EP272-Stuart McPherson & Planting a 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, welcome to Church Digital Podcast. This is going to be a fun podcast. We are in the middle of season five: how to take your digital ministry, how to take your metaverse ministry to the next level. We've got a great guest coming in on the podcast here today. Now remember, this season we're talking a lot about Leadership Network and their learning communities that are coming up. We're doing a digital ministry learning community, and we're doing a metaverse ministry learning community. We're talking about how to level up digital churches, how to take digital churches to the next level, how to do the same thing with metaverse ministry. And really the metaverse is what we want to focus on today.

By the way, before I get into that, I forgot to give you the URLs. If you're interested in checking out more information on the learning communities, check out leadnet.org slash DLC for the digital learning community, or leadnet.org slash MLC for the metaverse learning community. Hopefully you see how that works: leadnet.org DLC or MLC.

And I am honored today. I've teased this guy two times, and I'm watching him off screen cracking up as I'm having this conversation right now. I'm happy to bring in Tsunami into the conversation. Tsunami, it's great to have you here. Stun on me? Stunned on me? Is that not all I said, right? You're like my Mark Lutz. I don't know how to pronounce your name. Tsunami? Tsunami? Right? Stewing on me? Stew? Stupid not me? But I thought the short version was Stun. Is it not Stunned? I'm confused at this moment.

So Mark and Jay have both called me Stun from the chat because they just see the short version. They see the full name, a full metaverse name, Tsunami. So my name's Stuart. For anybody who's not aware, so Stuart and I turned that into Tsunami. And so in the chat, when I've been into like their Twitch streams, they just see "student army" pop up, and for whatever reason, both of their brains went to just reading the first four letters. And so I went from Stuart to Tsunami to now I'm just a stunning good-looking individual.

Yeah, that was a nice play right there. You're a stunning good-looking individual on a podcast. You've never looked greater on this podcast. Maybe our YouTube audience can't just soak in the greatness that is your beauty. By the way, you do ministry in virtual reality. Once again, probably not the best place for a stunning individual like you, Stun Ami.

So stunning good-looking individual? Yeah, very good, man. We're not even five minutes into this thing, and we are off the rails. So listen, Stewart is a friend for a while now, and we just have seen his church, Lakeland Church, do some incredible things in virtual reality. And it's funny. We were even talking offline today where, hey, hey, Stuart, you may not consider yourself this, but I think he's growing into the idea of being the minister metaverse ministry expert. Like, Stu, I don't know of anybody else in the country that is full-time whose only priority is metaverse ministry now. I know you've picked up some digital responsibilities here in a little bit, but that wasn't at a discredit of what's happening in the metaverse. It was there was a need in digital space, and so like, you are still pioneering in this space, really championing this idea of a full-time physical church doing metaverse ministry in ways that very few, if any, churches are really doing before. How right? How does that feel? How does it feel to be that guy?

I tell you, Jeff, it's still super awkward, I guess, would be the right word to use for that. Just like, you know, my wife, anytime she has to tell somebody what it is that I do for a living, she's like, "I really don't know how to explain what it is that you do to somebody else." And I say, I tell her, "It's okay, because I don't know how to explain what I do to anybody else either, but I get paid full time to do it, and I'm having a lot of fun."

I would say this: if there's any real way of summarizing how I feel about it, it's, you know, we talked about this before on my Discord. My bio on there just simply says, "Attacking the gates of hell all around the world through a headset, through the metaverse, right?" And I think that really summarizes how I feel about this. I'm just excited because that's how I'm wired, and I'm getting to do it. So it's fun. It's a lot of fun.

That's awesome, and that's the right answer to have. I was just a guest on Tsunami's podcast, which is called Metaverse Church Podcast. Yeah, Night of Research Podcast is part of the TCD Podcast Network. I was a guest on that. I mean, probably by the time this airs, maybe a month ago, but had a chance to talk about metaverse mission trips, and that's one of the things that we'll get into a little bit with this conversation.

But Tsunami, Stewart's going to be helping me lead this leadership Network learning community that we are putting together and doing. It's going to be two physical meetups and three online meetups this fall. And so if your church is interested in doing metaverse ministry, man, come hang out with Stu and I. We're going to be at Community Christian Church, Dave Ferguson's church, up in Illinois, then we're gonna be hanging out at Northwood Church in Keller, Texas in December. So we'll get Chicago in September before it freezes over, and then we'll be down in Texas in December, which may be a little cold, but not as bad as what Tsunami does.

