be talking about some of the challenges and obstacles that we're going to be facing as we're going into aggressively doing ministry in the metaverse, and what we, the church, should be on the lookout for while we're doing this ministry, reaching into some of these dark spaces.

So hey, we got a great session one more coming up after that, but we gotta get started. So hey, Adam, I'm gonna go ahead and hand it over to you.

Hey, everyone. My name is Adam Graber, and I'm excited to be with you for Leadership Network's Metaverse Summit. I hope to introduce you to metaverse and Web3, and my hope is that you'll walk away with some clarity around what each of these is and how they could become part of your relational efforts in the church as you lead.

So I co-host a podcast called Device and Virtue, and I am a consultant in digital theology for Faith Tech. So the metaverse has become a bit of a household word following fall 2021 when Mark Zuckerberg made a big announcement and a keynote around what the metaverse is and where he envisions Facebook, now Meta, going with it. But you may not be as familiar with Web3, so my hope is to give you some insight there.

So what is the metaverse and what is Web3? So I would say that the metaverse and these are a bit squishy words. I would say first of all, so if you are a little confused, you're not the only one. There are different definitions that people are using, but I think these will generally distinguish. I'd say they're a bit of a Venn diagram. They're overlapping a little bit, but these are how I would distinguish them.

So the metaverse I would primarily align with VR technology, so virtual reality, augmented reality, or extended reality, mixed reality, whatever reality you want to talk about. If you're talking about Facebook's Oculus or the Horizon platform, and I would argue if you're talking about Fortnite, you are in the metaverse realm. By contrast, if you are thinking about Web 3, you're probably hearing about blockchain. You're probably hearing about cryptocurrency. Maybe you're hearing about virtual currencies like Bitcoin or Ether, and then maybe you're also hearing about NFTs, non-fungible tokens, which are digital contracts. And we'll get into a little bit more of that in a bit. And so collectively, the metaverse and Web3 are sort of a constellation of technologies. They're creating value for the digital dimension of our lives, and they are a way that we can create ongoing value digitally ourselves.

So as I said, the metaverse is sort of this virtual reality space. And when I think about virtual reality, I ask, is it a better version of reality? And to that I would say no, and other people might disagree. But is it a better version of the internet? And to that I would say probably so. It is a more embodied, more involved, more immersive way of engaging with others on the internet.

And so one question you might be asking is, will it become widespread? And to answer that question, I would echo my co-host. He says that technology tends to follow an arc, moving from toy to tool to becoming part of our environment. So VR has really been in that toy stage for a long time. It's been that gaming space, right? And in that space you have things like Fortnite. You have things that are really social spaces and they're interactive with these avatars, and boys all over the country are engaging in what I would say is a metaverse, but they're not using the headset yet. But that may be coming. But is it moving from toy to tool? Well, in 2021, Facebook planned to spend 10 billion dollars, billion with a B, on what they called Facebook Reality Labs. It was their metaverse division tasked with creating augmented reality and virtual reality hardware, software, and content. They have this will and billions of dollars behind it, so they are pushing to make this happen. And in October 2021, Bank of America announced that they were going to train 50,000 employees using virtual reality across their 4,300 banking centers. And a month later, Accenture, a multinational consulting firm, announced that they were distributing 60,000 headsets to their consultants. And so there are indicators that it's moving into a tool space. It's moving into that business space. And Facebook has really pushed their Horizon Workspace as the way that they're getting into virtual reality and the metaverse.

So will they ever be as ubiquitous as smartphones? First, they will have to make that leap from the toy to the tool. We do see some indicators that that could happen. And if you think about those teenage boys who are playing Fortnite today, they will be entering the business world in 10 years, and they will be already primed and ready to accept a metaverse type of business experience.

Another question that people have is, is the metaverse a real place? Is this like even a real thing? And to that I would say reality and the internet are not separate. They do overlap. What happens on the internet does not stay on the internet. This is not Las Vegas. And when you think about things like cyberbullying, that has a real world impact. And so offline and online are happening together.

And to get a little biblical, I would say that even things like Jesus's parables present a virtual reality to us. Jesus invites us into these stories, these pictures of what the kingdom is like, and he invites us into this virtual world to imagine something that is not something we can see with our eyes, but we can imagine for ourselves. And VR is doing something a bit like that. And I would argue that in some ways the church is a virtual reality. It is a place where we go to practice being the people of God, practice living into the kingdom of God. And so is it real? I would argue yes. And there are predecessors.

Okay, pause. That's the metaverse. We're going to take a breath, and then we're going to dive in to Web 3.

All right, how does Web 3 compare to Web 1 and Web 2? So here's the kind of top line way I would say it is that Web 1 provided information, Web 2 provided a social experience, and Web 3 is providing a transactional experience. And they're not—Web 3 is not replacing Web 1 or Web 2, it's being added to it, but it's augmenting them as well. And so Web 1 was this space for information. It was driving the information economy. It was built on websites, and your primary involvement was reading the websites. Move on to Web 2, and it was a social experience, right? It drove the attention economy, and it was built on platforms—platforms like Facebook, like Twitter, like Uber, like Airbnb. These were all platforms that were driving Web 2. And your primary involvement was interacting with other people on the platform.

And so now moving into Web 3, that's—this is not informational, it's not social, but it's transactional. And so it's driving this notion of the ownership economy, and it's built on not platforms but on blockchains. And your primary involvement is transacting or doing business. And so where Web 2 was sort of this soft transaction in the form of social exchanges, Web 3 was a hard transaction in the forms of contracts or currency.

So what is being transacted in Web 3? Well, it's currency. It's contracts. Currency—it's in its digital currency. It's cryptocurrency. And it's disrupting banking and finance. And some people disagree whether cryptocurrency is actually currency or is it stock or is it a security or is it maybe some mix of those things. And it's actually a new thing. I'm not knowledgeable enough about financial vehicles to really advise you. Maybe you are. But as you think about it, there are philosophical concepts around currency, around stocks and securities for really defining what Bitcoin, what Ether, what cryptocurrency is in general.

So you've heard about crypto. You've maybe also heard about NFTs—non-fungible tokens. These are basically disrupting legal contracts. So let's break down the word a little bit. NFT token—non-fungible token. The token just means a certificate of ownership. So it indicates that you have a deed to a piece of property that could be digital property. It could be a real property.

So second, fungible. That's a great word, but who knows what it means? Think replaceable. So fungible means replaceable. So non-fungible means non-replaceable. So it is a non-replaceable token, a one-of-a-kind token, a one-of-a-kind certificate of ownership. And it can serve as a legal binding contract between two people.

And so you've got crypto, you got NFTs, and now you have—every—all of that is functioning with something underlying it called the blockchain. And blockchain is honestly pretty simple, but it's hard to get our heads around nonetheless. It is a system of record keeping. So most commonly you'll hear it called a distributed ledger. So the ledger part is the record keeping. The distributed part is this sort of new space that's hard to get your head around where it is a decentralized network that is managing this joint ledger. So there's no single person that's managing the ledger. It's distributed across the network.

And so when you think about—when you hear about decentralized, you can also think about de-institutionalized. So there's no one institution that's controlling the ledger like a bank or a financial institution would. And so with this decentralization, the blockchain allows participants to be checking on each other, sort of policing each other, using their computers to verify transactions from other computers using that same blockchain system. So you've gotta all be like a platform. You've gotta all be on the Bitcoin blockchain or the Ethereum blockchain.

So what are some questions to ask around these issues? The first question I would ask is a question of identity. What are people for in the metaverse? And what are people for on the blockchain? So for example, in a family you're a son, you're a daughter, you're a father, you're a mother. To the government you're a citizen. To a corporation you're a consumer. To a computer system you're a user. What are you to the metaverse? What are you to blockchain? I think that's an important question to ask as we dive into the metaverse and Web 3.

Second is a relational question. What is community for on in the metaverse and on Web 3? How might the metaverse—how might blockchain shape how we relate to each other both there and offline? Because we know that they're together, they're overlapping, they're integrated in some ways. And who does the metaverse leave out? Who does the blockchain leave out? Some people that come to mind are children, the poor, the elderly, the incarcerated. And I'm sure you can imagine some others.

And then a theological question. Does the metaverse—does Web 3 have space for God? For Scripture? For the church? That is a key question that you are answering by the work that you're doing.

So Mark Zuckerberg said in his keynote that the metaverse will not be created by one company. It'll be created by multiple companies. But who gets to define what the metaverse looks like? Is it corporations? What about governments? What about NGOs? What about churches? Do they have a stake and an opportunity to speak into what the metaverse is shaped like? What blockchain is shaped like? So that it can think about who's being left out and what our identities are?

So a couple key takeaways. First, the metaverse is this virtual reality, extended reality system. If you are hearing the words like Facebook, Oculus headset, or Horizon Workspace, or Fortnite, you can be sure that the metaverse is among you.

Second, Web 3 is this constellation of blockchain, of crypto, of non-fungible tokens, of virtual currencies or a financial vehicle of some kind, and legal contracts. It's a decentralized distributed ledger that's disrupting currency, disrupting contracts, and being used for managing who owns digital objects, but also potentially physical objects.

And the church has one major thing in common with both the metaverse and Web 3. It's all about relationships. These are technologies that will impact how we socialize, how we do business, and how we relate to one another, and also how we relate to God. And the church has this mission of helping people to love God and love each other. And figuring out how that looks in the metaverse, how it looks on the blockchain, that will require innovative church leaders like you to walk it out in practice. And I hope this helps. Thanks.

The two campuses that we've got—we've got one in an app called AltSpace. And this is one that, you know, many churches are now coming to. Life Church, you know, they kind of entered that space, and a lot of people saw that. But yeah, so we've been in there for about two years. And AltSpace is what we would kind of call like middle of the road. Where the avatars that you create are pretty limited in terms of what you can be. So everybody as a person looks like, you know, like a human person. And the clothing that you can have is all very cartoony, very middle of the road. And it's great. Like, the atmosphere in there is very social. And the campus that we have, the church body that we have, it's a mature church body. We of course have new believers coming all the time, but the church body that we have there—if you were to look at it and you didn't know that it was a VR church, you would—it ticks all of the boxes for what you would hope a thriving, mature church community would have in terms of engagement and community.

So AltSpace is one of those platforms, and right now is really the main platform. That's the one that most churches, when they're starting to look at the metaverse, AltSpace is really the first one. And for good reason. There are technical aspects to AltSpace that make it a good place to start. One of those things is that the moderation controls on the room—they're very good. They're robust in terms of being able to mute people that you want to mute. It's good in terms of being able to boot people that you want to boot and control who can talk and broadcast your voice. There's lots of—it's designed well for holding a church service or a small group or things like that.

And so from that perspective, it's a very good place to start. It's also a good place to start because the demographic is large. It's basically a little bit of an older demographic in terms of—older in terms of comparatively to the other platforms. And so you get more of an adult crowd in AltSpace, which of course then makes it a little more—again, keeping it to the middle of the road in terms of the chaos, if you will. And we'll talk about what true chaos looks like in some of the other platforms. AltSpace generally doesn't have too many issues, so you can kind of focus on understanding what metaverse ministry looks like in a more controlled atmosphere in AltSpace. Since that's why it's a good place to start for churches.

Love that. And so we've seen, like he said, Life Church has been in AltSpace, and it seems to me, maybe this is the unofficial title, but AltSpace, which is owned by Microsoft, seems like it's like the training wheels for churches in the space. Where it's the safe community. You're probably not going to get F-bombs. You're probably not going to see a naked avatar walking around. And so like a lot of churches, it's like get a headset, download an AltSpace app, create an account or use your Microsoft account, and just walk around the community. It's safe. It's very welcoming environment. You're gonna have conversations, and it's not as hostile, maybe, as some of the other environments that we get to. And I don't want to oversell it, but yeah, there's some hard stuff that's out there.

Well, let's—I'll tell you what, let's even get into some of the hard stuff here. Let's talk a little bit. How are we gonna do? You wanna do Rec Room next?

I think Rec Room is probably the safest option to go next.

Yeah, yeah. Rec Room is another great space. We actually are right on the precipice of launching our Rec Room campus. And so that's going to be our third campus that we launched, and we're very close. We have our world built out, which was built out by one of our volunteers, and it's an amazing spot. I can't wait to get in there.

But Rec Room—it really is a game platform. And one of the popular misconceptions about VR in particular is that it is predominantly gamers. And I shared that misconception. I am a gamer. I've always been a gamer. Coming into the space, I thought, okay, cool, I'm gonna be in my element. I'm gonna be talking to lots of gamers. Or I'm going to—they're going to identify with me. And I'm not only a gamer, but I'm a game developer. And like, it's going to be awesome. And lo and behold, I get into the social apps, and it's not really—it's not gamers. It's not predominantly who's there. We're there, but it's not predominantly that.

Rec Room is a game platform, but it's very casual gaming. And so once again, it still isn't what we would say like, yeah, that's where hardcore gamers go. Again, we enjoy it. You can go in there, you can play paintball, you can now drive like vehicles around, and there's all sorts of other neat games that you can go in and play. And that is the kind of the foundation of the platform. But it also is very much a social platform. And so it is really in essence social first with games kind of as an added benefit to be able to do that together, as opposed to like, you know.

A hardcore gaming platform, hardcore meeting like Call of Duty or Pop One in VR, that kind of thing. Um, the games are much more casual while we're here. Let me just ask quick, quick question because you mentioned student ministries maybe trying to use used Rec Room. Is there any challenges towards like reaching students in in virtual reality? Uh, you're also a lawyer so I know you're shaking your head yes in the background, but like just briefly, uh, maybe maybe hit on a couple of those. What are some of those challenges targeting students in virtual reality something that a church would struggle against reaching students, reaching youth?

Um, not a challenge at all. They are there and are really generally quite hungry to learn about what the message that we have and so a willingness to listen. Uh, it's, it's to me maybe the greatest place right now that we have to reach kids who don't know. Literally, they didn't know nothing about what we're talking about and I'm not talking about necessarily like kids around the world. I'm talking about kids in the United States that I've talked with that, you know, twelve years old, thirteen years old, and when I ask him like, okay, well tell me what you know about Jesus, and they're like, nothing. I don't. They don't even know why we have a cross in front of a church. And so, and they're, and they're just there and they're willing to listen. So that, that the challenge isn't getting them to stop and listen. The challenge that we are working through is how to appropriately engage them because, um, obviously first of all, none of, no under thirteen are supposed to even be on these platforms. There's there's COPPA, which which covers, you know, uh, online interactions with children, and and they're just not even supposed to be on there. But of course they find ways on. And so it's not totally unusual to be, you know, delivering a sermon and afterwards somebody coming up and saying, hey, I've got questions about Jesus, and then lo and behold you find out they're twelve years old. And so we are talking quite a bit. Again, as you said, I got my lawyer hat on all the time to how do we appropriately engage? First of all, under thirteen, then how do we properly engage the middle range between eighteen and thirteen and, um, protect those kids, but then also protect our, our staff and volunteers. So we want, we, I'm just working through that because in, you know, in the physical space it, you know, it's very, it's very easy to make sure that we've got safeguards in place. We get, you know, uh, either, you know, setting up the safeguards in, in, in the physical space is, is actually easier. And then also very rarely are you going to interact with a minor like that without some guardian, you know, like some, they don't just generally don't just show up. Generally there's a guardian there where you can say like, hey, your son or daughter has questions. Love to talk to them. Let's all work through this together. A lot of these kids are on there. They're guardian nowhere to be found. Or we, they won't give us access. They won't even tell us their real name. Let alone, hey, can we call your mother? Can we call your grandmother? I mean, we have these, we ask every time. Not a single one is like, yeah, great, here's my grandma's number. She'd love to talk to you. That just doesn't happen. So we're working through best practices there. And, um, and that's, and that's just as a community, I think we need to kind of rally together and figure out, hey, what, where, what can we all come up with as far as the ways to do that? Right now it's mainly nobody go in alone. Like just at the very least make sure that we are having group discussions at all times. No solo interactions. That's the one thing at least that we can control right now. And we're just kind of building and learning at the same time.

