EP271 - Season 5: Metaverse Mission Trip, Relevant Magazine, and Next Steps in Metaverse Church

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

And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Hey everybody, we are launching season five of the Church Digital Podcast. Here, my name is Jeff Reed. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Founder of the Church Digital, co-founder Digital Church Network, and oh man, I love every one of my nineteen jobs or whatever it is at this point. But we get to do a lot of fun stuff centered around digital ministry, digital church, metaverse. Like, so we can really get into some really interesting concepts here as we're launching out season five. We're talking about next level—how to take your digital church, your digital ministry, your metaverse church to the next level in beverage church. Like, that's actually a category here in 2023. I love it.

So hey, listen, I was actually challenged by an idea a couple months ago, and it was so good. Not only did I say yes to helping this church, but it was like, oh my gosh, this is going to be an incredible opportunity for so many. Now, honestly, I was a little embarrassed I had thought about it myself, but that's why I surround myself with smart people and listen all the time. And so I'm really excited to introduce here with season five Next Level my guest here, Ryan Sidholm, lead pastor, church planter here with River City Church. And so Ryan, thanks for jumping on the podcast here.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

So Ryan's up in Vancouver, Washington, a church planter there with River City. So maybe before we get started here, we start to explain what's going on. Ryan, give us a thirty-second update. Tell us about River City.

Yeah, you know, we're excited about what the Lord is doing. We launched Easter Sunday 2019, which was ten months before the pandemic. Uh, so if you, I highly recommend that by the way. If you want to start something new, do it right before a global pandemic. It'll really stretch you. But early on, we had to think in unique ways because of this. You know, we all got thrust into COVID. And so I, by the grace of God, we're still here.

Awesome. You know, so many planters in that season were joking, almost tongue-in-cheek a little bit, about the opportunities and the challenges of launching in the COVID season. But it's been so much joy in my life seeing planters like you and so many others—even my own church, Reality Church down here in Miami, Florida, that was launching in that season—how innovation looks different and how, yes, the playbooks were destroyed and let's do something different. And many churches launched really strong in that space. And so it's interesting. Four years you just celebrated your four-year birthday anniversary, talking off air, and it's exciting to see churches like yours thriving. And to be honest, it's even exciting for me to have this conversation come out of a church that's just four years old.

You see, Ryan came up to me. Uh, was this—I can't remember the context. Where were we? Was it a Zoom call? Like, how did this conversation start?

Right, it was just a random Zoom call. I shot you a message on Facebook. I said, "Hey, I got a big idea. I need to talk to you about it." So okay, we got on a Zoom call, and Ryan pitched to me the idea of a metaverse mission trip—like, a church taking people into virtual reality for a mission trip. And I'm like, well, this is an interesting concept. So let's see what this guy has to say.

So we jump on the Zoom call, and I mean, here's the premise, right? You're going on a mission trip. Your church is going on a mission trip to, I don't know, Bolivia. And so you're buying, you're making all these volunteers buy a plane ticket to Bolivia. You've got to pay for the visa, get your passport in order because you're leaving America, assumed to go to Bolivia. You are having to pay for a hotel. You're having to pay for some sort of room and board in Bolivia. You're having to pay for food in Bolivia. You may be taking family members. Other people may be going with you. I mean, at minimum, you're probably spending fifteen hundred, two thousand dollars to go to Bolivia now to do physical, tangible ministry. You're walking the streets. You're talking with people. You're praying with people. You're working with churches and organizations in the space, serving them. Like, a physical mission trip is hugely impactful. I've—my listen, I met my wife on a physical mission trip down in Key West. And so like, the opportunities—I'm not saying go on a mission trip to meet your spouse. That was not the appropriate response. But mission trips are very powerful.

And so when Ryan's posing the idea of, what if, what if instead of a plane ticket, we buy a headset? As volunteers, the volunteers buy the headsets. And then we start to not spend our time in a different country learning those cultures, but we go into the virtual reality and start to better understand the cultures that are in VR. And oh my gosh, like, this is an incredible idea, right?