I'm glad you're in virtual reality ministry because, you know, where you are is Minnesota or Wisconsin. I can Wisconsin. Like, Wisconsin, at what point does the world freeze over and you just turn into the Frozen "Let It Go" like world, man?

On a good year, in the two to three years that I've been here, about the end of October, we can maybe start predicting the first snow coming. But here we are, like at the time of this recording, most people in the US right now are experiencing spring and kind of gearing up for summer time, and I still have all of my winter clothing out.

Yeah, man, you look. If you're watching on YouTube, you look quite warm right now. You got the long sleeve jacket on. And yeah, man, awesome. That's good for you. That's a good time. I mean, just stay warm and enjoy that virtual reality ministry. So that's kind of the best part is like doing VR ministry. I have the ultimate control over the weather in our VR campus, and we can have service outside every single weekend under the stars if I want, and it's like a nice seventy-five degrees because that's what my thermostat says.

So I tell you what, why don't we just transition right off that seventy-six-degree church under the stars? Talk to us a little bit here. You know, I don't think I've done a lot of interviews with you in like Leadership Network podcasts and different things, but I'm actually trying to think when it's been a minute since you've been on this, the Church Digital Podcast. So tell my audience a little bit here. Like, what metaverse ministry looks like for you? What does actually doing ministry, doing church, look like? And where are you at now that, you know, AltSpace is gone? What have you evolved into in recent months?

Yeah, so here's the crazy part, Jeff. You just brought to my realization that I actually don't know that I've ever been on this podcast before. I don't want to call myself out publicly, yeah, but I was doing all of my virtual reality stuff over on Leadership Network show, and I know you're over there, and I did Leadership Network podcasts with you and panels, and I you're new. This is your first time on this show, bro. And so first off, welcome to the show. Glad you could join us. But yeah, this is a sudden realization for me. It's like, man, well, I'm glad we could have you on the flagship.

But tell me, tell me a little bit about ministry. Look, before I get into that, I do have to say this: like, you sit there and you start this whole podcast talking about how I'm the expert in this field, and I don't know that that's necessarily true, or if I bought into that yet. But you got to know what it feels like for me to be the guy that you're calling the expert, and I listen to this podcast on a regular basis, and I've never been invited. About calling me out? Oh my gosh. He doesn't even. He says all these things just to kind of pump me up, and that never invites me onto the Church Digital Podcast. And I don't even know how I feel right now.

So all that being said, all that being said, oh my gosh, yeah, well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't do that. Oh, dang it. All right, all right. Publicly, this podcast is so far off the rails. I love every second of this. By publicly apologize to Tsunami, Stuart McPherson, for not having him specifically on my show until episode, embarrassingly, what is this? What did I say? This was 272. I have managed to have 271 other conversations than Stuart McPherson, who I am suggesting is the expert in virtual reality ministry in 2023. Now, stations, I've empowered him in other ways, but I, for contractual reasons that I am not able to get into on air, did not have him on my show here.

So Stuart, will you humbly forgive me?

Oh man, I forgive you so much, Chef. I'm just honored that I do get to be here. And look, as we are talking about metaverse ministry and we're talking about how the show is like already off the rails right now, I feel like those two things really, they go hand in hand with each other. Because I think what a lot of people typically think of when they hear the idea of church in the metaverse or church specifically in virtual reality, I think that they think that the church is off the rails in the process of that. Like, what are we even thinking about bringing church into these spaces? And to be honest with you, on a podcast that my co-host Goose and I did, we even talked about how church in the metaverse, what it's actually doing, is slaughtering the sacred cows of the church. And we're starting to realize that there's a lot of things that we as the church felt like were non-negotiables, that you had to have in order to be considered the church, whether that's certain days or times or however you're doing ministry, that also aren't realizing, especially in the metaverse, those are sacred cows that we're able to bring to the altar and just leave them there and say, "Let's just do what God has called us to do, which is to be the hands and feet of Jesus in these spaces."

So it's a lot of fun. You know, us over at Lakeland, we've been in virtual reality for over two years now. It started off as just what was supposed to be a six-month trial. Let's see if we can get a church started in there. If we get nothing more than a small group that's meeting in VR, we would consider that a win. And two years later, we were still going. We have a team. We officially call it a campus. So we see it as a multi-site campus. And we're just doing it every single week. So like you said, we were in AltSpace.