That's really good. He's, he's a world builder. He's a metaverse pastor. He's a video game programmer. He's a lawyer. Uh, he wears a lot of different hats, uh, down here in South Florida. So awesome, uh, thank you for sharing that. Hey, let's, let's get back to communities. Uh, let's, let's talk, um, I don't know, let's, let's talk Facebook Horizons briefly. You know, I know it's, it's the new thing, but before we get into the others, uh, Facebook Horizons, like that's the new thing. Facebook Meta is investing a lot into this and it's been open, uh, just a short while. Kind of what's, what's the initial feedback on that?

Yeah, I think it's got some, it's got some growing to do. There's a lot of promise there. I know that there are some churches, um, that are entering that space and doing well. I know, um, even even the meshing between venues and what that became and now, you know, what you know, Horizon Worlds is going to become. Whatever, whatever Facebook is going to settle on as the thing that they're going to like push as far as VR in particular goes, we have to believe is, is going to be, is going to be a big deal. I'm still, yeah, we've, we've looked at it. We looked at it as a potential spot for a campus. We're holding off right now, um, mainly because there are other churches that are in there. We're like, great, let's, let's, let's then let's let them probe that. Um, we can put our efforts elsewhere. And, and then, you know, we'll kind of like cast a wider net, if you will, like we're all, we're in communication with each other and kind of working together in that way.

So now let's get to the platform, uh, that it seems like I talk about the most. Uh, it's VRChat. Now DJ Soto calls it the, the wild wild west. Uh, you know, I've called it the red light district. And I, I personally, I've had some unique experiences in those spaces and talking with people outside of those spaces that that have been in there. Just, uh, but it's, it's the, you know, it's the, it's truly it's the red light district. You know, I've had people tell me that forty to fifty, this is unscientific stats, but forty, fifty percent of people in any given time are having sex in private rooms in VRChat. And, uh, uh, didn't low parental controls, uh, which means that avatars can be anything. Um, and so walking around and seeing a Xenomorph from, from Alien, or a naked woman or naked, like it just seems to be kind of the wild wild west. Um, yet those are the same people that need Jesus too. Uh, and so talk to me because and you've recently, uh, and we're actually talking to, um, Stewart, who's the world builder who's kind of heading up, I think some of the minute, maybe not the world builder, but the guy who's heading up the ministry out of, uh, the VRChat campus. We're gonna have a conversation with him later. But talk to me a little bit about this community VRChat and maybe a little bit about what church looks like in that space.

Yeah, it, it, it is, it is, it is a wild place, um, to be to be sure. I think maybe I've become a slightly desensitized to it. Although, you know, even, even, even just my first interactions there, it very quickly, um, it very quickly dawned on me that that at the end of every headset is a soul. And so, um, you know, I've told the story before, but like it's really just just the paradigm of VRChat, which is, um, this was like the first time I got in there and, um, and you know, one of my early days was pastor in there. And, um, and you know, we do the service and we do Q and A afterwards. And I'm sitting there talking with four Mandalorians about who Jesus is. And it's just, I'm like, I'm kind of processing this. And I'm just thinking, you know, I'm just thinking about my, my, you know, all of my friends and, and co-workers from my, from my old church thinking like, how am I even going to explain what my, like, first day on the job was like? I'm delivering the gospel to these four Mandalorians. While I'm doing that, Paul Blart Mall Cop like comes up on a Segway and he starts listening. And I'm just looking at him just like, this is, this is so bizarre. And then one of the Mandalorians says, hey, can you pray for me? I just found out from my doctor that I might have a terminal heart issue. And I'm just wondering if you could pray for me. And like at that point, like you're not looking at avatars anymore. You're not looking at Mandalorians. You're looking at a hurting soul who's looking for, for hope. And when, when you approach VRChat, I mean, first of all, when you approach that is the way to approach the metaverse period. It doesn't matter where you are. Um, you, you, you just have to like cut through some of the silliness and the ridiculousness and realize like that is, that is what we were dealing with. Our souls. But VRChat in particular, where it just does get very wacky, it gets very sordid, um, and, and people are hurting there more than other places. Right at the very least they're acting out on it more. When you cut through all of that, you see the ministry opportunities that just, you know, absent a miracle of God, most of the people there are not gonna wake up on a Sunday morning and say, you know what, I think I'm gonna go to church today. But many of them will stop in to our church world because they see people in there and just want to talk with somebody. They just want to see if there is someone in the world that will listen to them, that will care about them because many of them have nobody. And that is, that's the, that is the essence really of metaverse ministry. But particularly, particularly VRChat, um, just because the, the darkness and the brokenness there is so deep. And so, um, it does get crazy though because, you know, the we talked about some of the technical issues, right? Alt Space, great moderation controls. Mute people, broadcast your voice, boot people, and all this other stuff. VRChat doesn't have that natively. We've worked hard at programming some of it in. Um, but still, if people want to come in and cause problems, the best we can do is boot them, which we don't really want to do because those are the people that need to hear the gospel the most. And so that's why it's great in Alt Space. You know, somebody comes in, starts to cause all problems. It's great. We just mute them. Hang out, bro. Like, you do, do whatever you want. But you're going to hear the gospel while you're here. In VRChat, they legitimately can cause problems for us. In VRChat, they can annoy other people so that they can't hear what we're saying. They can even crash the room by using their avatar in a certain way where it, where it, you know, they can emote and do all these other stuff where it actually literally can crash the room. So it's not uncommon for one of us to be in there preaching and just in the middle of the sermon, the entire room shut down or the entire app shut down for us. And we know, all right, somebody crashed us. Fire it back up. Go back into the world. Go back up to the, to where you're preaching. And be like, okay, where was I? And then start going again. So, um, for churches that are used to a very, very, very, very tight, excellent experience, VRChat can be a bit daunting because it is very rare that we would come out of a VRChat worship service and say nothing went wrong. Like, you just, you just have to roll with it. Um, so that is what makes VRChat daunting and challenging. On top of the fact, as you said, Jeff, um, the avatars that are in there, like there are technically, you know, like limitations on what VRChat is supposed to allow. But that bar is very, very, very low. And, and so it is not uncommon to be preaching and looking around the room and being like, I just, like, I'm just not going to look over there. Like, that I don't want to see that. That's not appropriate for me to see right now. I'm going to focus on this side of the room. But again, it's like, I don't, that's not ideal. But that person needs this more than anyone else. And that's the kind of like the line that we, you know, we, we walk that tightrope of, of let's, let's keep them here. We want to talk. And to that point, when we talk metaverse, I know like it's like, oh.

First of all, people think VR, that's okay, that's good, but it one again popular misconception is that it is only VR. Alt Space has a desktop client, meaning you can just download Alt Space onto your PC and open it up on a 2D screen and go in and do everything that a person with a VR headset can do. Interact with all the VR people. It's just that you're doing it on your computer monitor or your laptop instead of having a VR headset on. So not having a headset doesn't preclude you from participating in VR ministry, attending a VR church service, like being going into those apps. VR Chat has it. Alt Space has it. So for sure that both of those, it doesn't require a VR headset. It's just that's the core experience. Um, and so, uh, along with that, as churches think about metaverse ministry, um, I would urge them to think not just about, okay, well, hey, everybody's going to Alt Space and like, yeah, that's that's great and we need more churches in Alt Space. By the way, one of the one of the things that is just so awesome about what is happening in Alt Space. When I first came in to Alt Space and and saw the events that are in there, it was like a couple of us doing church and then like the events wall was all like mystic meditation, crystals and chakras, um, all sorts of other stuff that we would be like, that's not healthy. That's not. All these events. If you go in there now, it is a wall of church events, seven days a week. Like, any time I go in there, it's it's like a small group's happening, somebody's doing prayer time, somebody's doing a Bible study discussion. Some, it's just a wall of of church events. Like it's it's like we like flooded Alt Space with churches and we like we are all high-fiving each other over that. Like we could not be happier. We and Pastor Jason and I talked about that initially, which was like, how do we get more churches in here because we need it? And and the Lord is just, it's just like that soil is is sprouting. He tilled the soil and it is is just sprouting there. So it's awesome to go into Alt Space, but the metaverse is is really any digital, any digital space that we can interact and create a community. And so you said Roblox, and Roblox actually was probably one of the first VR churches ever, right? Like, I mean, that was, I don't, I don't know how many years ago that was that was created, but how far ahead of a time was was the kid that created that?

Yeah, you're talking Daniel Herron. Uh, Daniel. Just Daniel. Yeah, yeah. Daniel. He just turned twenty-one years old. Uh, he created it eleven years ago. So if you're good at math, um, he, it, when he was ten or eleven. And uh, things still around. He's still running it. Uh, I asked him one day. I was like, hey, how many people do you think you've connected with through the Robloxian Christians? You can Google Robloxian Christians. And he told me he says, well, we didn't really keep good records, you know, when we started because he was ten and he didn't know what his database was. Um, but he says he, we probably estimated around maybe forty to fifty thousand people.

Yeah, and it's just, this is crazy, the impact that, I don't know what you were doing at eleven. I wasn't, I wasn't building at the first digital metaverse church when I was ten or eleven years old. And so I was making video games, but it certainly wasn't to advance the gospel. I'm ashamed. It's a gospel for the King. No, I, that was not where I was at. That was where my mind was. But yeah, to that point though, um, my my urging to church is thinking about the metaverse is to kind of look at, look at what God has already deposited within them and see if anything emerges. Like their, you know, the essence of metaverse ministry is pushing into new frontiers, right? It is, it's new mission fields, reaching new tribes on the continent of the metaverse. And um, there may just be plat, a platform that that no church is in, but somebody within their church body or their staff or whoever is like an expert in that. I would just say explore that as a place to build a community around advancing the gospel because the principles are all generally the same. People are looking for community. That's where the, that's where the real gold is in in metaverse ministry. Um, we we all have uh, we all have dynamite content, but what we learned through COVID was that uh, relationship trumps content, right? That's that is where that is what people are looking for universally, even in the physical space, but certainly in the metaverse. So we we look more and more at um, how do we use the content simply as a springboard into the interrelationship? And that can be done in any place. I mean, I do, I do uh, I play Population One. It's a VR game. It's like the Fortnite of VR, although us older guys say it's the Call of Duty of VR. Just, but anyway, um, but it's not, but but we do, uh, if I could, I'm gonna be doing it tonight, but we've been doing it almost a year at this point, um, we go in, we open up an open lobby, and we um, and and we play a bunch, and then in the middle of it, I stop and I say, hey, let's go circle up, and I give them a message, and then we talk about it. And we get lots of people in there that would never go to a church service, but because we're playing Pop One with them, we've got credibility, and now all of a sudden, somebody that wouldn't normally listen to the gospel is listening to it simply because we played a game together that we both like. We made that contact point. So anyway, my my point is just the the best places to probe into the metaverse are the places that you've already got experts in, and then just see how you can infuse Scripture and prayer into that.

Goose, uh, Michael, use Davina's. Thank you very much for the time today.

Hey guys, we are talking about mental health in the metaverse. Come on, could anything be more of a mashup of everything that's important right now? Uh, I'm Mindy Caliguire. Glad to be joining you. I care a ton about soul care. I care about leaders. I care about ministry leaders and I care about the future and digital and all things like that, and I care about Leadership Network. So it's really delightful to be with you, um, on the topic of mental health in the metaverse. Like, again, it just feels so grand. I don't hardly even know where to start. Um, I'm gonna walk through a couple points that I hope will be helpful just in framing the conversation about mental health to begin with, and then look at how does, what what does that mean for this incredible new domain called the metaverse?

So first of all, from a Christian or a just human perspective, how should we be thinking about mental health to begin with? So one very important thing to anchor in is that mental health sort of is this beautiful mashup of what is going on in the realm of the mind—your thoughts, your emotions, your sense of awareness of yourself, your mindfulness, all that kind of stuff—and this part of your body called the brain, and it has all these neurotransmitters and functions and has, you know, water and nutrition and burns energy and electricity, and it's an amazing, amazing part of your human body. And they are not the same thing. The mind, the mind, your thoughts, your emotions, is not the same as the brain.

Now, when it comes to the topic of mental health, we, like any other topic of health, parts of our physical body can get sick, right? If we have liver disease, we go to a doctor. If something's wrong with our foot, we go see a different kind of doctor. And if we have something wrong with the brain, things can go wrong with the brain. We should also go and have that approach. Now, when things go wrong with your foot, it impacts how you walk. When things go wrong with your brain, it impacts how you think and how you feel. And so it's vitally important for us to have this quite integrated understanding. And the distinction, you know, integration only works if you understand the two different parts and then how they relate to one another. We have to understand how the topic of mental health touches into the domain of the mind and what we do with our thoughts and the domain of the brain, the physical body, and how our brain is doing.

So the pursuit of improved mental health usually follows into both one or both paths. And that's the topic for another uh conversation, but it's important for a conversation today just to establish, just level set. God has created us with a body, and the body can be healthy or not so much, and it's important to guard its health. Secondly, God has created us in God's own image, which means yes, our body has certain attributes and our relationships have certain attributes, but it also means we have capacities in the mind to think and to feel, to communicate, to do all these different kinds of things that are vital to being human. The integration of those two is we're talking about when we're thinking about mental health. And when I think about the human soul, the idea of soul care and soul health, soul health broadly includes the domain of the mind, the domain of the body, the domain of the emotions, the domain of relationships, the domain of our like social context, and how that all integrates into the personhood that is you. So the care of the soul is the care of all of it.

So this is a vitally important topic, and as you can imagine, tons of people are curious about it these days because, headline, you know, spoiler alert here, we're in a bit of a rough spot globally as it relates to the topic of mental health. I don't think that'll be a surprise to any of you. Some of you see it in your congregation. Some of it see it in your own families, and many of us probably see it in ourselves. There is unprecedented levels of burnout, tons of depression, mild and severe. There's been increased suicide rates, death by suicide. It's very, very tragic because it's heavy, heavy circumstances that we find ourselves in in this moment. And even this shows up in the workplace in something, you know, that has a headline, the Great Resignation. But I think what sits not too far below the surface around that is the data that we're seeing from corporations and and studies being done uh, a lot of places about the number of people who are who are experiencing burnout. I think I saw fifty-two percent of the workforce in one uh, Indeed did a research project, and fifty-two percent of their workforce said they had experienced depression during twenty twenty-one. Over half of our colleagues or again, or some robots have experienced depression, heavy or light, but that's significant. A large population of the human, of all of us, is experiencing depression. And then that shows up in the workplace as the Great Resignation, which is obviously impacting the entire U.S. context, both in the church and outside the church.