So Ryan, tell me, tell us here a little bit. Where did this idea come from?

Yeah, so I was literally just praying about how to better reach people for the gospel. And I don't know how much credit I can take for this idea because it came to me in a dream—like, a literal dream while I was sleeping. And I woke up, and it's like, man, that's a crazy idea. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought there might be something there. And so I was given permission by another ministry leader recently. He said, "You know, if God impresses something on your heart, put, you know, like talk about it. Like, see if there's something actually there." And so I prayed. I literally just prayed. I was like, "God, who should I talk to about this crazy idea?" And even though I didn't know Jeff personally, it was Jeff's name that kind of came to mind. And we had been connected. I had seen him speak at conferences, and you know, so it wasn't just like I was like, "Who is Jeff Reed?" You know? But apparently God wants me to talk to some guy named Jeff. But no, so I reached out to him, and that's the rest is—I mean, it's going to be history soon. We're rolling with it.

So very cool. Yeah, so evidently I'll agree to any crazy idea. That's true. But I do agree to a lot of crazy ideas right now, post-COVID. And listen, the idea centered around the metaverse mission trip and empowering people to be on mission in virtual reality—well, honestly, I've written two books in my lifetime, two books within the past year, one on doing virtual reality ministry and one on being a missionary in that space. And so when Ryan's sharing with me the conversation and I'm in my mind reflecting back on you know, best practices and virtual reality and engaging in these communities and recognizing the contextualizations of what's possible, man, I'm grinning ear to ear looking at the potential for Ryan's church here, River—man, I just blanked on a—River City to get into that space. And what an incredible opportunity to expand to new horizons and start to discover something different.

And so we're doing—what was fascinating with this—like, I even want to tell the story before we get into it. Um, so I'm in with Leadership Network at this a couple weeks ago. I was at Leadership Network at this Leadership Retreat. We're planning out the future and some things that are happening with LN. And I'm in the middle of like Backwater Georgia. Like, there's this water inlet. There's like alligators and dolphins swimming in the same space. Like, I've never seen that before—alligators and dolphins like in the same water. And it's just this beautiful—and listen, I'm in this space in Backwater Georgia at this Leadership Retreat, and there is no cell signal like at all. Not even like one bar of 4G. It's zero. And there's very little internet access. And so like, I'm completely withdrawn from society, it feels like, which was necessary and it felt good by the way. I slept really well for a couple nights. But coming off of that, you know, in the middle of walking around, I guess where I got that one flicker of cell signal, I get this text message from Ryan saying, "Hey, Relevant Magazine just published an article about the mission trip." And it was funny. It's like, you know, Ryan's like, "I had no idea they were looking," and I was like, "I didn't know they were looking either." And so somehow they found out. But did you, Ryan, did you ever get any insight to how we ended up getting on or your church ended up getting on Relevant Magazine?

No, literally my wife—my wife was just scrolling on her cell phone, and she saw this thing, and she thought it was another church doing a virtual reality mission trip, you know? And so she's like, "What's this?" And she clicks on it, and she just walks around the corner. She goes, "Ryan, Relevant Magazine just did a story on us." So yeah, I don't know where that came from. Maybe somebody's got like the Google Bots out there or artificial intelligence poked Relevant Magazine on the shoulder. Who knows? But it was awesome just seeing River City Church getting some attention centered around the virtual reality mission trip.

And so we'll put links to this in the show notes and things like this. You can check out the article. But here with this season, with season five, I mean, we're talking about this idea of digital ministry, of metaverse ministry to the next level. And so you've got opportunities. I want to encourage you right now, listener out there. There's two or three things that I want to encourage you to do. Number one, I would encourage you to consider being part of a metaverse mission trip. We, with the Church Digital, Digital Church Network, um, it is our goal here in 2023 we want to see 250 people go on mission in virtual reality this year. And so going through Ryan with his church, River City Church, doing what they're doing, that's an awesome opportunity for individuals to maybe jump on a mission trip. And Ryan, you were telling me off air, France and where else? Like, where have you been getting some exposure?