That's originally where we launched into these days we are in spatial dot IO and really kind of invest in our time in that space right now and yeah man we're just having a lot of fun and doing this just because we're getting the opportunity to meet with people that you wouldn't typically find walking in through the physical doors of the church and yet they're finding their way into our virtual reality campus and bringing solid solid questions about faith and religion as a whole to our VR campus and just watching we're having fun watching the needle move on people's spiritual journeys on that meter.

I love your church. You know, I met Josh Amstutz, the lead pastor there. Met him before COVID and I vividly remember the first time I met him on a Zoom call was through Stadia church planting and Greg Nettle, he's the president and CEO of Stadia, was on the call with me. It was the three of us and Greg introduced me to Josh and Josh told me that he was very passionate about seeing Lakeland launch a VR campus. I just remember, you know, almost embarrassingly so, I just had this look of awestruck on my face, just was almost speechless because it was the first time I had actually heard a lead pastor say the words VR. I didn't even know, and this is the joke that I told Josh at the moment, I was like, I didn't even know a lead pastor could spell VR. Like, this is a whole new world for me. You know, in 2019, COVID brought a bunch of that around, but to 2019, early 2020, before COVID hit, whenever this meeting was, was phenomenal to see Josh with that vision. And Stu, this was before you were even at the church, I believe you came during COVID. And so to see the church with that vision kind of dive into it so early and to see ministry happening as a result in pioneering, it's interesting to me that you say it's a multi-site campus. I would love for you maybe to unpack because you're aware of physical ministry, you've had traction in physical space, you're now doing virtual reality, you are somewhat getting back connected into digital because there's a vacuum at this moment. Talk to me a little bit what are some similarities and maybe what are some differences between physical ministry and virtual reality ministry?

Yeah, so I grew up in a multi-site church and so even from the onset of it, I wouldn't say it necessarily on the onset of it, but quickly after we launched it into even doing VR ministry, we just came to the realization that just because of what technology provides us, we were able to really live stream our services that were currently going on in real time into the VR platform that we're meeting in, which again was all Space at the time, now it's Spatial, but what that really kind of freed me up to do is really be the campus pastor for our VR campus in the sense that, hey, we'll let our senior pastor do the heavy lifting on the teaching side and really bring in a lot of that DNA aspect and teaching. Well, I'm there for really soul care and helping people develop or take a next step on their spiritual journey.

And so what we ended up really kind of quickly finding out and realizing was this really isn't something that could be done with a single person, but it was going to take a team. So I started to look at what does a physical church plant or campus have and what do we need to bring into VR that a physical campus would have? And a lot of it was, well, we have people who are out in the parking lot waving people in and saying hi right when they get onto the campus. We have people who are holding open doors, welcoming people in. We've got a next step station, greeters, all that kind of stuff, prayer team, and whatnot. And I was like, we need all of this in virtual reality because if you have one person who's just doing it, then all of a sudden you don't have every single person who is popping into the environment who is being greeted. If I'm having a conversation with somebody with all their thousands of questions that they're bringing in about Christianity or any other religion whatsoever, then we don't have somebody there who can pray for somebody who is needy in prayer at that moment in time. At the end of the service, I can't as an individual act with every single person to talk about what their next step might be. I can platform what all those next steps might be, but the one-on-one conversation just can't happen.

So we looked at all that and said if the physical expression of the church needs all this in order to help shepherd people along their spiritual journey, then the VR campus also needs those people to help shepherd our VR attenders along their spiritual journey as well. So even in the process of us officially launching the campus in March 2020, where are we at? Three, so at 2022, we just proposed and we invited people in on this journey with us. And I actually went to our current physical teams and said that person is a great greeter. I wonder if they'll put on a headset and do that in virtual reality. That person is a solid prayer team member. I wonder if they would do that and put on a headset and do it in virtual reality. And so we just gave the invitation and we just built this thing up to go and be the real physical expression of Lakeland in virtual reality.

That's fascinating. I don't know that I've had this conversation with you ever before. Like, so you recall this is my first time on your show, Jeff. Who knew? Like, there's so much depth to where you're at. So you recruited like what I'm hearing you is you recruited a physical church greeter and said, let me teach you how to put on this headset and do virtual reality now come do this for my, it's like you quite literally you can give me names of people that joined your ministry doing that route?