One of the things I think that's creeping into our culture, and I've been doing some research and reading around this, you may have as well, is that it's almost getting too hard to know in some cases what is disease, like what is a clinical condition, and what is just learning to live with suffering, with grief, with pain. Um, I I read in one article that there is a new diagnosis available in the DSM, the the big, you know, Bible of mental health and diagnoses that are sort of legitimate, and uh, and it's called Prolonged Grief Disorder. Prolonged Grief Disorder. And the people in the article were talking about how important it is for us to normalize the possibility of mental health. That's a good thing for us to be talking about it. Uh, it's a good thing for us to recognize that a prolonged season of depletion may not be a good steady state for us. We know it's not. It's not good for the mind, the brain, the whole thing. But they were starting to wonder at the end, it's like, where does, where does the line between just tragedy and sadness and diagnosis really fit? When does something become serious enough that it becomes a disease of sorts?

So these are questions I don't know, but I'm just framing all that to say the mental health issue is is upon us, right? This is a very serious issue that is impacting all of us. Um, and then into that context, we throw technology, this amazing, amazing creation of of man, yes, but allowed.

By God, perhaps inspired in some cases by God, and we all are trying to say, how do we use technology for the purposes of the kingdom? And that's a very exciting conversation. But let's also acknowledge that technology has had harmful effects, obviously unintended, on people's mental health.

Social media sort of becomes the big one, the obvious one to blame there. There's been plenty of research done on this, especially as it relates to adolescents and younger people, and the chronic comparison, the chronic "I'm not good enough," the chronic, which can affect all of us, and the doom scrolling and the way that these social media platforms are designed to keep us engaged even if in things that are very harmful to us. So that's a problem. So when we enter technology into the conversation about mental health, that becomes an issue.

Another article I found very interesting, and I'm going to read a bit of this, is that there was an article in a newsletter that I subscribed to that talked about how therapy is going viral. Perhaps you've heard of it. And they were talking about, oh, let me just find this article here. You know, part of the reason it's going viral is you have these chatbots and things like that. Is that there's just not enough therapists for everyone, or enough, you know, resources to pay for therapy for everyone who's struggling from mental health. And so they said we're beginning to grapple with the effects then of what they're calling influential influencer therapists. Now stop and think about that for a minute. And these are two implications they highlight, and I can put all these resources in the show notes, whatever notes we have for this session. But think of this: instead of offering individualized attention like in private practice, mental health influencers must appeal to the masses and work in short sprints rather than marathon talk sessions. Kind of sounds like what ministers and pastors have had to do, right? Platitudes might help users feel better, but they also make people part of an ongoing experiment where therapists are media personalities and therapy is content. That struck me: therapy is content.

I think we all know there has to be more. And I can say for myself, there's therapists or thought leaders that I follow in different social media platforms that I enjoy reading. But I don't know if you felt this, but sometimes I feel like I get to an exhaustion point. Like, I don't want anyone else telling me how to better think about myself or think about another person. Or like, it's just like constant barrage of "be better, do more," or "be okay that you're not okay." It's like it's just a constant barrage that is inherently at the core not relational.

So what does that all mean? And I have one last point I want to make before I try to tie all this together as it relates to the metaverse. A gentleman who has influenced me greatly, his name is Dr. Jim Wilder. He's written tons of great books about spiritual formation, about healing, about trauma, about, oh, I don't know, everything. Narcissism in the church. He's written a lot. And as a brilliant man, brilliant thinker, researcher, and about how people heal. And he has written a lot about trauma and the fact of trauma. Like, three or four people can encounter the exact same, literally the same experience, and some sort of it's a bit of a speed bump in their life, and they grab some wisdom and they have some perspective, but it really didn't impact them deeply. Other people are deeply impacted. They in fact get stuck in their trauma for a very long time.

And Jim has argued, and this has significant spiritual implications, that the difference between whether we get stuck and our brain literally gets lodged into this pattern of responding to that crisis as a means of trauma in our lives and people who don't and just encounter it as suffering has a lot to do with the extent to which we felt alone at the time of the crisis or of the injury, whatever it was. And that's a really interesting perspective. How alone did we feel? How much did we have access or awareness to someone being with us? Or especially in our context, God being with us?

And many of the spiritual practices of soul care and other things you're familiar with are about increasing our real-time awareness of God's presence with us, which we know has the capacity to help us with patience, enduring suffering, enduring hardship, healing along the way, and knowing fundamentally that we are not alone. That even in the worst of times, we can be known, we can be seen, heard. God can delight to be with us even when we're in great pain.

So what about the metaverse? What does this all have to do? Well, first of all, I think this brings about the idea that some new conversations can happen in the metaverse. It's safe to say we're going to encounter people who are struggling. If everyone's struggling outside of the metaverse, we can just fairly well assume that people inside the metaverse are also struggling. And we ourselves sometimes are struggling. And perhaps the metaverse gives us a new environment in which to encounter people in the midst of their suffering in some meaningful way where they're not alone.

So you're catching, I hope, the theme here. If we can be present there with an awareness of what suffering is and a capacity to move towards people in suffering, what does it mean for us to be extensions of God's presence, God's goodness, and invite people in? Which I love all the creative ways that churches and ministries are thinking of the metaverse as an environment for ministry. How can we be intentional there as people who can breathe life and belonging into others?

A second thing, so that might be obvious, but I just want to say it. I think there's gonna be a lot of hurting people that are ready for conversations and ready to be known. And let's go be there. Let's go have conversations. Let's be part of knowing and being known.

Another thing that I find is interesting about the metaverse is it introduces sort of an alternative reality, right? And I've only been in there once, guys, but I did watch Ready Player One, so I have a little bit of familiarity at best. But I'm getting better, and I'm gonna get one of those things soon because I like going into new frontiers. I think it's important for us to be in innovative spaces and have a seat at the table when possible to help shape what those environments should be known by.

But here's what I'm thinking. It's like it's a whole new reality, right? It's a new reality to drop into this game environment or drop into some sort of chat environment. And it's a new reality. And friends, we are used to functioning on at least two levels at once, right? There's the stuff that I can touch and see that's here in my little workspace. But at the same time, I'm aware of, and you are too, that there is another reality: the reality of the kingdom of God is with us always. And we as believers are constantly seeking to function in both those realities at the same time.

It occurs to me that it's not that different a challenge to figure out how to be present in this metaverse as still fully ourselves, able to interact with others in meaningful and appropriate and generative ways, and not lose touch with the fact that God is real over all. God is God. God supersedes, permeates, and undergirds everything that we think is real. And so when we move into this additional reality—I don't even know what to call it, the metaverse—that same God still supersedes, permeates, and undergirds everything we experience. And so learning to practice our awareness of God when we're in that environment helps us be the kinds of people who can encounter others there with something to offer.

So I think that's a pretty fun thought for us as we think of mental health and the metaverse. And then the last thing is it occurs to me that the metaverse could become a place of escape from our day-to-day lives. Sometimes it's a welcome escape. You just want to kind of pop in a game and go do something. That's totally fine, and you're doing lightsabers and tennis and whatever other great things there are to do there. But I would challenge us to approach that tendency in ourselves with just a measure of caution. When are there things going on out here with our people that we need to attend to? And when are there things that we can be intentional with our purposefulness, our engagement into this environment? Yes, to have some fun, but yes, with an eye to who are the people that need this message that we've been given?

So lots of new frontiers to go figure out, which I trust that as you seek the Lord and keep the Lord always before us in this pursuit into the metaverse, I'm excited to think about what it would be like if tons of Jesus's people were ready to receive those who are finding their way in there with the hope—with the hope that they probably have to encounter something oddly real in the midst of this very virtual realm.

We of all people have figured out how to and keep learning how to fix our eyes not on what is seen, even if what's seen is a digital interface, but keep your eyes fixed on what is unseen. That's where your firmest identity, your truest personhood is anchored. And from that stable place, you have a lot to offer the many wanderers who are increasingly going to be coming into the metaverse seeking something. What will they find? Hopefully one of you. Godspeed, friends. Take care.

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So we're back for the Metaverse Church Summit brought to you by Leadership Network. We've got session two coming up right here. Session one was great. We got to do an introspective look at the Web3 technologies, maybe dream about where the church is going. It's a lot of fun, a lot of potential out there. Today for session two, what...

We're gonna do is we're gonna focus on the idea of virtual reality and more deeply what the church can do with this virtual reality technology. We're actually talking with three different people with three different perspectives on what virtual reality can be.

So right off the bat, I want to introduce you to Bill Willenbrock, commonly known as Pastor Brock in the metaverse. Pastor Brock doesn't have a supporting organism. His nine to five job does not support him in what he's doing. As a matter of fact, the ministry that he's doing in the metaverse isn't even financially supported. It's something he does on his own. Pastor Brock runs an organic ministry. Organic is probably the best word to describe it, but essentially he told me the other day that he had shared Jesus over two thousand times in the metaverse over the past two years. As in, he'd walk up to some random person in virtual reality and start talking about Jesus. So this is a very, like I said, organic approach. As a matter of fact, his nine to five job is a hospital chaplain. And so what he does at night with the Twitch streaming, with creating YouTube as well, but also creating this presence in this avatar in virtual reality that now walks around sharing Jesus, is a very unique approach. But it's working in the metaverse. And so I cannot think of a better person than Pastor Brock to come in and talk about what virtual reality evangelism looks like. Great stuff.

Jason Polling, J-Po, is coming up in the second part where he is going to be talking about the theology of the metaverse. Now Jason's lead pastor of Cornerstone Yuba City, a small church in Northern California about two hundred people, but he also leads Cornerstone VR, which is a very popular and a very strong church in virtual reality. So if there's anybody with experience talking about the theology as well as maybe the relationships of physical and virtual reality churches working together, how to lead both of those, Jason's got great insight for you.

At the second one, third up, we've got another perspective. Stuart McPherson, yet another metaverse pastor coming into the conversation. But Stewart is much more aimed at, well, his background and his support is a megachurch. It's a large church, Lakeland Church in Wisconsin. But what we're finding is that Stewart's background is really small groups. And as a small groups pastor that's transitioned to digital ministry that's now transitioning to metaverse pastor, man, how do we pastor? How do we shepherd? How do we care for? What are relationships like in the metaverse? And how can that help us accomplish this disciple-making relationships that we want to see in virtual reality? And so there's some really rich, deep conversations we've got coming up here in this session too.

But enough talking. Let me get started. Let me hand it over to Pastor Brock to talk about evangelism in the metaverse. Here you go.

How's it going? My name is Bill Willenbrock, or as I'm known in the metaverse, Pastor Brock. And it's my honor today to talk to you about VR evangelism. I've been doing ministry in a program called VRChat for the last three years, and I'm entitling this talk today "Why I Need You in the Metaverse Yesterday."

The opportunity before us is just staggering. VRChat, the metaverse in general, VRChat specifically, it's really like the Netflix of evangelism. If you have thirty minutes, if you have an hour, you can be doing evangelism from wherever you are. And that's just so exciting. Evangelism in other areas can require gas mileage and effort and packing up and going somewhere, but you can do this all from your computer at any moment that you have some extra time to share the love of God. And that's just remarkable, really revolutionary.

And it's so much easier to share the gospel in VRChat versus other places. And here's why: in VRChat, you have this avatar. I'm sure a lot of the speakers today are going to be talking about the anonymity, that it's not your actual face and name. It's this digital representation of you and just some sort of ambiguous username. And that makes the social risk of sharing the gospel much lower. People are anxious about, you know, "What if they're ill-prepared? What if they look like a fool? What if they look preachy? What if they look..." There's all these anxieties that come with sharing the gospel. And VRChat metaverse evangelism reduces those or completely eliminates those. And that's why I think this would really be the ideal space if you've got an evangelism team, if you're trying to learn how to share the gospel. This would be like the optimal training ground. You can talk to real human beings, hear their concerns, hear their objections, hear what causes them pause for believing in Christ. And so I really think that's a really exciting opportunity, even for more physical churches as well.

The other reason why I need you in the metaverse yesterday is that these people need you. The demographics of VRChat are really the inverse of the demographics of the church in general in the United States. Now, your ministry may be an exception, but the church in the United States generally is older, right? Getting older every single year. Whereas VR is primarily younger. Let's say anecdotally, seventeen, eighteen year olds up till, let's say, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six. That's the range. I'm reminded where it says in the Psalms, "Do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come." And so if we're trying to share the gospel with the next generation, here they are, right? They're in VRChat. And so that's really exciting, that we have this space where it's really the inverse of who's already in our pew.

VRChat is primarily male, whereas the church in the United States is primarily female. Now, of course, there's young men and women in VRChat, but especially young men, I think we ask ourselves, "Where are they?" And they're here in VRChat. They're here, and they're excited to hear about Christ. We'll get more into that in a little bit.

So I would also say that VRChat is a place where people are generally kind and receptive to conversation. It's really the opposite of a place like Facebook, where you're kind of just a picture and a name, and people get kind of rather nasty. But in virtual reality, you have this sense of sharing space, and people are more kind when they share space. And so I think that's a really exciting place, or makes that an exciting place to share the gospel, is this sense of sharing space. And people can hear the kindness and love and concern in your voice, where some of that would be lost in mere text.

Also, I would say the people on VRChat are often times—this isn't always the case—but are oftentimes people that are neglected by society, ostracized by society. These are people, many who have agoraphobia, right? They don't like to go into places of community. They're maybe even shut in, maybe not for a medical reason, but just for social anxiety, agoraphobia. And many of these people, they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. They desperately want social interaction and community, but they also find that very anxiety-provoking. And so VRChat, again, with that anonymity that we were talking about, it provides a place for these people who desperately need love and community to find love and community. And that's, you know, these people that are maybe rejected, or because of agoraphobia, maybe they don't have a lot of interaction with people, and so they're maybe lower on the EQ spectrum and maybe they have personality traits that are maybe a little off-putting. But these are the people that Christ loved. These are the people that Christ embraced.

I'm reminded of these words from the Apostle Paul: "For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world." And so we have the opportunity to bring the love of God to people that may have no other opportunity to hear of Christ.

And I'd say the other reason why you need to be in VRChat yesterday is because all of these people I just mentioned are dying to have these conversations. Because we're told in society that do not talk, never ever, ever talk about politics or religion. Consequently, religion becomes this very interesting topic, but it's deeply personal, and everybody has their own ideas, and you never get to hear about interesting ideas because, well, it's taboo. And so people are dying to have a conversation around religion.

You know, very often I'll be talking to two or three people, and two or three people becomes five or six, and five or six becomes, you know, fourteen, fifteen, twenty. There will be an entire room just listening to the conversation about Christ, about why we should believe in Christ. Primarily, I come and try to bring reasons, right? That's the language of First Peter, where he says, "Always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that lies within you, yet do so with gentleness and respect." By the way, we need to work on that as the church. We need to work on that gentleness and respect. Peace is really big in VRChat if you're going to be doing evangelism—is to be gentle and to be respectful.

But to go back to the beginning of that passage: always have a reason. Be prepared to give a reason. The word "reason" there in the original Greek is "apologia." "Apo" means "from," and "logia" is where we get the English word "logic" from. And so to have a reason from logic on why I should believe any of this, that's really powerful. Because the church has not been prepared, I think. A lot of people, the best answer they got on why they should believe in Jesus is, you know, "Well, you should believe, right?" You know, maybe their grandmother just, "You should believe." Well, no, give me a reason. Why? Why is the resurrection true? Why should I believe there's a God?