Kyrgyzstan coming with us.

Yeah, that's crazy. And he was actually interviewed by Canadian press just recently, right? So we may be getting some Oh Canada people in the mix as well. But definitely excited about seeing individuals jump on. You know, I mean, I want to thank Ryan for opening this up. But there's an opportunity here for churches beyond Ryan's to get on board. And so through Leadership Network and through actually GACX, which is—I don't talk much about that, but that's Campus Crusade's Global Digital Division—we, the Church Digital, Digital Church Network, we're actually leading two more learning communities centered around the metaverse mission trip. And so with Leadership Network, as most of you listening are probably US-based churches, this is a great opportunity to come alongside.

And start to get some exposure on what metaverse community is, go on a mission trip, start to discover what the missional opportunities in that space are, and maybe just maybe even launch a church as a result of it. In addition to taking 250 people on mission this year, we want to see 10 churches get planted, get launched in virtual reality as a result of it. We're going to talk with Stuart McPherson next week about what church planting looks like and how the mission trip fits into that, and it's a great, great conversation we've got coming up with Tsunami coming up in the next couple weeks.

But hey, Ryan, let's dig in. By the way, if you're interested in the metaverse mission trip, leadnet.org MLC. Leadnet.org MLC, leadershipnetwork.org. Or not leadnet.org M for metaverse, L for learning, C for community. Lincoln, show notes. Ryan, if they're interested in your trip, what's a good link or information for that?

Yeah, River City Vancouver dot com. So you'd probably see a header that just says missions or missions to the metaverse. Just click there and you'll have all the information you need. But River City Vancouver dot com.

Very cool. Well, let's drill into some details here, a little bit. What exactly in your mind, and this is all hypothetical, we're onboarding this, we're doing this for the first time, Brian, but you tell me here, what is a mission trip to the metaverse? What does this look like?

Yeah, well, you know, we want to frame it in the sense of like a normal, if you will, mission trip. You never want to go to a mission field and just be tourists, right? That's a no-no. And so we don't want to be the people that go to, let's use your example of Bolivia again, and just say, "Oh hey, let's just go to see all the sites and let's get, you know, our Bolivia stickers and souvenirs and let's go home." The idea is we're there to either share Jesus or to do some work on the ground. And so the same idea is we want to go into the metaverse for the purpose of sharing Jesus, not just to hang out and play games, but to share Jesus with individuals that we encounter in this metaverse space. So that's the idea behind it.

And you know, in thinking through this, and this is something, you know, Jeff and I even just off air, like we're working out some of these details too, because it's like we're doing this for the very first time. But in a typical mission trip, you land on the ground and you're there 24/7 until your plane takes off again. And obviously, that's not something that we really want to encourage people to do in the metaverse. I don't know if it's healthy for someone to spend 24/7 there for a week. But so instead, we're making this mission trip a month long, and we're just saying, "Hey, you know, can you fit in five to ten hours per week after work, after school, you know, just in the morning, being intentional about sharing Jesus with people that you're able to connect with in this metaverse space?" So that's kind of the nutshell of what it looks like.

Yeah, so it's going to be the month of August is this window. They're opening up and really challenging the people on the metaverse mission trip to spend five to ten hours a week in virtual reality. Let me just go ahead and say it publicly: spending 24/7 in virtual reality, it's probably not a good idea. You may have like some anxiety issues and separation from actual physical reality, and that's probably not a good idea according to some therapists somewhere, or all the therapists somewhere. But I do, I love the opportunity to engage in these communities.

One of the things that we really, we 2023 church, what we don't understand is this technology literally exists for communication. It's designed to create the technology to connect people on opposite sides of the world and allow them to communicate together. I mean, VR Chat is called VR Chat for a reason, because people want to go into virtual reality and chat. Yeah, sure, VR Chat gets a little gross at times, and but hey, VR Chat needs Jesus. And so there's an opportunity even to contextualize and start to get people to go into the space and explore VR Chat, explore a Rec Room, explore Facebook Horizons, explore Horizons, explore the new option that's out there that's been growing like crazy, explore Spatial, the new option that's out there, explore these spaces, explore gaming, and what does it look like to build relationships through gaming? And how can we connect with people through Among Us, through, oh my gosh, I just blanked on the Fortnite pop one, you know, start to connect with people in these, even in these games, and build relationships.