Yep, yeah, absolutely incredible. Like, what were those initial conversations? Were people excited? Were they mortified? Were they laughing at you? Like, what did those first conversations go?

Yeah, sure. I would say that above all it was just interest. I think there was just more of like, I'm interested in what we are doing as a church in virtual reality. And then what they needed to hear was just the contextualization of me saying exactly what you do right now for the church, I want you to do that in VR. So like, we have one guy, he's one of our team members, love this dude to death. In fact, I believe he is a virtual reality pastor in the making and I've told him this. I've told him that specifically for VR chat of all places I think that's where he would thrive. But anyways, yeah, but he's never met anybody that wasn't already his best friend. And so like, I brought him with me on a trip actually. You've met him before. I brought him with me to one of the learning communities down in Houston and it was just one of those like, I knew that he was going to pull me out of my comfort zone just because of who he is. He's gonna drag you along with them for the most part. But he does this with every single person that walks onto the property. He wears this big old foam hand and he's high-fiving kids and he's welcoming people onto the site. And again, he's everybody's best friend. I was like, dude, if you would just bring that mentality into virtual reality, like if you're chasing people down and saying, hey, give me a high five, whatever it is, if you just let people know who are spawning into our event that they are seen and you're just trying to get like any kind of information from them whatsoever, it's like, dude, that's gonna be such a huge win because like, we know in VR and digital ministry as a whole, like if you're streaming your service on Facebook, anybody can come and see it for like two seconds and then pop, they're gone. But in virtual reality, you can't just scroll through the service on like all the other feeds that are going on. Like, you have to intentionally decide to enter into that environment. And so for us, it was we want to get you right when you pop in. So just like the parking lot, right when you get in, you're getting waved at. We placed team members right at the spawn point so when you came in it was like, dude, I see you, I'm so glad that you're here. And for us that was a sticky moment. Like, most likely somebody was going to at least give us more than just thirty seconds of their time. We were now going to at least get two to five minutes if not the entire length of the service.

So it was intriguing for them by me just saying, hey, we have a VR campus. What you're doing, I want you to do it in there. Would you be willing to do this? And then it just turned into interest meetings. So just in the same way that a physical church or church planter would start hosting interest meetings, we started doing it for our VR campus, presented the idea, the information to everybody, vision casted, and said, okay, who wants to come with us? And then from there we invested in more headsets, started having team meetings, and then we officially launched Easter 2022 of our VR campus. So that would have been like our third version of what we started back in 2021.

Yeah, yeah, that's the dates make sense because I was like, no, no, you've been doing since twenty-one, but that's good. Yeah.

You know, it's really fascinating to me and what you're starting to allude to is the similarities between the ecclesiology, between the functions, the operation of a physical church and a virtual reality church. You know, it's interesting. Virtual reality is far more controversial than a digital church. I can, you know, I'll say the words virtual reality in baptism on a YouTube video and I'll get slammed on YouTube as a result of that. But really, like the actual functions, as long as you recognize you're not breathing the same air molecules, the functions of the church are very similar. And so like, you're alluding to that really well. And so the controversy of virtual reality church, of churches in that space, are huge. And just ten times more hate for me at a personal level center around virtual reality. And that's been well documented now. What people cannot argue with is the idea of the mission field of virtual reality, like the missional implications of that space where people are literally utilizing this technology to step into virtual worlds to literally talk. Like, that's what people go into virtual reality for. There is a world called VR chat because of this exact reason. People go into virtual reality to chat. It's built around conversation. And so what better place to look at evangelism, to look at sharing Jesus, to look at being a missionary?

And so you know, it's interesting. I was on Stu's podcast, or Stun's podcast. You know, you're so rude to me earlier. I may forget your name, man. I may turn you into Mark Lutz or Lutz or whatever that guy's name is. I love Mark. Mark, you're listening to this, I love every bit of you. My tongue is not genetically aligned to say your last name correctly. I'm sorry. But I would look at, you know, I was on Stu's podcast talking about this. There was actually a relevant article written recently where I'm working with a church on doing what we think is the first metaverse mission trip where that church, we're doing some training in June and July with the church and they're trying to get people to go be the church and to go be on mission, to be on a mission trip in virtual reality. You know, just like you would go into Bolivia to do a mission trip, you buy a thousand dollar plane ticket to Bolivia, you have to pay for the visa, you have to make sure...