Now, I'm not the big apologetics guy. I'm not like, "Yes, let's talk about the cosmological argument." But I do think people in VRChat are asking for a reason. If we can give them a good reason for why they should believe, I think it's very powerful. And people, people become, they start to lean in on the ear. "Oh, there's actually a real reason to believe that there's love and purpose and joy and cosmic resolution to all the brokenness." That's exciting. That speaks to the heart of all men, but especially the people in VRChat.

Also, so let's talk about some things that will prepare you for metaverse evangelism. First thing I would say is our voice, right? So in an avatar, you obviously can't see your face—it's animated, per se—but the most personal aspect of you that's conveyed in VR is your voice. And I think our voice needs to be conveying the love and care that we're here for. The reason we're here is to talk to people. We're not here to win a debate or beat them in an argument. We're here to share the most exciting thing in our life. And so I think loving our voice and trying to always remind ourselves of why we're here—to not win a debate, but to share the love of God—I think that's really important.

Also, we need to listen, right? There's this, I used to work at a Jimmy John's, it's a sub sandwich place if you're unfamiliar, and they have all these signs on the walls and stuff, and one of the signs that

Says people who want to talk to you about their religious views never want to listen to you about yours, and I thought that's pretty, that's pretty true, you know. We always want to talk to people but we never want to listen. And I think there's a reality that if we genuinely care and listen to other people, people will genuinely care and listen to us. And so, um, let's be good listeners in this virtual reality space and let's be affirming of the truth in what other people say. Um, I think that has proven to be very valuable in my VR ministry as I talked about, talk to people about my faith. The, I think the other thing that just the conversations I've had, one of the things we should be prepared to talk about, people, you know, right off the bat, you know, okay, so you believe in God. Well, well, you know, why do good things happen or why do bad things happen to good people, right? That question of theodicy, that's going to be prime in VR chat. The conversations I've had, um, you know, I think that the main reason why people are so overwhelmingly moving to that none category, no religious affiliation, is because they've experienced tragedy and pain. They cried out to God and, well, God didn't help me out. I'm still experiencing pain and tragedy. And so I guess there is no God. I think it's not that people are listening to Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett and all of these people. They're heartbroken by pain and suffering. And so, um, we need to bring questions of theodicy, um, good answers to that question of theodicy in this metaverse space. Also, um, be prepared to have a good answer to questions surrounding LGBTQ stuff. Like that's usually like the second question I get. Oh, you're a pastor in VRChat. What do you think about homosexuality? And so, um, you know, obviously different church groups have different perspectives on that, but just be prepared to share what you believe in that respect because a lot of people are going to be interested in what you have to say about that.

I think another thing that's really powerful in VRChat, um, to kind of contradict what I said earlier about people being kind, when you do find a jerk, um, I think I've found it helpful to love. I think it's a really powerful thing. People know when they're being jerks, and if you're loving and kind to someone who's a jerk, that really befuddles them. And I think it really just speaks to the love of God, um, that we would love even those who hate us, as the ancient Christian hymn says.

Um, also, uh, being willing to fail. See, again, that's the thing that's so exciting about VRChat. If you fail and you say the wrong thing or you do the wrong thing or somebody's a jerk to you or if the whole opportunity to share your faith goes down the toilet, then again, with click, click, you can go to a brand new room with, you know, two dozen people, and now you have a new chance to try again, to hone your ability to share the gospel. And so that's why I need you in the metaverse yesterday. Um, it's just a great opportunity. I'd love to, if you have any questions further, shoot out, you know, a message to me on Discord. I'm sure they'll have ways to connect, um, somewhere in the body of the convention or the conference. Also, um, you know, just, uh, would love to be of support to you as you go about your VR ministry beginning in there. And I will be seeing you in the metaverse. God bless and keep. Bye-bye.

One hundred fifty years ago, Henry Stanley ventured into Tanzania, Africa, to find the lost missionary and explorer known as David Livingstone. When Stanley finally met him, he uttered these famous words in the presence of the impressive missionary: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume." Africa was so unknown to the West at the time of Livingstone that many felt it was as mysterious as outer space. Now there's a new realm that is proving to be just as mysterious as that. It's called the metaverse. And there are many, many millions of lost souls who have formed tribes and communities there. In some ways, those embarking on a mission to the metaverse are like Stanley seeking Livingstone. To paraphrase Henry Blackaby, we just need to understand how to find where Christ is working and join him. I've personally been led to plant churches in the metaverse, and I have found Christ at work there. But there are a number of pitfalls and dangers in this new missional work. So we need to make sure we ask the question: "Christ, I presume." In other words, we must determine if it is indeed Christ at work in our mission or if we have merely been led by a superficial desire to be innovative and adventurous. This is where sound biblical theology can protect us from presumptive error. We need good theology from the Word of God to safely guide the church in the metaverse. And I want to help you think through that theology.

Let's first look at cultural missiology and cultural adaptation. This principle of adapting to culture to preach the gospel is seen at the very beginning of the church. Christ gives these marching orders to his disciples in Acts chapter one: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth." But bringing the gospel to the Gentiles introduced significant cultural differences, which opened the door to controversial cultural adaptations for the sake of the gospel. And the Apostle Paul, as the chief apostle to the Gentiles, was at the epicenter of this controversy. In order to reach the lost Gentiles, Paul put off most of the Jewish practices that were still being retained by many of the early Messianic Jewish Christians. His cultural missiology was steeped in incarnational theology. Like Christ, he wanted to, as he says in First Corinthians nine, "become all things to all people that by all means I might save some." Paul's methodology is a good guide for us today in the metaverse. But we've got to first look at the use of technology because the metaverse is weird, or at least it, and the digital culture that spawned it, is so new and so unique that it feels less like reaching Africa and China in the 1800s and more like reaching an alien culture on a distant planet.

But the Bible does give us guidance for the proper use of new technology. Technology is inherently neutral. God's people often used advances in technology for the glory of God and in the advance of his kingdom: from implements of war to temple architecture, musical instrumentation to city development, to roads and ships and transport, to new writing technologies. All these God's people have used to spread the good news and to advance the kingdom. But all these technologies were also used for evil by evil men. In the same way, the metaverse will be used for evil, even as it is also being used by God to bring about great good for his glory. And this is the theological key: anything that is not explicitly denounced as sin in Scripture can be used with thanksgiving for the glory of God. Paul says in First Corinthians ten: "Whether you eat or drink or enter the metaverse, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."

This brings us to a pressing question about ecclesiology, though. When we use the technology of the metaverse to adapt to the culture in order to reach it for Christ, how do we do it in a way that is consistent with the Bible's instructions for the proper formation of new Christian communities? In other words, how do we do church in the metaverse, and should we? We need to look at the marks of a church to understand this. The church has wrestled over the centuries with Scripture, trying to determine which characteristics and elements were necessary for a community of Christians to possess in order to be called a genuine expression of the body of Christ. The greatest agreement has centered over the centuries on the following items: the teaching of the Word of God, corporate worship, corporate prayer, the practice of the sacraments or ordinances, at least with baptism and communion, and then church discipline. And over the past two or three years of doing ministry in the metaverse and planting churches there, I've seen these elements just naturally begin to be practiced in these new Christian communities formed by the gospel preaching, receiving it with faith. We've seen these. But we must turn our attention now to the issue of genuine fellowship that ties all these together. Can fellowship occur in the metaverse, especially when anonymity is the custom initially practiced by the natives who dwell there?

Most natives in the metaverse first visit the church community anonymously in an avatar form. This is a reality that existed, of course, well before the creation of the metaverse. The desire to hide is fundamental to the fallen human heart since the garden. We naturally practice this hiding, whether it's digital or also physical. There's a strength to anonymity, though, because people feel more willing to share their deepest thoughts and struggles, and this provides a robust context for sharing the gospel. However, if anonymity remains, true fellowship as the Bible intended it is impossible, and therefore church would be impossible. But we've observed, though, that the anonymity typically dissipates over time as the person becomes a Christian and grows under the ministry of discipleship. This decreasing anonymity and increasing vulnerability have resulted in a robust practice of discipleship, membership, serving, and the meeting of one another's needs through generosity. Meeting together is essential. Scripture requires it, as it says in Hebrews chapter ten.

Now, because of the immersive and relational, highly relational nature of virtual reality, the ability to love and serve one another regardless of location, now because of our digitized and globalized age and the renouncing of anonymity among the maturing disciples in the metaverse, it appears that the intent of God's command to meet together in Hebrews ten can be genuinely accomplished in the metaverse church. Even though this is true, I'm still an advocate for what I call a hybrid model of the church. This means that even though I believe we can faithfully plant churches in the metaverse and have, I still think the fullest expression of the church will always be in the physical realm. And so my goal has been to help maturing disciples eventually enter and join a local church. But of course, discipleship and maturation takes time. And so the presence of the genuine body of Christ in their native culture until that time happens where they leave to the local church, it's necessary to have a church in the metaverse.

Now let me talk about reality. Genuine fellowship happens in the metaverse. But a second concern has to do with our sacraments and our ordinances because without these, a Christian gathering cannot be called a true church. But before we discuss those, it's important that we briefly look at what I call a theology of reality. Now some might suggest that church in virtual reality is impossible because the entire enterprise is predicated upon everything being fake. But this is not correct. Virtual reality is a type of reality. King David writes in Psalm twenty-four: "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." The aspects that make up the realm of virtual reality are all contained within the earth and the cosmos as we know it under God. For example, when you and your friends see a cat in virtual reality together, you're both having a genuine shared experience of something quantifiably real. You're both seeing the same thing, and that something actually exists. It may not be a carbon-based cat that we're used to, but it is a something. It's a digital cat formed by digital bits instead of atoms. But those bits are made of electrical charges alternating within silicon computer chips. It's

Not unreal. It's just another way to interact with the overall reality that God has created. Now, all this is admittedly a lot to wrap our minds around. Virtual reality is real, even as it copies the real things of our physical reality. Now, this might sound novel and therefore somehow wrong, but the idea of alternate realities that are absolutely real, still, even though they are copies of other realities, is not new. In fact, it's very biblical. This is something for which we have not flexed much mental muscle in our biblical theology.

The book of Hebrews gives us a peek into God's view of reality in chapters eight through ten. I suggest you look there. The author reveals that the old covenant priests were serving a copy or a shadow of the true or real things that actually exist in the heavenly realms. Now, we know that God exists in a reality outside of our time and space, and this means that the time and space and reality that we live in and experience are all constructed things made by Him. They are very real, but that does not make them the ultimate reality. And therefore, we must admit that even our physical experienced reality is derivative, just like the metaverse's derivative. It's a copy of something else—the heavenly reality.

Now, this brings us to a discussion then on what to do with the sacraments of baptism and communion in the metaverse. As we learned from this theology of reality, it is not correct to say digital sacraments are fake or unreal. That's not the appropriate concern. The legitimate concern we should be discussing is whether digital communion and digital baptism are sufficient to express all that the Bible intends to express through these ordinances.

Let's look at the literal versus symbolical communion. Now, if we have a theology, and maybe you do, that believes physical forms are always necessary to understand and experience the spiritual reality of baptism and communion, then digital forms of these sacraments for you will not be acceptable. Clearly, this applies to those who believe the bread and the cup in some way literally become the body and the blood of Christ, or at least co-mingle with them. However, most believers in evangelical and Baptist and Anabaptist circles have a theology that's different—a theology that sees the bread and cup as simply symbols representing the death of Christ. And the symbols of bread and wine do not become Christ in any way, shape, or form. To them, it's only bread and wine that are consumed by our physical bodies. But is that physical consumption the point of the command to practice communion?

I would argue that even though the physical taking of communion is a superior experience because of the heightened involvement of all the senses, it does not necessarily follow that the digital taking of communion is an invalid experience. Now, we do recommend participants utilize physical bread and juice at their homes as they visually handle the digital elements in the presence of their fellow believers. But again, we still do not think that the larger spiritual point that the symbols convey is diminished even when communion is celebrated without physical consumption.

Let's look at the literal versus symbolical understanding of baptism. Like with communion, baptism raises similar concerns when practiced in virtual reality. Is it disobedient to Christ's Matthew 28 command if one is baptized in virtual reality, or is it still appropriately obedient to the spirit of the law Christ intended in the commanding of this ordinance?

We need to look at the transition of baptism through the covenants. Baptism needs to be seen through the lens of this transition from old covenant to new covenant theology and practice. In the old covenant, the Jews practiced ritual washings frequently in order to purify themselves. The writer of Hebrews explains these purification rites in light of the covenant transition in chapter nine and how those things have passed away in the new covenant. Now, the Old Testament is full of instructions concerning these washings, as the writer of Hebrews calls baptisms.

Now, John the Baptist, being the final prophet of the old covenant dispensation, used baptism as a way to call people back to a right covenantal relationship with God through this symbolic cleansing. Now, this baptism of John was not a new covenant baptism as practiced in the church, and this is why in Acts one, immediately before his ascension and the arrival of the Spirit of Pentecost, Jesus reminds his disciples of the practice and teaching of John. He says, "John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." Something new is happening. The kingdom of God was coming with new power and new forms.

The apostle Paul in the New Testament appears to give the physical ceremony of baptism very little importance compared with the essential spiritual realities brought about by the gospel. In the Corinthian church, for example, Paul seems to diminish the importance of the physical rite of baptism largely because of how much trouble it was causing the Corinthian church. He tells the Corinthians quite plainly, "Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel."

Now, these sentiments of Paul are not isolated here in First Corinthians. In fact, whenever Paul tends to talk about baptism, he often speaks of it in much more symbolical and spiritual terms, like in Romans chapter six and First Corinthians ten.

The apostle Peter makes a similar symbolical point when he writes in First Peter three. He says that ceremonial baptism in the new covenant era is just a symbol that points to the same more important reality that also Noah understood in the flood when he was saved in the ark, which is our submission to God's authority by faith, by trust in Him. And to avoid any confusion that might conflate the physical form of baptism with its more important spiritual point, Peter diminishes the value of literal H2O molecules on the believer's skin with this statement: "Baptism is not a removal of dirt from the body, but an appeal to God for a good conscience."

Now, what does all this mean? It does not mean that the rite of baptism is not important. It certainly is. We should practice baptism in obedience to Christ's command in Matthew 28. Paul and Peter's comments simply mean that the physical ceremonial form of baptism is not as important as we tend to think it is. And so we should not get so fixated on the form of it that we lose the spiritual point and impact of baptism.

Now, virtual reality allows for an immersive and public expression of communion and baptism, and the individuals engaging in virtual ordinances are real people who are making real commitments to Jesus Christ that impact their real lives in how they love one another, both in their local culture and more, the more global digital culture that they inhabit in the metaverse. Like with communion, we do still think that the full sensory experience of baptism is superior to the virtual form, and therefore we encourage participants to get baptized again in the physical realm as they begin to transition into a local church.

And I want to close with just talking about the idea of grace, graciousness in our methods. When we think about bringing the mission, the message, it's clear to me that Christ is at work in the metaverse. We don't need to presume His presence and activity there. We've seen scores of individuals at Cornerstone who, once having no hope and without God in the world, were brought near to the Father through the blood of Christ, through the preaching of the gospel, and they're receiving it by faith. It's a beautiful thing.