Yeah, now can that relationship feed to Discord? Can that feed to a text? Can that feed to something off the headset? Sure, that's kind of the goal. It's build relationships and then speak to blessing people. Begin with prayer, listen to them, explore shared experiences, serve them, and then share your Jesus story. Like, this is the heart of sharing Jesus online. This is the heart of being a digital and metaverse missionary. And there's an opportunity to start to challenge churches like yours and to find volunteers to go on mission in the metaverse, not spending 1500 plus on a plane ticket internationally, but, Rich, you know, Stuart Tsunami talks about this a lot. He's able to be a digital, a metaverse missionary internationally and never leave his couch. He's able to jump in that VR and start to connect with people globally and start to represent Jesus for a whole new generation of people that don't know them.

And this is so cool. So here, Ryan, I want to ask this. You have been around for years, like that is, you're diving in the deep end of the pool here, my friend. Not a lot of four-year churches, and when I have this conversation, why are we having, like, you know, they're worried about service times, they're worried about the buildings, they're worried about, you know, I don't know, set up and tear down, or the things that you know, young churches like yours are getting into. But you're really doing some abstract thought here. Not even number one, abstract metaverse ministries, okay? Number two, let's involve ministry in that space. And three, let's promote it like crazy. Like, there's, you're very complex here with what you're doing. Where did this come from? Like, how did you end up doing this? Was there what's the secret?

Well, you know, the only secret I can think of is literally it's just, you know, I feel called to make disciples of all nations and all generations, right? And if we're going to reach this next generation, we've got to be thinking outside the box. We can't be doing church as usual, if you will. And so, you know, you said it earlier, the playbook was thrown out. And so, you know, if I heard somebody say this, I don't remember it, might have been you, I have no idea, but somebody said, "If the only thing that our churches do as a result of COVID is go online, if that's it, then we failed. We've missed the mark." Like, the whole pandemic changed everything. And so we've got to be innovative in the way that we reach people for Jesus. And so that's, you know, number one is just, you know, just trying to be innovative in the way that we do this.

But another thing that I'm thinking about that I don't know if people realize this or not is a big goal of this trip. A month, that's habit forming. That's enough time to really make some habits. And so these people who live in the real world, who go to a brick and mortar church called River City Church, my idea is I want at the end of the month for them to take their VR headsets off and say, "Wait a second, that thing that I just spent a month doing in virtual reality, I could do that in real life too. Like, I can engage people in my everyday world with the gospel and similar with you, you know, using similar tactics, the bless framework."

Yeah, I love the idea of that. Early on with Ryan, it was funny. I brought up the point. I was like, "Hey, you know what? You're trying to get everybody to buy these headsets and they're costing, you know, the cheapest ones right now are four hundred dollars, and you know, Apple will be like, 'Hold my beer' in a minute when they come out with theirs in a couple months for two or three thousand." And so like, the price of this is high. And you know, and I really pitched to Ryan, man, you can like rent a headset for a month for a couple hundred dollars. Like, I think it's like thirty bucks a week from some of the vendors that I've been working with. So there's opportunities to really make this much more cheaper and much more accessible. And Ryan really pushed against the idea, which I totally respected. He's like, "I want to create the culture of people utilizing virtual reality. I don't want to give them an out at the end of the month because they got to ship back the headset." And so having that buy-in, having them own the gear to engage in virtual reality, to engage in these communities and these, and build these relationships, I mean, this is so good.

Yeah, and you know, we're not there to get souvenirs, but a VR headset's a pretty sick souvenir.