Your passport's aligned, you got to pay for a hotel, you have to pay for food, you're gonna have to miss a week worth of work, you're probably gonna pay a couple thousand dollars to go be on mission in Bolivia. You got to learn the language, you got to adapt to the culture. You're going to do some physical activities, you're going to walk around and meet people and share about Jesus on the street or help out the physical ministry that's happening there. But you're going to spend a week worth of time and spend a couple thousand to be on mission in Bolivia.

And so we believe, and we're actually doing this through the learning community that we're doing through Leadership Network, we believe that you can do and be a metaverse missionary. And actually, our hope is to empower 250 people over 2023 to be missionaries in the metaverse to bless people. You know, somebody wrote a book on blessing in the metaverse. The name's escaping me. Oh, Doctor Dr. John Harris, that's who I'm thinking of. But you know, I know him. Yeah, yeah, that guy, that guy's smart. The other guy, I don't know, he's a little flaky. That other guy. But we wrote a book on blessing people, on being digital and metaverse missionaries. And so we're inviting churches, just like we did this one that's happening this summer, we're inviting churches to join us on this mission to be digital and metaverse missionaries, to be on mission in the metaverse in virtual reality.

Stu, how do you when you look at like relational evangelism, and even like we were having a conversation earlier even talking about trauma-infused evangelism, which is I think very helpful in the metaverse, like these different approaches of having conversations and being relational, do you see that working? Like, have you seen that or experienced something in your life that speaks to that?

Yeah, so you know, I did an event in Altspace before I shut down that was actually really intriguing to me. Yeah, I went to my senior pastor and I just said, "Hey, I want to run an event that is separate of Lakeland. And I just want to see what conversations spark from it." And basically, the event was, you know, Altspace gave us the ability back then to advertise on a main event board, and I just put on the main event board, "What is wrong with the church today?" and just left it wide open. And when people started coming into the event, I opened up the event and I said, "I established the ground rules of: I'm not muting anybody in this event, and I'm not shutting down any conversation in this event other than if you are somebody who carries the banner of Jesus and you start trying to defend the church, I will shut that one down. This event is just for people to voice their concerns or what they think is wrong with the church today," because I knew that that was going to welcome and invite many people in.

So like you brought up trauma, trauma-informed, trauma-infused evangelism as a book that you and are both familiar with. And I think that's what people are looking for these days is they're just looking to voice their hurt or their disgust, if you will, with or about the church. And so that in and of itself is missional. It's understanding the culture of the people that you're with and letting them inform you as the follower, as the missionary, as to what their spiritual temperature is. And then it gives you all the information that you really need to be able to meet them where they're at. So you're no longer trying to force a conversation or force anything upon the individual, but you're actually getting to know who this person is on a relational level. And then they invite you to be able to speak into their life.

So you know, we did that and I saw a lot of great success that came along with it. I also would say that for those who were carrying the banner of Jesus into the event, it was eye-opening for them to learn like, "Hey, maybe the old traditional ways of how we do things don't necessarily work or play well within these environments." But that's separate to what we typically do for a service in VR as Lakeland, because we livestream. That's not necessarily missional in its approach. It's very typical to a physical church Sunday service. An arena is established and we're waiting for people to walk in to participate in the service, whereas doing something like that, it's we're going out onto the mission field to just get to know people first. And if they allow us to speak into their lives at that point, then we were awarded that opportunity based off of just being there and being known.

So yeah, is it difficult to connect those two? Like, do you feel like you built a relationship or are still building a relationship with some of those people? Altspace is dead, so that makes things difficult. But like connecting the dots towards getting them into a physical ministry or something towards long term, what would something like that look like to turn some of those skeptics that you had a conversation with in that meeting and building relationships that could point to Jesus?

Yeah, so with those people, even some of the people that have popped into our services, I've always provided the next step of like, because they do come in with their questions or their concerns, I just invite them to follow us on Discord. So we made our Discord super simple to find. We just say, you know, just go to Lakeland discord.com and that's the invite link. So as soon as you type that in, it drops you right in. But then I give them the invitation to find me on there and send me a friend request. So you know, I tried really hard to make sure that whatever my name is on in the VR platforms is the same or close to what my Discord name is, and I invite them to continuing the conversation outside of that environment.