Yet the idea of metaverse church is still a great challenge to many of us. The best remedy for our discomfort is to offer grace, even when we disagree with our fellow brothers and sisters over how to reach the emerging digital generations. That grace comes from humility, and that humility comes from an awareness of our own inability to follow God perfectly or do church perfectly. For example, we must remember that most of us don't literally practice foot washings or enforce head coverings in our churches, even though these commands are just as clear, arguably, as the commands to practice communion and baptism. Now, I cite these to remind us all that we are all inconsistent in our keeping of God's instructions. None of us keep God's laws and commands perfectly. And again, this is why Christ died. Our acknowledgment of our failure to get everything right allows us to run to the gospel of Christ.

It is this gospel-centered fixation that prevents us from falling back into the rigidity of ceremonial forms and external markers of religious practice that turn us into a modern version of the Judaizing legalists Paul denounces roundly in the book of Galatians. We must always emphasize the gospel of grace. Like Stanley and Livingston in Africa, the metaverse may feel like a frightening brave new world, and in some ways it is. But we must remember that it is still God's world, and He has commissioned us to go there so it can be a saved new world.

Well, hey, everybody, and thank you for joining me for this session. Man, I'm so excited to be here with you at the Metaverse Church Summit. And, to be honest with you, God has been doing some amazing things within the past couple of years within the metaverse, and I truly believe that God's just getting started, that we're barely scratching the surface and seeing what He's wanting to do there. So I'm just excited to be with you during this session and to lead out this session. My name is Stream McPherson. I am the VR campus pastor for Lakeland Community Church, and we're based in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. And we have been doing church in virtual reality for over a year now, and specifically we've been in AltSpace VR. And it has been an amazing ride. I can't wait to tell you more about that. But I want to start off this session by asking a simple question: What is a pastor? What is a shepherd? What is a pastor? What is a shepherd? And what do they do?

I found a couple of things I want to read to you when it comes to the definition and examples of a pastor and a shepherd. And this is the first one: A pastor—the goal of a pastor is to reveal the glory of God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to a people who need God's grace in their life. That's a pastor. A shepherd—a shepherd, especially within the biblical context, a shepherd had different responsibilities. They kept look for the flock, watching out for predators. They cared for the wounded and sick sheep, caring for them and nursing them back to health. And then they guided sheep, spending enormous amounts of time with them in order to build a relationship and this comfortability to the point that the sheep trusted their shepherd.

Now, I shared these definitions and these examples with you, and to be honest with you, I don't expect any of them to be new to you or to catch you by surprise. In fact, my assumption is that many of you have been pastoring and shepherding well within your context for a while now. But here at the Metaverse Church Summit, some of you are looking to plant a church, start a church within the metaverse, or possibly you've already been doing that. But the question that you're asking yourself now is, "Man, how do we pastor and shepherd well within the metaverse?"

So today, I want to share with you three things that I believe that every single one of us need to know in order to do that, in order to pastor and shepherd well within the metaverse. And the first one is this: We need to ask God to give us vision to see what He's already doing and then the desire to join Him on that mission. Isaiah 43:19 says, "For I'm about to do something new. See, I have already begun. Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland."

A little backstory on myself. Back in early 2020, this is pre-COVID, an article came out by a guy by the name of DJ Soda, who is also a part of this summit teaching, and the article was about his experience of leading a church in virtual reality. And so a few of us, we gathered together in an office space there at the church and we began to have a discussion whether or not we believe that church and virtual reality could ever be a legitimate way of doing church. And at the end of that time, all of us talking, we all really agreed that VR and church will never go hand in hand with each other. It would never be a legitimate way of doing church. And if I were to be completely honest with you, at that time in early 2020, I wasn't even convinced that doing church online could be a legitimate way for somebody to experience and be a part of the church body.

A couple of weeks later, we got ushered into this pandemic where two weeks worth of lockdown teaches you really quickly that you have to pivot and find a new way in order to pastor and shepherd people well. And as the young adult pastor at the time, I quickly found myself creating a YouTube channel for our young adult ministry in order to upload the teaching series that we were doing in order to continue to stay connected and keep the community together during that season. All of a sudden, I found a legitimate way of doing church online and the need for doing church online. But even still at that point, I was not convinced that church and VR could ever play within the same realm with each other.

The truth is that God was up to doing something new, and the rumblings of it began for me with that article from DJ Soto. He was paving new ways to go into the world in order to reach the lost and let them know that there is a God who is for them and not against them. I just hadn't hopped onto it yet.

A year later, however, Lakeland invited me to spearhead the launch of our virtual reality campus. And to be honest with you, it was something that I was still very hesitant to. But quickly after hopping into this and launching our campus, God began to peel back the scales from my eyes in order to see the opportunity that was before us. The opportunity to plunder hell and populate heaven all around the world just through a simple headset and doing church within the metaverse.

You see, if we only see the metaverse as just a new territory for us to plant our church's flag into the ground and say, "Here we are," we will never see the opportunities that are before us the way that God sees them. So we have to ask God to give us the vision to see what it is that he's already doing and the desire to join him on that mission.

The second thing that we all need in order to pastor and shepherd people well is we have to love people. Jesus quickly says that the greatest commandment is to love God with everything that we are, but he says that the second great commandment is similar to it but is to love people. And that's what we've all been called to as pastors. We've been called to love God and to love others and help shepherd them into the similar mindset.

And it's easy to assume that pastoring and shepherding in the metaverse is different than doing it in real life. And it's easy to make that assumption because of the misconceptions that we've built up in our own heads. We sit there and we look at the metaverse and we look at virtual reality and we say, "Man, it just seems like it's a whole bunch of video games. It seems like it's too cartoony. It's fake. It's not real. There's probably just a whole bunch of kids in there. So I don't know that it's for me. I don't know that we can actually pastor within that realm." And it's easy to assume these things just because of the way that it looks.

But to be honest with you, well yes, there are games within the metaverse, the metaverse is not just for games and it's not just for gamers. The last gaming console that I've ever owned was an Xbox 360. I am not a gamer whatsoever. And I'm pretty sure that the only reason why I even had that Xbox 360 was so I could play Blu-ray discs and watch movies. Now keep that in mind. That's how long ago it was that I've owned a video game console. That Blu-ray disc was still the popular way of watching movies. Now I just turn on my TV and I can stream anything that I want.

The truth is, though, despite how it all looks, when you get into the headset or you're watching from your 2D experience, on the other side of those avatars are real people who are feeling the effects of this broken world that sin has ushered in before us. The same effects that you and I feel today.

The crazy part is, within the metaverse, people can be as anonymous as they want to be, not giving us any information, not really making any connections. But the same is true, honestly, for anybody who is streaming your services on Facebook, YouTube, or the church online platform. But you know where else people can be anonymous? In real life. Think about it. Without the intentionality and the authenticity in order to get to know the people who are walking in through your doors or watching your service online or in VR, people can stay as anonymous as they want to.

So it takes an intentionality in order to get to know people, no matter the context, in order to be able to celebrate wins with them where life is going great, in order to care and pray for them when they're in need. For us, it's through intentionality and deep care like that that within virtual reality we've been able to gather stories from people and we've been able to learn real names and we've been able to celebrate wins.

We've got a couple within our campus that they joined us right from the very beginning. They hadn't been to church. They didn't even know that they could go to church, that they would feel welcomed there. But they started attending our campus in virtual reality, and we ended up learning their real names. And we ended up finding that they were expecting their first kid in a few months. Into being in virtual reality and doing church in there, we were able to celebrate with this couple the birth of their son, and we were able to rally around them and say, "Man, welcome to your new season of life. Anything that you need, man, we're here for you. We're in your corner."

Another story that we have is we had a lady who joined our campus just a couple weeks after Christmas, this past Christmas. And she told me right from the get-go. She came in towards the very end of our service and she says, "Is this a church?" And I said, "Yeah, we are." And she says, "Man, I haven't been to a church since the pandemic got started, but this is what I needed tonight." I asked, "Just like, man, you sound like there's some pain. There's some stuff going on. What's going on?" And she said, "My nephew who's living with me stole my car last night and wrecked it. Totaled the car and damaged other people's property in the process. And our insurance and the police department told us that we are going to be responsible for paying back all the damages based off of the decision that my nephew made." She said, "So I'm just at a rope's end right now, and I was just needing some hope. I just needed something. So I decided to throw on this headset and I just so happened find your church, and it's what I needed."

And so me and my team were able to rally around her and pray for her and just were able to invite her to come back to church the next week. And we told her, "It's like if we see you, we'll be the very first one to welcome you in." So just opportunity upon opportunity in order to pastor and shepherd and care for people because we're able to love people well in that environment.

The third thing that we need to do in order to pastor and shepherd well is we have to build community. We were never meant to do this life alone. Within the first two chapters of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, we learned that we were never meant to do life alone. And for us, our next step, our clear next step for any person who joins our campus, isn't just to join us next week for our service, but it's actually to join our chat community, which is within Discord. And we tell them, "Look, we're a blip on the radar for one or two hours on a Sunday, but our doors are always open. If you're in need of prayer, you want to learn more about Jesus, you want to find community and help, find community with people who are willing to help you walk along in your spiritual journey, join our Discord server because we have people who are for you and they want to love on you well."

And so you just got to build community in order to do that. So again, those three things: asking God to give you the vision to see what he's already up to and joining him on that mission, loving people well, and building community.

Shortly after we launched our VR campus, one of our in-real-life members asked me, "Hey, sir, what do you love most about doing church in VR?" And I told them, "You know what's exciting is I became an international missionary spreading seeds of hope all around the world without ever having to leave my basement in order to do it."

TechJury.com wrote in an article published this past March said that there are currently 171 million active users in virtual reality. 171 million. But there are only 14 known active churches within the metaverse. And so that brought me to Matthew 9, verses 36 to 38, where it says, "When he, Jesus, saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. He said to his disciples, 'The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest and ask him to send more workers into his fields.'"

Friends, the harvest is plentiful, especially within the metaverse, but the workers are few. So I'm excited for you to pastor and shepherd well within the metaverse. I'm excited for you to even begin the adventure of exploring what your role will be in the metaverse, where your church's role will be in the metaverse. And please know that as you begin this adventure and you begin exploring, I'm here to help you in whatever way that I can because I think that there's just so much opportunity in this new thing that God is doing, and there's just such a great opportunity for us to pastor and shepherd people well all around the world in order to plunder hell and populate heaven. So have fun, and I'm always here for you. Enjoy the rest of the summit. God bless.

Hi, Dave Ferguson here with Exponential, and I want to tell you something brand new from Exponential that you don't want to miss. If you've been to the Exponential Conference, you've heard me say we're not just a conference, we are a community with a cause. And the specific cause that we have is what we call the 16 mission. We want to see 16 percent of all churches become reproducing and multiplying churches. Why? Because that's what sociologists call the tipping point for change that can bring change to our cities, to our regions, and to the world. That's how we get to movement.

And to help mobilize you for this cause, we're introducing something brand new. We call it the Multipliers Community. During the last two years, over 25,000 of you have accessed our content online on a platform that we call the Hub. Well, now we're taking the Hub to the next level and launching the Multipliers Community. There are three tiers for you to be a part of in the Multipliers Community.

Now, tier number one is just Multipliers. That's free. Yep, totally free. You'll continue to get the same great content you love from our Hub, and actually even more in coming days. Within the second tier is Multipliers Plus. Multipliers Plus will give you access to all of our free content plus special workshops and personal access to thought leaders via live Q&A. I'm telling you, that is going to be awesome. Well, then thirdly is Multipliers Pro. Multipliers Pro will get you all the above plus the ability to start your own group, and you're gonna love that.

Multipliers, Multipliers Plus, and Multipliers Pro all designed to help you become a hero-making leader and your church a multiplying church. The Multipliers Community is an opportunity for you to journey and connect with thousands of other leaders who are pursuing church multiplication 365 days a year. The content from both Exponential and Leadership Network will include topics like micro church, meta church, the next generation leadership, church planting, hero-making, and more. So learn more at multiplication.org/community and let's be the community. The Multipliers Community.

So we're back with the Metaverse Church Summit brought to you by Leadership Network. Session one, we did that deep dive on Web 3 technologies and started to explore what could be with the church. Session two was that introspective look on what the church is currently doing in virtual reality. In session three here, we're going to explore some of the innovations as well as some of the innovators that are working here with these Web 3, with this metaverse technology.

So right off the bat, we've got Chesley Lundy coming in. Chesley Lundy is co-founder of the Digital Church Network, and we're going to be talking about this idea of a decentralized church. Now, one of the most powerful shifts that are going to happen as a result of Web 3 technology actually doesn't have anything to do with the technology itself. I believe it's going to be the cultural shift that we're going to see pushing towards the idea of decentralization. You see, many of the Web 3 technologies, specifically I'm talking blockchain and crypto, at minimum they exist merely because we, the culture, do not trust large organizations. And I think you're going to see more and more of this come out as a result of Web 3, where we're going to see this push not towards organizations but more towards individuals. And so how can we, the church, respond to that? If we're living and if we're operating in a world where culture does not trust, where it's losing trust of large organizations, then the idea of decentralizing church may come down to more empowering more of the people, operating less in a hierarchy and more like a network. Maybe that starts to make sense. But hey, you know what? I'm going to let Chesley talk about that in his session coming up here in a second.

Next up is going to be DJ Soto, as bishop to the metaverse. DJ has launched multiple churches in virtual reality. He's literally been doing VR churches—churches literally called VR Church—he's been doing it five, six, seven years at this point. Like the idea of virtual reality church is old hat to him. What's the bleeding edge for the guy that's already bleeding edge? Churches and video games. And so that's what we're doing. We're going to be talking about the idea, and DJ is already planting churches in MMO video games—massive multiplayer online video games—games that are less about beating the big bad in video games and that are more about living and being in community in these video game spaces.

Now, video games aren't truly metaverse yet. I believe as more funding comes in, you're going to see a stronger presence of video games and more VR technology and more metaverse technology really engaging in the video game space. But right now, DJ Soto and others are planting churches in video games like Final Fantasy, Black Desert Online, Rust, and many, many other MMO video games.

So right, we're going to have that conversation. We're bringing in DJ as a bishop to the metaverse, literally, as well as two of his other MMO pastors, Aletha Singleton and Enrico Pellini, in a conversation that's going to be centered around innovating churches in video games. Okay, now maybe that innovation sounds crazy. Next up is going to be a lesser crazy but still out there. We're talking to someone that's been doing work in augmented reality. Honestly, I haven't met a lot of people that have really been taking advantage of this technology, and Elle Michelle Salvant's doing a great job with this technology where she's created this idea of immersive journaling. Now I can detail it for you, but she's going to do a great job talking about that in her session. And then finally, we're bringing in Noel Thomas into the story, who has been, well, basically he put the Bible on blockchain. Why? How? What was the motivation behind that? He's going to tell you that story. You want to stick around for that.

By the way, we couldn't end this idea of the metaverse church summit without saying the words "dark web" at least once. So you want to stick around for that session to start to explore why the Bible on dark web is actually a good idea.

So hey, we've got a lot to cover in this session. We're going to pack it in with this innovation. But right off the top, let's hand it off to Chesley Lundy to talk more about this idea of a decentralized church.

The message of Jesus created a movement that disrupted all of Roman society. And 1,700 years ago, when Christianity was legalized, the church went to work creating a society that centered around Christ. You see, they began to plan their entire cities around the centrality of the church as a way to symbolize that all of life was centered around Jesus. They centered the community's calendar around Jesus's story, and the people's week centered around the day of Jesus's resurrection. People would take a break from their labor in their agrarian societies to come to a central space to hear the words of Scripture, to connect with each other, and to worship Jesus. His fame spread among the world, and a church culture emerged. But along with this beauty came brokenness. People, seeing an opportunity to use the centralized structure to gain and wield influence and power and wealth, jumped on the limitations of this structure to oppress and abuse people bound by illiteracy and the laws of their government. Common people were held captive by a movement that turned institutional.