Yeah, from a mission trip, I mean, I literally, I keep mine here at my desk. I've got it just right over there in a charger ready to jump in at a moment's notice. And I am really excited at the idea of pioneering these ideas with the churches, you know, it's funny. Like, I'm just as a guy that literally is championing, he's pioneering, trying to get churches to get behind the idea of a metaverse church. I'm also recognizing that that's probably one of the more controversial statements I've ever said, getting churches to open up in the metaverse. And that, you know, I'll talk with the digital pastor, I'll talk with the metaverse pastor, I'll talk with the volunteer, and there's excitement around virtual reality. But somewhere up the stream, the excitement stops. Maybe it's an executive pastor, maybe it's a lead pastor, maybe it's an elder board. For whatever reason, you know, there's a lot of pushback.

It's interesting. I'm going to side note on this. Push Pay actually came out with some stats centered around the state of their state of the church tech address. There's some, they did some research and they released it February 23rd. But they actually found that 25 percent of churches today in America are interested in launching a church in virtual reality. So even though you've got these tensions, there's somebody that's interested. You know, I believe there's somebody upstream in the orgs that are not comfortable with that. And I think that's really what causes, you know, a lot of negativity that causes a lot of churches to get stuck.

I believe this mission trip is the opportunity to move beyond that, because it gives you an opportunity to cast vision to volunteers. For volunteers to buy into it, you're able to get credible stories about what's happening in the space. You're able to explore what the metaverse is without feeling pressure of, "Oh my gosh, I've got to do a church, I got to do a church." No, you're going on a mission trip. You're meeting persons of peace. You're meeting your person of peace. You're exploring the culture that's there. And as a result of it, it gives you permission to explore without coming in and saying, "We're doing this." And it gives you an opportunity to tell better stories to your leadership, to ground it with volunteers that are saying, "We want to."

Do this that's going to give you a much better case for doing a church in virtual reality as opposed to coming in blindly with it. So I love the idea of you know crock-potting this, doing the mission trip, going slowly through the process and trying instead of trying to force something through.

Hey Ryan, as a four-year-old church, I know I'm curious like, are you interested in doing a church in virtual reality? Like what, what is the takeaway from this trip? What are you hoping to walk away with? How is your church going to be better as a result of this?

Yeah, absolutely. We're 100 percent interested in starting a virtual reality either church or campus. I lean more towards church. But you know, I mentioned the idea of walking away with our people more equipped to share Jesus. But you know, early on when we were ten months old, yeah, ten months old is when the pandemic hit. One of the very first things we did was we did a virtual internship because we were wanting to do a summer internship with our church plant, kind of you know, missionaries come spend the summer with us and help us plant roots into the community. But with COVID happening, we had to shift pretty quickly. And I had the idea, why don't we just do a virtual internship? And I'd never heard of that idea before, but it was awesome. And we were able to connect with people in different ways than we'd ever connected with people before. Even though some of our interns were like, one of our interns was in Texas and we're up here in Washington State. And so we were able to do that. But then also we were able to really connect on a real level with people who still to this day have not set foot into our brick and mortar building. And so yeah, you know, I forgot the question, but there's something about something maybe completely unrelated.

Yeah, that's awesome. I'm going to build off of what he said. There's a much larger percentage of atheists and agnostics in this space. There's a much larger percentage of mental health issues and addictive behaviors. When we talk about virtual reality, you are seeing a different type of person than who's coming to your church building. And that's not to discredit your building. That's not to discredit virtual reality ministry. It's bringing attention to the fact that if we are going to complete the Great Commission, we need to not only need our church buildings operating the way that they are. We need to start exploring and getting into spaces like virtual reality and starting to address this darkness and these spaces and these communities. You know, we talk a lot in the book of VR in the metaverse church. I mean, I tell stories of women who have been raped in virtual reality. They tell the stories of how their avatar was raped in these worlds. We tell stories of strip clubs, the million dollar strip clubs that are operating in that space, selling rights to do things in dark back rooms that probably shouldn't be done. And this is not the reason that we run from virtual reality church. This is the reason that we run towards virtual reality and get in these spaces. And it's so exciting to me to see guys like Ryan and women that are already doing ministry in that space as well really championing and stepping forward and saying we want to go in that space and we want to help others catch a vision for what can be. And so this is who we're looking for for these metaverse learning communities that we're doing specifically through Leadership Network. We're looking for twenty-five churches to step up and say, hey, we're going to explore the space. We want a guide to go on this journey with us and really help us start to explore what metaverse ministry, what a metaverse mission field, and what a metaverse church can look like. And so thankfully we've got Tsunami. Like I said, he'll be on the next podcast next week. Stuart McPherson is coming on with the metaverse mission field learning community and is diving in with us on helping churches explore, helping churches do these mission trips, train your people or specifically on what metaverse missions looks like, and then explore the idea of what a church can be. By the way, Stewart's, we'll get into it, but Stewart's actually creating a virtual reality church network where he's trying to gather together churches of all denominations and wants to see a massive movement of God in virtual reality space. And he's doing that through Digital Church Network. So some incredible things coming up, but it all centered around this mission field concept of what we're kicking off here.