And let's walk through scripture together. Like, if you have questions, like let's let God's word speak for itself. And anytime that we come across anything, even if it's like the first word, third of whatever book that we're reading through, if it causes you to have a question or concern, then let's stop and let's explore that together. So it's just let him know like, "Hey, I actually want to be with you on this journey. I don't want to just present something to you and assume that you are now going to be a card-carrying member of Lakeland or you know the movement of Jesus." It's like, "Did I know that this is a process? I'm still on the journey myself. It's a continual learning process." And so I just invite them to take it outside of just that one conversation and actually turn it into a relational thing.

We've had some people that have taken me up on that. I think like the coolest one is like we've had some Muslim missionaries, if you will, pop into some of our services in order to kind of spark debate, I guess. And we even had one guy that he came in and you know, he was just like, "Look, I don't believe what you guys believe in, and he goes, in fact, I'm actually a Muslim. But I've always had questions." And I was like, "Dude, great." And so he started asking his questions. And at one point I was like, "Can we pause for a second? I was like, dude, what I would really love for you to do is tell me what you know about Christianity or what you think you know about Christianity. Let's start there and then let's kind of see where that goes."

And by the time it was all said and done, I was able to tell him, and this ended up becoming a conversation off VR and into Discord, but I was able to, I was like, "So what you just told me is that you believe Christianity is a little bit of Jehovah's Witness, a little bit of Mormonism, a little bit of whatever, and you think that is the Christian faith because all these people are proclaiming Jesus. I said, you have a very muddy picture of the Christian faith and of who Jesus is. Like, let's try to clear up the mud a little bit. Let's try to get to clean water and then walk from there to answer the questions." I said, "Because I believe the misconceptions that you have of Jesus right now are what's making it difficult for you to fully understand the text of what God's word is saying, and it's muffling your ears to hearing God's truth right now."

And so that ended up becoming a conversation offline, online, trying to cope with that one of us walking together through just God's word and just being able to answer some questions.

It's interesting. And so at no point did the Muslim guy bomb you or get really mad and offended at the conversations you were having?

No, I've had those, but not him.

What percentage of people are you know, get offended in virtual reality? Like, I'll just be honest, I have not had, I've had maybe one or two out of all the conversations I've had. Like, it's a very small percentage.

Is that the same for you?

Yeah, it's I would say that it's small. I would say that that small percentage is obviously also the loudest voice in the room. And I think that it changes per platform as well. I think because a lot of churches were hopping into Altspace at one point, like when we got into it two years ago, pretty much every event that we put on, we were inviting the trolls in like bugs to a bug zapper. But as more churches were hopping into the platform, the less trolls we were seeing. And I kind of feel like it was just the mentality of, "Well, they're not going away. In fact, more of them are coming in, so there's just no point of even trying to fight this anymore."

Now that Altspace is shut down, you go to a platform like, let's say Big Screen. Anytime that I run something at Big Screen, I'm guaranteed at least for every three people in the room, one of them is a troll for sure. So you're talking about like a good third of the people in the room are definitely trolls. Big Screen is fifteen people max, so probably about five will be trolls. But they also have the same mentality. Like, if they're there trying to disrupt, if as long as you keep going with the conversation or whatever your event is, they eventually just see themselves out. And we've used that as an opportunity before of like, "Hey, so you popped into this event. You know what it's about because you know we're not shy of church or Jesus or anything like that. Like, why do you feel the need to pop into this and start cussing us out or saying some of the vulgar stuff that you do or whatever?"

And what has been interesting is there are some trolls that they come back and they're like, "Well, the church is just blah blah, are you Christians are just blah blah." It's like, "And at any point in time in this conversation, have you heard me put you down of your lifestyle or anything like that? Like, you're on the attack of me right now, and I'm just over here like taking it full on and saying it like I'm glad that you're here. Like, there kind of seems to be like there's a weird thing going on with like you feel like I'm very judgmental, and yet I haven't judged you once, but yeah, you're judging me hardcore for just the title of the event that's in here."

And then it turns into a really sweet conversation of like, "Well, you know, just all of you Christians," and I'm just like, "Yeah, well, we're pretty jacked up too. That's what I'm trying to point out to you."

So yeah, just embracing the trolls. I have, I don't have a lot of Big Screen experience like you do, but I have had multiple people tell me that that's probably more troll heavy. So that's it's interesting to see the trends there.

Hey, through the community, we're wanting to help churches better understand virtual reality and the nuances of ministry, how to...