How did this happen? Slowly. When it began, it was about the centrality of Jesus. But with every passing moment, the pomp and circumstance of the rituals and the readings of the homilies and the scriptures took on added weight and significance. They constrained the momentum of Jesus's movement into mere moments—week after week, year after year, century after century. Power amassed and corruption ensued because of the character of the men exploiting the limitations of their systems and structures.

One day, an institutional official used a technological invention in an unusual way to couple his knowledge and his conviction to publicly question the legitimacy of the institution's practice. Martin Luther innovated. Martin didn't know he was disrupting industries, sacred and secular, when he distributed his 95 Theses, but he did. The Reformation disrupted the Catholic institution, and with it, education, business, and world politics. We decentralized knowledge by speeding up the velocity of content through the mass distribution of books. And yet the structures of church and the way we expressed our faith remain largely intact because of the sluggish pace of content and the need for connection.

You see, for 1,700 years, the church has been able to utilize the central platform of the church building to create crowds of people celebrating Jesus through sacred moments in sacred spaces. But the twentieth century hasn't been kind to this centralized expression of church. We decentralized content to a mere commodity and we digitized human connection. The world now operates as a decentralized network while the church still operates as a centralized one, making it ripe for the disruption of viral and network effects created by innovation and imagination. And the church has yet to harness the power this affords us.

The church has settled on creating moments when it could be focused on creating momentum. When people utilize invention and imagination to do something new and then attach this innovation to a viral social idea, which is a movement, it decentralizes access to something previously inaccessible to a greater number of people. This is the disruption formula: innovation times movement equals decentralization.

Friends, the church has been disrupted when it comes to innovation. It's nothing special. Use your imagination to utilize an invention in a new way for a new purpose. Using the internet to connect with people rather than transmit data was an example of innovation, one that I think the church still needs to learn. What technology or invention is your faith community utilizing that could be used in a new way to help more people?

Innovation is usually an accident. It's a byproduct of something more potent: spreading an idea. We need to understand that Christianity at its core is a movement. It's an idea that God came to be with his people. Jesus understood that we were in a war of ideas. That's why he called Satan the father of lies. Movements matter.

So as church leaders, we need to cultivate a movement mindset. And to do that, we need to understand the characteristics of a movement and then ask ourselves how to infuse these into our organizations. Now, movements have four characteristics at their core, and I remember them best by the acronym MOVE.

M stands for magnitude. For a movement to occur, there must be a vision that is bigger than the leader, the brand, or the community. It is transcendent to the core. It coalesces people who normally wouldn't congeal. Movements mean significance. Movements are weighty. Movements have magnitude.

O stands for order. Every movement is a beautiful tapestry of the organic and organized. It has protocols and agreements and ways of behaving and operating that are codified and systems and structures that serve the organic nature of the movement. Order understands that systems and structures are inherently flawed and have limitations. They understand that structures are created to sustain, not to stifle. Movements without order, though, are merely moments in disguise.

V stands for variation. Movements celebrate unity, not uniformity. When we observe movements, we see people from all creeds, races, socioeconomic means, and no single community attached to the movement looks the same. It's a kaleidoscope of humanity. Movements create room for the many.

E stands for empowerment. When we observe movements, we see the empowerment of the common man. Jesus's movement created the priesthood of all of his people rather than a select few. When we control a movement, we only provide moments. Paul knew the secret to movements. They rise and fall on the empowerment of people. That's why he was so huge on character formation. He understood that leaders shouldn't manage movements; they should model them.

A movement mindset can unleash the imagination required to thrive in an age of disruption. Finally, we need to understand that the outcome of innovation times movement is decentralization. And the truth is that we've been moving towards a greater decentralization for some time. Multi-site is a step towards this reality. And what we're realizing is that decentralization is now down to the individual level. And this affords us a beautiful opportunity.

In the past, in a centralized paradigm, decentralization meant we would lose people's relationship. We would lose their presence. We would lose their resources, and we would lose their talent. It meant that we would collectively suffer as a community. And while there are limitations to decentralization, the truth is that this doesn't have to be the case anymore. Decentralization doesn't mean disconnection. In fact, it could mean greater impact. But it requires us to understand a new concept born out of disruption: asynchrony.

Through the concept of asynchrony, we can create a community that exists outside of geographical space and not bound by physical imminence to be present. Community can be legitimately built on a decentralized

digital platform that can connect us at any time in any place. In fact, I believe this is the greatest disruption the church has faced. MySpace, AOL, and Facebook began as community builders and conquered market share from the church. But as the profit motive of these companies killed some and morphed others, they have transformed into entertainment battling for attention, leaving the church an opportunity for communities to spring up and reclaim what they lost. And people need community now more than ever. And aren't churches uniquely designed to fill that need? If we understand the disruption formula, we can think differently about the churches God called us to lead.

As you embrace this new paradigm, you'll see new and different opportunities. You don't have to throw your methods and models away. You just have to recognize the formula at work in our world, then begin to use the formula to your advantage. As you begin to shift your focus from creating moments to creating movements, you will move from disrupted to disruptive. You have the leadership capability to guide your faith community to boldly go into the future, knowing God has called you for such a time as this. You are the leader He chose to lead in disruption. Count that as an honor and joy, and know that the challenges and difficulties that you are going through now are the seeds of a greater future. If you don't grow weary in while doing, we need more movement leaders in this world—leaders who embody the message. We need more leaders that are done using the limitations of the previous paradigm for ill-gotten gain. Moments are beautiful and they have their place, but God didn't call you to focus on moments. He called you to focus on the momentum of His movement. So will you live in a past that only cares about moments, or will you lean into the future where disruption awaits? Will you embrace decentralization? Will you move from moment creator to movement leader?

So the idea with churches in video games really is at the heartbeat of what virtual reality church is all about, which is to church plant across the metaverse. So we've been doing that since 2016, putting churches in Rec Room, VR Chat, AltSpace VR, and experiencing these spiritual communities that exist in the metaverse. And we don't have a physical location, so that speaks to this new era of strong social interactions that we're having with the VR technology. As we were doing it, as we're experiencing that and seeing transformation, we're watching the church form in the metaverse. We just started exploring what would it be like to plant in other places that have strong social tools. And so not just VR, what about if we went to MMOs? So MMO stands for massively multiplayer online, and so that's where hundreds or thousands of players inhabit a platform, an experience. You know, things like Warcraft—we've probably heard of that. Millions of players over there. Final Fantasy. And you have all these experiences where thousands of players exist. But here's what's unique about them is that there's strong social tools within those platforms or experiences to help bring people together, and that's like their goal. Like, okay, there's a game to be played, there's an objective, but they also want a community. And it could be argued like, where is the best community-building experiences? And it's probably in MMOs for the most part, because they're designed to put people together in guilds and companies and parties, and you have to work together to accomplish something.

So as we observe that and we're just impacted by that, and our heartbeat is to plant churches in the metaverse, we thought, let's continue our vision of taking church to where people are at. And so we started checking things out like Final Fantasy 14. What about Warcraft? Many of us were playing a survival MMO called Rust. And some people say it's not an MMO, but you know, that's a gamer kind of controversy. But as we just started observing strong social interactions—millions or thousands, hundreds of players coming together—it was just the natural heartbeat of our church to establish spiritual communities there. And the two that we identified, really, and there's many—you could plant churches like every day in a different experience—but the two that rose to the surface was Final Fantasy 14 Online and Rust. And we found those social experiences to be really strong. And we went out to do our three phases. So what I mean by the three phases is we like to explore, experiment, and then establish.

So we spent some time exploring. Like, me and Rico, we were playing Rust for a long time before the church got established—probably months. And I don't even know that we were thinking church. If I can remember correctly, I think we're just having fun playing, and that just kind of evolved as we saw the church that formed in there. And so after a few months of just playing Rust and experiencing it, we started having church services on a Sunday. I think our first church service was like Easter of 2021, if I'm not mistaken. And so we started building a little community in there, and that's been like a crazy story of some viral moments on TikTok, you know, the server getting swarmed where we were guests—we didn't own the server—getting kicked out of that server. So Rust has been a whole fascinating journey to establish a church in. But some really unique stories I'd love to pick Pastor Rico's brain about. But then also Final Fantasy 14 Online, we—my family and I—were in Beijing. We were just taking a trip, family trip, rest time, checking out the VR scene in Beijing. And I read an article about how there was a Final Fantasy 14 player that unfortunately passed away, and they—I saw an image of this in-game kind of memorial where people—it just seemed, I don't know if it was hundreds, but scores of people were lined up. They had umbrellas. They were walking in formation. And that just kind of really impacted me, and I thought, man, there's such a strong sense of community for an experience to do that. And so that was also another draw.

So we went into explore mode. Final Fantasy 14, got a couple of us going in there, just, you know, questing, experiencing it. Rust, the same thing. And then after exploring for a while, we said, hey, let's experiment with church. And that's kind of where we're at because really, MMO church in Rust and Final Fantasy 14 Online is still a baby, so to speak. These aren't even, you know, Final Fantasy is months old. You know, Rust is probably barely a year old. And so we're still in that experimenting phase. I don't know that we would say we've established that. And so the story of MMO church in Rust and Final Fantasy 14 is yet to be seen.

So in this experimentation phase, we're just learning a ton—what works, what doesn't work, you know, the ebbs and flows of a new game coming out and our attendance dropping, you know, all those things. How do we build this community? How does it connect to Discord? You know, Final Fantasy just updated this and that alters the game a little bit. And so we are definitely in experimentation, and I think we're learning a ton. And I think we'll probably be here for a while because we're kind of building the plane and flying at the same time.

But if I can just hit the Y real quick, when we go there, there's a website called MMO Population. Currently, the number one game at the moment is—I don't know if it's number one, but the activity of it—is called Lost Ark, and there's a total of 11 million players and there's one million active players. Number two is Final Fantasy. They have a total player base of 37 million and actively 1.4 million. And so if you just kind of take those numbers for a moment—1.4 million active players in Final Fantasy 14 Online—that's like, if you stop and think, man, that's like a city. That's like a city that's just waiting for a church to have an experience in. And so when you look at those numbers, I can't imagine that we would just ignore that and say, you know, that's interesting, that little part of the universe has millions of people, and we're not going to do anything with that. So that's, I think, the heartbeat of what we're all about is to plant churches in those experiences.

That's beautiful. Let me have just a follow-up here. Back up a little bit. What does community actually look like? So you tell me 1.4 are playing Final Fantasy. Lost Ark was a higher number of active players. What does community actually look like? Are they playing games? They trying to beat the big bad? Like, what are they actually doing in these communities?

For me, my observation is a mix, really. Okay, so there are objectives like there's end-game goals to beat this dungeon or to fight this boss, to, you know, raid this area. And so there's a lot of energy and grouping and tools within those experiences to put people together to do that. But you also find it can get to the very social level of just hanging out. Like, we're just going to go hang out in this area. So, you know, if you go to Final Fantasy 14 Online and, Pastor Coco, what's the name of—I always pronounce it wrong—Limsa? The Mo? What's the major? Limsa Lominsa? Right? Did I say that right?

Yeah, you go there, and in the town square, there's like people everywhere. They're just hanging out. You'll see players playing instruments, and they'll be like a little concert over on the side. So if you try to define what it is socially, it's the breadth of like focused end-game experiences and, hey, let's go have a concert here in the courtyard and let's have people gather around and clap when they finish playing the song, right? And so everything in between. Some of these have, you know, voice chat. Some of them don't. So there's like in Final Fantasy, we're, you know, typing out. And Rust, there's voice activation. So as people run by, hey, how are you doing? Very much serendipitous experiences that you can have in Rust. And so to define it is difficult because it just depends, and that's the beauty of it. It's the surprising social experiences that you're going to have in these platforms.

So in, you know, thank you, Coco, for that. Rico as well, let's just open this up. One up for question. What is what does ministry look like? So you're pastoring. You're a church in these video games, MMO communities. How are you actually pastoring, shepherding, caring for these video gamers through these communities?

I think what's important to remember is like what makes these video games fun or worth going back to is the people, the community. And we often say in our church that behind every avatar, behind every screen, there's a real person with a real life story. So when it comes to Rust, for example, like, you know, there's voice chat, so it's very easy, right? From like, I go to talk to people, to interact with them, and it's exciting. You know, people are willing to share their stories or to share how their day is going or what they think about this or such thing. They're very open to talk because it almost seems almost easier to do, to be honest, or to share or not put a mask when you're, you know, online, when you're talking through your avatar. And one of the stories I remember, I think it was near the beginning, I think DJ, you can correct me if I'm wrong, we had a service, and it actually was not even during our service, but somebody had attended one of

The rest services and they actually came back to find us in this city and rest at our sort of physical church in the server at our home and they said hey, like would you mind if we, if we talk for a second? So DJ and I, uh, stay there and other people sort of walked away because it's, um, when you speak in Rust it takes into consideration the distance, so as you walk away you actually can't hear somebody's conversation. And so we were with this person and he just opened up and said, "Hey, listen, like I know you guys are like real pastors and you're here and rest and," uh, he needed prayer. He had shared that he had visited the doctor with his girlfriend and they were not sure that the baby was gonna make it. They were very afraid that she might be losing her baby. And he said, "You know what, I just need you guys to pray for me." You know, and so we were, I personally was taken back because this was like, "Oh my goodness, like this is exciting as a pastor, right away you're like, this is exciting, I can't wait to pray for you," but also like, you know, as this guy's friend and this, as I knew this guy, I was like, "Oh my goodness, like yeah, you know, it connects, you know, you think of the game and all the different things you can do in it, but then you remember like, wow, this is a real person, you know, and he's got an issue." So we prayed for him and he was very thankful. We had a good, good moment which had it. And I remember, I think it was about maybe eight months after that, that we heard on our Discord, uh, which server, which is this place where no matter what game you're in you can come back and have conversations and build a community with a BR MMO church. And I remember out of the blue this person posted a picture of his little baby girl, uh, just thanking DJ and thanking the community for praying for him those months uh back then. And he thanked us and he thanked God. And when he recognized that it was God with that, that he answered that prayer, you know, I don't know whether he's a Christian or not, but that's just, it made it real for me. And it's a testament that, you know, that ministry can happen in video games. And it's such an encouragement.

That's a great story. And so you've got it easy, Rico, like you can actually talk with people. If I'm understanding it, and I'm not a Final Fantasy person, so I apologize in advance, Coco, like you're typing on a keyboard. Like there's no, there's no voice calls. So what, what is that like to be building those relationships via a keyboard in a video game?

I think back to the old days of AOL. I remember that. Yeah, I too actually, I am that old. Thank you for that. Um, chatting in chat. Um, we do try to push people to get in the Discord because we'll meet in the Discord voice and that way we can talk. But those that don't want to join the Discord, we chat through. We have these community, one of the community things that DJ was mentioning was this thing called cross-world link shells, where you can create a private community chat. And so we can invite people to that chat room, chat room, um, that you can chat in while you're playing the game. Or we try to push people to Discord though so that we can actually speak to them in voice. And then our services are obviously going to be different because of that limitation.