Hey Ryan, I'm curious. I actually don't know the answer to this. Do you have an eternal goal of how many people you're hoping to get on your specific mission trip with River City?

Yeah, I really don't. I really don't have a goal. It was more of just a crazy idea. We have some other mission trips that are, you know, IRL mission trips coming up. And so we're wanting to beef those up as well. But we're not large by any means. And I want to just use this as an encouragement to say, you know, when I hear big crazy ideas like this, I'm like, man, they must be a big church with a lot of money. Like, we're not a big church at all. We're a four-year-old church plant that has spent the majority of our ministry in pandemic times. You know, and so we're not a large ministry by any means. And so I think it would be a huge win if we had a dozen people from our church doing this. And that's awesome.

And by the way, what that would give to church is a dozen, hopefully at the end of the mission trip, a dozen people that are bought into the ministry that understand what metaverse ministry is. And now you've got a dozen people potentially to build a core team to build a church around in virtual reality. By the way, you don't want to lose that same evangelistic aim when you launch the church. You need those people to continue to go out into the virtual reality worlds and bring into the church. Like there's a one-to-two relationship. So often, and Ryan can attest to this as a church planter, so often in church planting, even in physical space, we lose that evangelistic aim and instead transition into service planning and things like that once the actual physical church launches. And we don't want to lose that evangelism. We don't want to lose that missional aim of the church. We want to keep that bright and fresh even when the physical services or the virtuality services launch in this context.

And so hey, this has been a great conversation, Ryan. I do want to note that with the learning communities through Leadership Network, we're not only doing a metaverse learning community. We're doing a digital learning community as well. And so like, if you are a church that's saying, hey, this is crazy, I would never do anything in virtual reality. 2023, I understand what you're saying. Wait till Apple comes out with their headsets. Watch the world explode in virtual reality. And nobody's ever going to be able to spell AI anymore. Everybody's going to go back to VR. Maybe Apple's probably going to be too expensive, but augmented reality, mixed reality is really going to be the thing anyway. But we're doing a digital learning community that's going to be going on a digital mission trip where we're going to be utilizing some of these same blessed practices. We're going to be training churches on how to create digital missionaries to lean into digital communities, not metaverse, not virtual reality communities, digital communities, communities like social media or Facebook groups or even video games, starting to be more engaging in communities that exist in that space. Even things like, oh, I don't know, Nike Plus, you know, engaging on their app and things like that. Any place where there's a community, I would suggest there's an opportunity definitely for relationships. And at any time there's a relationship, there's an opportunity for Christ. And where Christ comes into play, there's a chance for a church. And so this is really the approach that we want to share with churches, more of not creating a community that exists in digital space, especially in digital, but more of how do we engage better in communities that are already existing for Christ? What does it mean to really have a digital missionary? Empower the people in your church to be those digital missionaries. Somebody wrote a book on that. I got to think of, you know, sharingjesusonline.com. You can download it. Dr. John's a genius, and I just, you know, show up every once in a while. But definitely excited about what's coming up here in digital and metaverse spaces.