Deal with trolls, how to have these conversations with people, how to marry together the idea of the church service with a metaverse virtual reality, um, missionary team that that's out there that that can be aggressive, having these conversations and and building relationships, how to balance um evangelism centered a relational evangelism with it.

Uh, even the mission trip. Ryan sit home with uh with River City Church. I just blanked on the name. River City Church is is that that Pioneer that said hey, he came up to me. He's like, "Hey, let's let's do a metaverse mission trip." Uh, he had read both my books and said, "I'll say hey, that's a great idea," and he says, "You, I'm surprised you're not already doing it because you talked about it in your book," and I was like, "Oh yeah, so that's that's a thing too." So um, but yeah, that's that's what we want to do here. And and honestly, like through these learning communities we're doing with Leadership Network with River City Church, and we're actually also working with GACX internationally, like the Digital Church Network, TCD, the Church Digital, we want to see 250 people um go on a metaverse mission trip in '23, and and we would love to see 10 churches planted uh in virtual reality. Like our hope is to see these churches get a taste for what metaverse ministry, for a virtual reality ministry looks like, uh to develop stories, to build up a volunteer corps through the mission trip experience that can then help plant a church in that space. We're hoping that these metaverse mission trips will literally lead people to the persons of peace, that churches will connect with persons of peace in virtual reality, that prayer walking within these virtual reality space, God will indicate in their hearts in their spirit where to go, and that we will see at least 10 churches launched in virtual reality this year. And so an incredible opportunity. Once again, it's Leadership at leadnet.org slash mlc for the metaverse learning community. And uh, I don't think I said this earlier, you get a hundred dollars off. Uh, we're gonna we're gonna make this uh friends of Tsunami. And so if you if you type in coupon code Tsunami Stu and Ami, you get a hundred bucks off off that. And so so it's a great opportunity to get connected with other churches that are on the journey um to to walk with some people like Stu who's already been there, Stu, who's already been there, uh knows the the past, knows where the skeletons are buried, knows where the pit holes are in the road um and can walk along that. And and Stu and I were talking about this offline, the idea of doing the mission trip first to allow your church to get acclimated to the culture and to really understand the missional implications centered around relational evangelism. Oh my gosh, like the ability to walk in any questions or challenges your leadership has. Dude, it's a freaking mission trip. Why would you? Are you really suggesting that we're not able to go on a mission trip? Um, no, every everybody wants to go on a mission trip. You'll go on a mission trip, and through that mission trip you're going to discover what the metaverse really is, what virtual reality really is, and and the power that your church can have to reach people in that space. Um, and that's gonna, I believe that's gonna light your people on fire for the idea because I've just I've seen it time and time again where people don't understand it until they get that headset on. And then when they get their headset on, it is it's pedal to the metal because they see the power, the potential, they see how the Holy Spirit is is moving in the pixels. I know that's weird, but it's it's a reality. God is moving inside those those headsets. And so Stu, as we're looking at the Learning Community, like and there's a lot of stuff you're teaching, there's a lot of stuff that I'm teaching and talking through and experimenting and discussing and facilitating, like what what are some things that you're excited about uh contextually over with the learning community?

Yeah, I think just what excites me the most is we're making it super practical for anybody to hop in. Um, I think what I have learned within just the past year alone is that there are really a lot of churches that are interested in this idea of metaverse ministry. They just don't know what it looks like, what it means, how to go about it. Um, who is the person that uh spearheads this for their church? Um, most likely you probably have somebody in your church right now that would love to spearhead this for you, even if it was like a 10 hour a week or a high capacity volunteer. Because here's the thing, like there are, I would guess the newest numbers are over 200 million active users of virtual reality um to date, over 200 million. Um, 70 million of those are in the United States alone, and probably a good two-thirds of those U.S. users are guys. And if there's anybody that every church knows that the hardest community to reach are the dudes, but yet if you can reach guys that end up transforming families, being the spiritual leaders that they were called to be, man, you start changing the spiritual temperature of the world in that sense. So but 70 million people who are using VR right now, so you probably have at least one if not more. And that's what excites me is like there are tons of opportunities for your church or you as an individual to hop in. And we are about to give you this simple, easy, low-hanging fruit handles on how to go about doing that and taking all the guesswork out of it. And what I think that, like to put the cherry on top in my opinion, is that's actually my heartbeat right now is that we would see more and more churches hopping into the metaverse. Um, I know that we left Exponential as Lakeland, we left Exponential uh Orlando with just the dream to plant 100 churches in 10 years and the virtual reality spaces. In fact, we believe that it can happen even faster than that and more churches. The way that I even phrase is we want to at least plant 100 churches and at most 10 years in those in those spaces. Um, and I just think that we are living in a day and age right now that this is what God's calling the church into. So uh, Jeff, can I get on a soapbox for a second?