So, um, community building, I have some stories too. I have helped people. They just are more open, it seems like, because they have trouble talking to their local churches because there's a lot of, I don't know, there's trouble talking to your, like in person with pastors for certain issues. But they'll talk to me about depression, suicidal tendencies. They talk to me about family members struggling with alcoholism. And it's just all kinds of things that they're coming to me and talking about that they can't talk to anyone else about. And so it is really making a huge difference that you often don't see in local churches or your physical church because people are afraid to talk to their pastors because they're afraid of being judged. Um, but they're opening up more in these games because they've got that protection of that avatar.

Yeah, we see that time and time again, right, in virtual reality churches, uh, where it's that, that the separation, I'm quote unquote hiding behind that avatar, but actually that hiding, that separation gives me freedom to be a lot more open and genuine in that. A lot of times with churches, at least in the virtual reality, and you've said Discord several times, we see the discipleship aspect, um, kind of like the ongoing relationship in NVR. We see that happening in Discord where they're running Bible studies or they're doing things in Discord through the voice chats, through the text channels, uh, asynchronous connection. Uh, are you guys seeing that? Are you seeing engagement on Discord with the video game churches as well? What is that, maybe ongoing outside of the video game community? What does that look like for you?

Um, Discord is kind of like, um, it's a great tool. I don't, it's not necessarily the end all. It's like a part of the experiences. So, you know, sometimes we'll see high interaction, a lot of chatting. And since there'll be seasons where, you know, there's not, you know, much going on. You know, I noticed when school started getting going in the fall for college and for high school and jobs, you know, things kind of quieted down. But the power in it is the access. So I just, you know, looked on Discord yesterday and this young man that's been part of our Rust church popped in. He said, "Hey, I've been gone. Can, can we connect again? Can we play?" And so that, I think, is really one of the powerful things about Discord is that the church feels like, you know, I got busy with school, I got busy with work, this big thing happened, but I have this community that I can always go back to. And that's where Discord represents. So they might not be able to attend a live VR church service, Final Fantasy, you know, they don't do their services on Saturday. We do our Rust church on Sunday. And so maybe they miss those live events, but that Discord is like that asynchronous. We're always on. Somebody will see this message, you know, somebody's going to respond. And so that's the power in it. And I feel like that's a little part of it. I don't know that there's like a necessarily a ton of chatting or discipleship going on there, although there is, because we'll post, you know, videos, you know, about mental health or somebody who asks a question and maybe we'll post a link to the Bible Project that gives them some anchoring there. But I think it's part of that total experience. Discord, those live events, hanging out in voice chat, and then when you put it all together, I think it's a real, real powerful thing.

And going back to what, uh, perfect example, just to repeat what, uh, Pastor Rico was saying, you know, that that kid that came, uh, I called my kid just because, you know, I'm forty-three, but um, the young man who came back months later and was like, "Hey, uh, thanks for praying. Here's a picture of my baby." So Discord was that, "Hey, let me come back and report on what's going on." So, you know, that's my view on Discord. But I don't know, Pastor Coke or Pastor Rico has any other any thoughts on that.

Yeah, I think of it almost as like a station, you know, or before you jump into the train, in the train, and you go into this community or into this game or like a room with portals, you know, and we, it's a lobby. We all meet together, you know, and everybody, you know, no matter what games you play, you can get to know each other. And that's the beautiful thing. It's like I don't personally play Final Fantasy, but I was able to meet some people who are in that community just because I see them talking there. And it really brings everybody together, you know, under MMO Church or even be our church, you know, brings everybody who's in all different videos, you know, because we have a common sort of interest, you know, just video games or hanging out online. So Discord just kind of is that meeting place before you go off into different communities.

Yeah, it's pretty neat. Yeah, I kind of feel like it's the church lobby for us in one sense. Like we just come in, hang out, chat, and then everyone kind of goes there a different direction. I gotta go volunteer. I gotta go see if I'm gonna go in the church building. Are they gonna go serve over here? Um, I kind of feel like it's the same thing for us a little chatter on Sunday. "Hey, when's the service starting? Where are you guys going to be at?" You know, joined up here, you know, that type of thing. And so, um, I do think it's a tool that could be, we may, you know, maybe we could probably maximize it, put more strategy and vision behind it for discipleship. But, you know, that's a whole other beast. Discord can get like, not out of control, but you can just grow very quickly and almost needing a point person to shepherd just the Discord community in one sense.

Actually, if I could pause here, it's almost a church in and of itself. Like we're talking about planting churches and all space, you know, Final Fantasy, Rust, but Discord is kind of like a church in and of its own. So it's, it's also how we build our community and bring it together because even though we have people that I've met in Final Fantasy, they're playing Final Fantasy less because they finished the game, like the content, but we're playing Dungeons and Dragons together now, so in Discord. So we're, it's, it's our, yeah, I guess his our train station, our, uh, lobby of how we continue to build community is Discord's a really important tool that we use for building that community.

That's a great point. Cross collaboration. So we have people that generally speaking are committed to a particular experience, but now you're seeing a little bit of crossover. Like we've had, you know, like for instance, Warmest, you know, he was part of Rust and VR church. Now he's checking out Final Fantasy. And so you see that kind of cross collaboration. And he's playing D and D with us. I'm playing D and D with you. And then you see also too, like our small groups are more adventure groups, and it's more like game playing. And so people will join those. And so I don't know, just kind of being repetitive here, but the idea that it's the lobby, it's the train station.

No, I love that. And more that we talk with digital churches and metaverse churches, I mean, really this innovative ideas, the MMO, the VR, even different platforms within VR, like that's that's the front door, I think, that would feed into a Discord where you are able to have ongoing conversations, relationship, discipleship, start to maybe push some of these richer ideas and actually, you know what's funny is Coco's, you're the third person I've heard in a week talk about a Dungeons and Dragons church. Uh, and so like, and one's running right now, one's rolling out this summer. And so it says, yeah, there's an innovative idea. Hey, let's do Dungeons and Dragons church. Uh, but as that feeds into, you know, hopefully a discipleship system that's attached in an asynchronous community like Discord, man, we see just huge potential to engage with people in different ways. And in a lot of ways, I'm suggesting here through the video games because I know I hear this in virtual reality, these are people that are not attending a physical building. We're utilizing these new platforms, these new communities to reach a different type of person.

Well, hey, as we're wrapping up here, DJ, let me ask one last question. Where do you see this video game church five years from now? It's an innovation. You're exploring. You're experimenting. You know what, where, where do you think you're gonna, I mean, what are we, twenty-twenty-seven, call it twenty-thirty? Um, where are we going?

Yeah, that's, you know, when...

You think of MMO church and you think of VR church. One of the questions of MMO church was, you know, why are you playing Final Fantasy? And Rust? Those are games that released years ago. You're planning in new platforms and futuristic platforms, but when we plant in these MMO churches, the theory is that these worlds are going to intersect. The VR world and the MMO world, and we think a new genre is going to come out that's going to be very significant in the future. You know, call it the metaverse, call it whatever you want, but the combination of VR and MMO, that's where I think it's going to go. That's where we believe it's going to intersect. You're starting to see that come out. This new experience called Zenith where we have small groups in Zenith gameplay and spiritual groups. And that's a, uh, well, I don't know if it's the first VR MMO, but one of the most like that kind of caught on a bit. Um, and so that's where our heart is. Is like when these two plant paths converge, and they will in the future and they are already starting to converge, that's where we want to be to plant churches. At the end of the day, so we have the VR side, we have the MMO side, and we want to merge those together into VR MMO church.

I did have one thing that I wanted to point out though, that the MMO side of things is different and you have it very much depends on the game you're going into. What you do? So you have to play the game. You have to understand the culture of the game, the limitations, the rules of the game, because there are rules around religious activities within the games. They can tell you the story of Rust, and we want to honor those rules and work through those rules like we would if we were going to another country. So it's you're going to have to study and understand the culture before you go in there and start building a church.

If I could say something about culture real quick, because that is so true. You got another culture, and when it comes to Rust, I'll be quick. But the culture in Rust is essentially trust nobody. Like you're on your own. It's a survival game. You cannot trust anybody around you. You're just, you know, trying to watch out for yourself. But we're going in there and we're saying, hey, we're building a church. If you need help with anything, we'll give you stuff. You know, we'll help you out. And people are shocked. And actually, even on TikTok, people watch the videos and say, oh, if I was there I would blow it up or whatever. People were saying like, what? There's a church in Rust? Like, like, people are just, um, almost shocked that we would go to a place like that where it's almost so, so, so different to what, uh, church teaches. But what we're beginning to see now is that when DJ goes happen and it's just about to begin his message on the church in Rust, people are coming down the aisle and just dropping stone and wood and tools and stuff and saying, hey, this is the donation for you, for the church, for you guys. So it's like we're shifting that sort of culture in the game where, you know, they're saying, hey, just you're on your own to like, hey, we're a community. Let's help each other out. It's a beautiful thing to see.

Yeah, and real quick, Pastor Coco and Pastor Rico mentioned something really important that we've kind of assumed but maybe should be stated real quick. Is that each experience is completely different. Like we go in with an idea of what it might be, but the platform is going to tell us or the experience is going to tell us what it wants to be. And so we've made some shifts like in Rust and VR Chat and because it's so very different, so you're not going to go experience VR church the same, MMO church the same everywhere. The platform says, hey, this is what we want to be in a church. And so, and even the players kind of speak into that as well.

Yeah, it's not long sermons. It's like we have to have discussions because they're too, it's they're too easily distracted to have sit down and listen to a sermon. So you can't do a sermon. So you have to do something else. What can we do? Discussions, Q&As, things like that that are more engaging.

And one final thought real quick, Jeff. I never tried going over time here, but what I find interesting is, you know, maybe someone said, well, why not do longer sermons? But you know, what we feed them spiritually, I think is so powerful in the sense that many of these will have never attended a church. I wouldn't be surprised if someone came up to me this week and says, I've never been to church before. What's it like? You know, can I come? And so we see that. And so to be able to plant those seeds, I think is really important. And that's what, at the end of the day, this MMO church ministry, um, at the end of the day, we're planting seeds in places that I don't think many people would be able to have access to, because they're not going to come to physical church, but they will be in Rust. They will be in Final Fantasy.

Awesome. Well, hey, listen, I'm funny. I would love to dig more into this. We may have to do like a separate show just on this. We'd love to even explore this in the time to come. Let me ask one quick question. We may edit this out. Um, hey, so like, if I'm a church, I'm interested in exploring this, uh, real quick, like, how do I get started? What's maybe a practical step or two in exploring maybe how to launch a church in an MMO video game?

I have a quick thought, and then, Lau DJ, because you're the expert. But I would reach out to young people in your church because they probably are in those communities, and they'll, they would love to be involved and help you out with that. So reach out to the young people in your church.

Yeah, uh, I was just about to say that. What Rico said, like, if you're like, hey, what should we do? We see VR MMO church is here. Maybe we should do that. I think that's the wrong approach. Like Rica was saying, you gotta ask your community what they're into. It could be Minecraft. You know, it could be something else, and find out what they're passionate about, what they would rally around. So that's that's really good advice, uh, Rico. Beautiful.

So listen, uh, Coco, Rico, DJ, thanks for the time jumping in here and appreciate your insight and uh, we'll keep looking from the outside and cheering you on as you are innovating by doing the MMO church. Thank you very much.

Well, Jeff, I'm so happy to be here today. I'm Michelle Salvant. I am a technologist who works in the space of using smart glasses in the area of healing and uh, have been in media ministry now since the early 2000s. I have just seen things grow and just happy to be in this space right now. It's a good time.

Awesome. Well, we're certainly great to have you here. Uh, we'd love to unpack now. You and I had a conversation. I don't know, maybe a couple months ago, a month ago or so, and really just kind of blew my mind about how you're utilizing augmented reality and sent around this idea of immersive journaling. I can't talk today. That's weird. Journaling. It's not that hard a word. Talk to me a little bit here. Tell me about what immersive journaling is.

So if you just kind of look at the two words just in their very basic form, so immersive is like being completely into whatever it is. We know immersive in the metaspace, um, just kind of refers to uh, how virtual reality uh, might be used where we're just kind of completely enveloped into an experience and it's kind of all around us. Journaling is just reflecting on life, usually in a written format. So when you combine the two, what you have is a deeper level of the journaling experience that I'm seeing come alive through smart glasses.

And so when we talked early on, I talked about the 2020 Live Film Project, which is really a ten-year immersive journaling project that I started uh, back in December of 2018, which will go throughout this entire decade until December 31st, 2029. And the whole premise behind the project really is uh, to take a look at life through a true point of view perspective using uh, smart glasses and then reflect on what I see and see what needs to be changed. It's been a tremendous uh, healing tool that I didn't expect to really turn out to be that way initially when I started the project. I was turning forty years old. That's a real milestone, you know, and I just wanted to capture the year hands-free. Which I think there's um, something to be said of to that. Uh, we just heard a talk about augmented reality and many of the experiences or unlocked experiences are a lot unlocked through markers and we're kind of using our mobile uh, devices. But when you talk about these connected augmented reality experiences and how you can do these things and have really more use of your hands, it kind of begins to create questions around like, well, then how do we capture this part of our life uh, that will be happening in this way when we're interacting with an experience with our hands? So if we need to use our hands and experience, how then are we going to record that? That's just a side note. But the smart glasses opens that up. It opens us up to be freer and more connected into life uh, itself.

So initially I thought a bit more like a vlog. Like I'll be recording live through the glasses. But when I look back and looked at the footage from a point of view perspective through the smart glass lenses, it began to unlock some layers in my life that brought about more healing. And as I thought about the layers and unlocking it, it really opened my mind more uh, to augmented reality because I said in the physical we see whatever is in our periphery or whatever's in our view, whatever is real. But there's so many other layers of life that, you know, it may take some other means like these smart glasses to unlock. So how do we convey a film like that to an audience so they can feel what it means to go from something uh, that you see to some of the things that you don't? And so augmented reality, we started incorporating that into a physical journal to unlock the experiences that we were having through the smart glass lenses.

So right now, augmented reality is more centered around using devices like these where we're able to interact with markers, these physical tangible viewable things, and scanning them brings out more um, technologies, visuals, things that that are viewable once again on these devices. But the heart of where we're going with augmented, and really, I mean, maybe we're twelve, eighteen, twenty-four months away from this, is where we start to get into this. When Apple releases their glasses and instead of the phone, and where the glasses now becomes this merger of a virtual world of a user interface now intersecting with the physical, and so now we're able to kind of put those two together.

As your, as what you're talking about by creating a ten-year film, uh, you know, doing some of this a year film for every ten years in a row, like what role does augmented reality play today and maybe what are you excited about for the future?

What I'm excited about is to see how the medium evolves over these ten years. So when we started, we started with a company uh, that is very much about, you know, kind of uh, democratizing, I think I said that word right, AR, where everybody gets a chance where you don't necessarily have to code experiences for you know, these uh, experiences in AR to come alive. And we use that to bring experiences alive in our first journal. I didn't know how to code, but I knew what uh, the layers of a story that I wanted. Um, anyone who uh, participated with me with the journal, anybody who purchased it to get. And so in uh, in our next couple of volumes, we're using another company that does more art-based AR uh, to bring imagery alive. And and to see those type of

Animations and more 3D models and things like that. So I think what's going to be interesting over the 10-year period is to see how, right now we're scanning these journals that start by being made with the classes. We're scanning them with our mobile devices now, but I think by maybe my seventh volume, maybe six, I'll be in a pair of my own smart glasses that I'll make or partner with someone to make, and they'll be specifically used to unlock information without a handheld device in the journals that we print. So we will, we will literally not only be able to film and take in information that creates the journal content, but then we will be able to experience the journal with the smart glass technology.