So Ryan, your specific church was at the website. More information to get connected into your specific mission trip is where again?

River City Vancouver dot com. So we'll have rivercityvancouver.com. We'll have that in the show notes. And so if you're an individual interested in getting connected into a learning community, that one is a great place to go. If you are an organization interested in hosting a metaverse mission trip like what Ryan's doing, hit us up at the Leadership Network Learning Community. It's at leadnet.org, L-E-A-D-N-E-T dot org slash MLC for the metaverse one, the virtual reality one. And if you're interested in the digital one, it's leadnet.org DLC for digital learning community. Hopefully you see how we did that. We're pretty trying to be smart there. So either one of those are open. Leadership Network's learning communities are going to be in the fall, September, October, November, December. So definitely time to sign up now and save your spot for how we're going to do this in the fall.

So hey, man, this has been great, Ryan. Short and sweet. And definitely excited. Thank you, by the way, to whoever decided that Relevant Magazine write an article about this because that kind of made my day. But man, I swear as we're landing the plane, any questions? Go ahead.

Yeah, well, I want to share one more thing just that I think is kind of important. And we talked about the idea of this mission trip transcending time zones. So how we have someone in France and Kyrgyzstan jumping in with us. But one of the things that I've seen in promoting this is it really transcends physical abilities as well. And this is one of the things that kind of blew my mind when I was speaking to somebody who said, you know, my wife's been in a chair for several years, so she's unable to go on a typical mission trip. But he was like, but she could go on this one. And that really got my brain, you know, just my wheels turning about. I know so many people who are unable to go on a, you know, a quote-unquote real mission trip because of, you know, immuno-compromised or social anxiety or fill in the blank, you know, physical limitations. And so this is something that transcends that as well. So I'm really excited about seeing who is going to engage with us on this trip.

Yeah, the implications and the opportunities to have people that aren't able to connect on that physical mission trip to engage in the metaverse, you know, not only do I think that you can empower a different, you can reach a different person in that space, but I agree. I think you empower a different type of leader, a different type of volunteer to engage. And I know plenty of people that aren't socially comfortable communicating in physical space that would do very well in a metaverse.

Metaverse environment or even a digital environment and rather than trying to force people into one context, to be able to open up and create other contexts in other environments for people to speak into and share the gospel. Man, this is a great opportunity I think for churches like yours out there to really start to discover how metaverse ministry, how virtual reality ministry, how leaning into digital communities are going to reach a different person and empower a different leader and still have that same opportunity to disciple at the level that your churches are expecting.

So hey, Ryan, man, thank you. Well, first off, thank you for dreaming weird dreams and listening when God said go talk to that Jeff guy because that's encouraging to know he knows me up there and is still thinking good things about me. So hopefully we see more ideas like this happen. And by the way, if your church has got crazy ideas, man, listen, like I said, I rarely ever say no these days and it's a lot of fun. You know, at this point I actually rarely ever say no. It's not no, it's hey, have you met this guy? Because there's usually if I can't do it, there's somebody else that can. And it is so much fun pioneering and exploring new space for the kingdom.

So but hey, with this we're going to land a plane. Check out rivercityvancouver.com for Ryan's. Check out leadnet.org, MLC and DLC for what's coming up with the metaverse and digital learning communities. And excited about pioneering this new idea of a digital and metaverse missions.

So hey, check out. I know Jeff got your hopes up about mission trips. Don't expect to meet your partner on this virtual mission trip. If we could arrange some virtual reality marriages, there's an interesting documentary. It was on HBO Max. It was centered around a married couple that got married in VR Chat. Was that the Taco Bell one? No, there was a Taco Bell couple that got married in the Taco Bell metaverse recently. That was no kidding. That would be awesome. It's 2023, man. It's getting weird.

So hey, lean into this stuff and try not to me. Well, yeah, listen, you want to find your wife in virtual reality, but we're going to land a plane. Four for Ryan, this is Jeff at the Church Digital and Digital Church Network. Thanks for jumping on the podcast here. Season five continuing next week with Tsunami. See y'all then. Talk to you later.