Oh, that's interesting. So you're combining the, we'll essentially have a two-part process. And you know, it'll start with, okay, let me collect some content and reflect on that, and then we'll be able to go back and look at it and see maybe all types of augmented reality experience. What if there were journals all over a said place or a city that people could have their glasses on and read and say, wow, so this happened here. What a testimony. You know, because for me it's about testimony and seeing the many layers of what God is doing in the life of an individual. It's about personal storytelling. And so bringing that alive even more so through AR is gonna be amazing.

You know, metaverse really does bring about more of a decentralized, more of a relational, more of a personal part of culture. You know, Web 2.0 we saw a shift that way. And so for the good and the bad, where we're sometimes even in social media, there's things we love, there's some things that we hate in that space. But as we get more into this immersive experience and the world building, it's really much more of a personable approach. And a lot of times that's lost. What you're doing here with this immersive journaling is you're telling your personal story. Could you maybe elaborate a little bit? Like, what, how has that impacted people? Maybe even how has that impacted yourself while you've been reliving some of these events and telling a story now utilizing, you know, augmented reality and some of these other technologies?

It has unlocked the layers. So we know from a technical side what we've been talking about throughout the summit. We've talked the technical side of things and what it means to embrace that or what it would take to implement that. But I think the personal side of this begins to remind, it has reminded me how many, or shown me the many layers in my life that I may have been missing. The layers, the healing that was underneath that needed, that I needed to have, that was underneath all these just traditional or everyday type way of operating that I was doing. The glasses, looking back over the footage, kind of like having a chance to step outside of myself and see life from my perspective without being in that actual moment, has made me more mindful. Has caused me to be more present. Has caused me to be a better wife, a better mother. I'm a trauma healing facilitator and just kind of healing coach in a way. And all of that came out of the journal experience. Before that, I would just tell you I'm a media coach. I was really just riding the surface because there was nothing to unlock these layers until I put on the smart glasses and began to see life for really what it was from another perspective. But it was me, you know. Things begin to change and begin to open up in this area of healing and me being a person. I'm very passionate about testimonies. I always have. That was the kind of media ministry that I was really into. But even more so, I wanted to know. I always wanted to get closer to the story. If you had a testimony, I wanted to go to the place. Like, where did this happen? I wanted to experience it.

And you brought up a good point going Web 1.0 to 3.0. Web 1.0, digital. Web 2.0, social. This is now, as my friend DJ Soto, Ella, can eloquently put a couple of years ago, the experience age. Welcome to the age of experience. And what better way to do that than to be seeing life from your true point of view? You being a partaker of what you need to see first, and then sharing that with others to help them think about life on a deeper level. And the tech is cool. So it's a cool way to heal, you know? That's how I see it.

Definitely. Well, and as augmented continues to open up, right, we're going to see more exploring in the space. I actually have a friend of mine that runs a mobile app, a 2.0 mindset, where basically anybody who uses the app can, and this is similar, Michelle, to some of the stuff you're talking about, he can any user can clock up prayer, can type a prayer into the app, and wherever they are, it's registered within, you know, like a Google Maps type of interface. And so he's got thousands of people from all over the world using this and geographically marking where these prayers are. Now, you know, you take this simple idea, apply it to an augmented reality mindset, and all of a sudden now I'm able to physically interact. I'm able to prayer walk and pray with my friends in the same areas, the same prayers that they're praying, or alongside complimenting them. And so there's this new opportunity as we start to blur these types of devices into a visible interface like we're getting with augmented reality. And so the tech is kind of new. Why don't you even speak to that for a second now, Michelle, because you've been doing this for three or four years, and I'll be honest, I didn't know there were vendors out there three or four years ago doing this. So like, maybe what are some challenges that you've been facing with as an early adopter?

Well, I think one of the things is that it is so new that sometimes you can get attached to projects that a company might say, or your products, I'll say, and then they say, well, we've found a better way to do it, so we're not going to do this anymore. But if your augmented reality experience is connected to a certain marker, that people, essentially what makes augmented reality so powerful is the ability to update it at any time and for anyone to be able to scan that marker and experience it right where they are without having to type in a www or anything like that. It's just kind of like how we're in the QR code age. Okay, they just scan it and they can see it. But anytime, let's say I want to switch companies, well, that marker doesn't go with me. And now that marker might deactivate, and people who have it can no longer experience that anymore. You know, it's kind of almost like your experiences, they're tied to one place, but the place is not necessarily universal. So it's not like it's tied to one website that can be accessed through Chrome, Safari, or you know, Firefox or whatever. It's kind of like when you build an experience, it lives here on Chrome, and if you decide not to pay for Chrome anymore, then you'll just have to build entirely new experiences on Firefox, you know?

So I think that can be a pain point, especially for somebody like me who has a collection of journals that we're creating. I essentially, probably good for the companies, have to stay with whatever company is connected to these markers. So if someone says I want to buy the whole collection six years from now, I won't have to say, yeah, about that. Journal one doesn't necessarily work anymore. But, you know, if you get journal six, it's real good though, you know? So those are that's been one of the major pain points. And then just finding people to create these experiences. It's kind of like how the web was in the beginning. Every the price tag is a little bit higher because it's new. Now you can pretty much create them on your own. I like the first company that I work with that you really can kind of create these AR experiences on your own. But I think it'll get easier to create over time. But some of the more dynamic ones, you may pay a little bit more now just to be an early adopter.

Well, Michelle, thank you for the time here, and thank you for being a pioneer, you know, even exploring this idea of immersive journaling, exploring and utilizing the augmented reality. And keep doing what you're doing. Appreciate it.

Oh, thank you. Appreciate you.

Biblex exists for one reason alone. We want to preserve the Bible for hundreds of years, free of censorship. Our Biblex team is a ragtag group of passionate individuals who wants to see the Gospel preserved. Our team consists of an ex-Bible smuggler, a former rock and roller, a crypto enthusiast, a guerrilla marketer, and the guy who helped write the security protocols for Ethereum.

So you may ask, how did I get here? Well, as the son of two lawyers, my grandpa was a lawyer, my uncle was a lawyer, and I enjoyed speech and debate. I fulfilled my lawyer parents' highest desire for their kids, and I joined a punk rock band and then a Christian death metal band. Thankfully, despite not following in their footsteps, they encouraged me to live a life full of adventure.

My music career opened the opportunity to travel around the world with a Christian electro pop band. I played the keytar, thinking that the 80s were coming back in full force. They never did. We worked with YWAM and Operation Mobilization to spread the love of Christ everywhere. While overseas with the band, I got a flyer on human trafficking, and everything changed. From that moment forward, I couldn't stop thinking about human trafficking.

So I went to India with a non-profit group, and what I saw shocked me. I witnessed a 14-year-old girl being trafficked. Law enforcement helped facilitate the sale. The brothel was actually above the police station. And while filming, the traffickers noticed and chased after our van.

So think about this. The brothel was right above the police station, right above the people you thought you could trust. There's no depths of depravity too far for the human heart, for our hearts, for my heart. It's a hard visual image to forget.

From that day in India, and now fast forward 10 years, we lead a company, Zero Trafficking, with several intelligence experts. We're working to use tech and data to defeat human traffickers. As a technology company, we help disrupt sophisticated human trafficker rings. We support law enforcement and financial institutions to fight against these human traffickers.

Yeah, it's been a journey, an interesting one at that. But God is good. And I noticed something along the way on this journey. You begin to see that justice isn't the end of the story for the human trafficker, but only the beginning. Because mercy triumphs over justice every single time.

Targeted drone strikes, lifetime sentences, and sanctions, yeah, they seem to help short term. But over time, the global depravity only seems to get worse. Did you know that global corruption now costs developing countries more than one trillion dollars a year?

If we want to see human trafficking and cartel violence change to legal businesses in fentanyl production to cease to exist, it starts with the Gospel. If we want to see public corruption change into free societies, it too starts with the Gospel.

As I said, mercy triumphs over justice. During this period of touring with the band, I saw God's mercy at work in a way that I cannot deny or even explain. On one tour with the band, I was in Iceland where I met a pimp. He explained that he became a believer and left his life of crime for the Gospel. Once he was transformed, this man, he used his house of prostitution as a recovery center for addicts and for ministry. This rocked my world.

How could this be? It is force, fraud, and coercion, which is the baseline for human trafficking. How could this pimp, a trafficker who likely used force, fraud, and coercion to exploit people, come to the saving grace of the Gospel in such a radical way?

See, we all carry the sin code within.

Our hearts and we're guilty of the verdict eternal separation from Christ. But with hope of the gospel, we too can be redeemed. I need the gospel just like this pimp in Iceland. Hence Bible X. It's a love story for the most broken. You see, the gospel is for the depraved, the sicario hitman, the makers of weapons of mass destruction, traffickers, the persecuted, and all of us. The cure for spiritual cancer is the gospel. Unadulterated, uncensored, unstoppable.

Fifty-two countries have outlawed the gospel, and last year 360 million Christians were persecuted for their faith. 360 million Christians cannot practice their faith without concerns of retaliation. They live in the constant threat of torture and execution, yet they risk their very lives for the axis of the gospel.

Censorship, when misused, it limits our ability to express free thought, to trade ideas as currency. In our DNA, we long to express the depths of our soul freely, to know and to be known by the creator of the universe. This ability to express oneself freely through speech is the building block of a free society. This is why the founding fathers and so many other democracies fought so hard for free speech.

We face a dangerous part of history when free thought and reading becomes limited, when books are banned, knowledge is stifled. Censorship is the hallmark of an oppressive regime and is often their tool of choice. An oppressive regime will continue to limit access to the Bible. To give access to the Bible in hostile countries, Bible X is using the latest technology where censorship is high. Blockchain helps preserve the Bible in perpetuity.

For the current context on why this project of preserving the Bible is important, let's walk back to the future. The year is 1439. 1439 is argued to be the most influential year of that millennium, not because King Henry VI banned kissing to prevent the spread of the bubonic plague, no. A man trusted God and he changed the world.

In 1439, you find yourself in a world where only a select few could read the Bible for themselves. The choices are Latin or next to nothing. Think about this. In 1439, the Bible was only accessible by handmade copies. Handmade copies of the entire Bible.

A man led by God changed the world. Johannes Gutenberg, a German inventor, says there has to be a better way to get Bibles into the hands of everybody. Access. He wanted access for all mankind to read the gospel for themselves, free of censorship of the elite, of the government, of misled churches. Gutenberg found the vision that God gave him to invent the modern printing press.

It's argued that the printing press played a major role in the Renaissance, Reformation, Age of Enlightenment, and Scientific Revolution. Not to overstate it here, but this revolution of the printed word launched the opportunity for mass communication globally. It sounds kind of like the internet. Think Gutenberg, not Jobs, for our ability to communicate worldwide.

Now we as humanity experience today three industrial revolutions. Now he said on the precipice of the fourth. Robots making hamburgers, designer babies, humans in the loop of AI, decentralized economies, virtual worlds in the metaverse, telepathy, and perhaps most important, blockchain. The fourth industrial revolution has implications for everything. Blockchain, Web3, crypto. It's bigger than the internet.

So what is the blockchain and why put the Bible on it? To understand the blockchain, we must first understand the internet. The precursor to the internet was ARPANET. ARPANET was started as a way for the US to gain military dominance. ARPANET was built because it created an easier way to transfer intelligence via packets of information through underground cables.

In 1983, the internet was born on the back of US government research to undoubtedly give the world access to free ideas. In 2002, US Naval Research helped create the Onion Router, or Tor, to communicate secretly within the internet. The Onion Router, or Tor, is the main way to access Darknet. Darknet, you know, the marketplace for murder for hire, fake passports, and drug sales. It seems to me that Darknet is the prime place for the hope of the gospel to be.

And back to the blockchain. It became popular in 2008 and it had its origins with yes, you guessed it, Satoshi Nakamoto. No, not the US government, or at least so we know for now. Satoshi Nakamoto will remain a mysterious character behind Bitcoin and blockchain technology. Regardless of who or what created Bitcoin and blockchain, the technology today is as transformational as the printing press.

Without going into all the technical details, the main reason for blockchain application is that it's used for security, programmability, verification, and decentralization. The practical use case of the blockchain will create better banking, transacting, ownership, and preservation. Meaning blockchain technology is not only the most secure on the market, the concept of how blockchain empowers decentralization, transacting, and ownership, it changes everything. It changes everything because it transfers power to the people. No geographical boundaries. It's hard to regulate. With it, you could spin up global corporations, ideas, or art easily.

Blockchain is a central theme in the fourth industrial revolution. Taking it one step further, let's look at smart contracts. Ethereum started in 2015 with the concept of smart contracts. Smart contracts are built on blockchain technology. So for example, on a smart contract, you could create a better deed to prove ownership of your house.

One of our team members helped write the Ethereum security protocols. He said that one of the concepts for the creation of Ethereum was to allow for better access to free thought and help prevent books from being censored. So Ethereum and other blockchain protocols make it so that the Bible can be censorship resistant. This gives us hope that the Bible can be accessed by 360 million oppressed Christians around the world.

So why the Bible on the blockchain now? The technology is here to say we can use cutting edge tech to advance the gospel worldwide in hostile countries. It's time to put the Bible on smart contracts using the blockchain to preserve this life-giving book for generations.

So let's talk about the timing and rollout of Bible X. In 2022 to 2023, we will deliver the first beta version of Bible X on smart contracts. This will give an endless and unedited copy of the Bible on the blockchain. This will set up the foundation for what's next for Bible X. You can kind of think of these smart contracts behind it as the time capsule for the Bible, a time capsule that's easily accessed by future generations.

So what's needed to make this a reality? We need a generation to stand for the gospel, to not shy away from the gospel because of fear of what others might think. We need a generation with bravery, courage, and vision to preserve the Bible for generations to come. Using technology, we can ensure generational access to the Bible, and together we can preserve the Bible and offer access in hostile areas of the world because we know that the future belongs to the Lord. Thank you.

Hey, thank you, Noel, for landing the plane. That was a great session. Just to wrap up on Bible and the blockchain, but hey, we're done now. Remember, with session one, we talked about this idea of the metaverse and how the metaverse exists and maybe some ideas about how the church can utilize it, but maybe some ideas about how there's maybe some mental health issues and things that we need to be wary of and what obstacles that we're looking at as we're heading into ministry.

Session two, we've really got to explore virtual reality and how virtual reality is being used today by churches and what that looks like from three different perspectives. And then we dove into maybe the world of crazy where we started to talk with innovators and innovations, discovering how they're innovating and seeing maybe what's possible today, but even what's possible and where we're going in the future.

And don't sleep on this idea of a decentralized church, maybe in response to even some of the decentralization or cultural shifts they're seeing as a result of the Web3 technologies like blockchain and crypto really impacting this culture that we live in.

But all this has been a great summit and we're gonna be done. We're landing the plane. So for the twelve speakers, hey, thank you very much for contributing and being a part of the Metaverse Church Summit here for Leadership Network. Thank you for putting this on. But we're done. So for Leadership Network, for the twelve speakers that shared, and for myself, Jeff, with Metaverse Church Next, thank you very, very much for being part of the Metaverse Church Summit and hope to see you soon.