You are more than welcome. I mean, I know that this is your podcast and I'm a first time invitee, so I'm really kind of placed myself on an invite block like chopping block, but you know, whatever. Jab, jab, well done. Keep going.

I would say this: like as church leaders, we know what we have been called to. Like we know that the our commissioning is to go into the world and make disciples. We are living in a day and age where the world is funneling itself into one specific location, which is the digital spaces. And 200 million of those people being in virtual reality. So if the church is having a hard time getting out, there's a simple way of being able to do that, and that's by going in through a headset and interacting with these people in real time. They're gonna end up going back into their own homes, their own countries, their own businesses, who are being introduced to Jesus for the very first time. You know, seeds of hope being planted that are going to end up causing the Holy Spirit is going to do what the Holy Spirit does, and there's going to be this great explosion of life transformation that's going to take place. Reformation. I love it. Like I just love what God's wanting to do in this day and age. Um, but it's just it's too easy not to do it. And I think that's just really the hurdle that a lot of people need to just get over right now is like, man, if this is really that simple, why wouldn't we do this? Um, and I just think that through the learning community, that's what you're going to see. I got asked right after we launched into VR, one of the guys who's probably one of the biggest evangelist prayer warriors that I've ever met, um, he asked me, he's like, "Hey Stu, what do you love most about doing church and virtual reality?" And uh, I thought about it for a little bit, and I just almost like, I think what I love most is I became an international missionary without ever having to leave my basement. I'm able to tell people from Indonesia, from China, from the Middle East, from UK, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, all these locations that have come into our environments that in real life I probably would have never met. But I was able to meet these people, introduce them to Jesus, ask questions, answer questions, and next thing I know they're going off and taking that information into their own homes. And I just love like there's going to be a point in time where I take my final breath on this side of heaven and take my first one in heaven, and there's gonna be people that I had never met face to face, but I know them based off of avatar, and they're just going to tell me about how their life was transformed all due to the fact that we were diligent enough and obedient enough to take Lakeland and Jesus into the VR spaces. I'm like, that pumps me up and keeps me going. So crazy, attacking the gates of hell uh via virtual reality. So very cool. With that, you know, once again, the um the the information on the Learning Community is leadnet.org slash uh mlc for metaverse learning community. There's a it's a session in September, physically September in the 20s, uh and then physical meetups, or I'm sorry, Zoom meetups, October, November, a couple times in there. Senator on the metaverse mission trip uh where we're challenging churches to go to take their people on a metaverse mission trip over the weeks of October 15th and November 15th. Uh, spend five to ten hours a week. You decide as a church how long you want to do. We can do the training for you. We can equip you to do the training. We'll talk about that either way. But we want to see 250 people uh in in in in the metaverse as missionaries. And that's that's a drop in the bucket for the potential of what can happen. We're hoping to see that idea multiply even as we're hoping to plant 10 virtual reality churches in in 2023. And so and then we've got the metaverse Learning Community. I'll have a physical meet up as well in um in in December. And so more information at Lee at leadnet.org mlc for that. Coupon codes do not let me get you 100 bucks off because everybody loves Tsunami. This this is good. Well, evidently I, and everybody loves being, and everybody loves being a Stu-nning individual. Stu-nning individual. This is your opportunity. Very cool. Hey, so uh, publicly, let's uh, let's get you booked for the next podcast. I'm actually doing a conversation um with so let me let me pull it up here to make sure I get the names right. Peyton Jones. Uh, so we're talking about, yeah, we're doing a podcast uh in um season six. We're gonna be talking about uh the movement system for with for Digital Church Network. We're talking about planting churches as part of that. And uh, and Stu, for some reason I think you would have a strong voice centered around planting churches. So hey, let's get you into podcast conversation with Peyton Jones and I. But then on top of that, so I'm your friend. I'm not the guy who still chew. That's that's literally 12 podcasts away, maybe 14 podcasts away. So in the next three months you're gonna be another podcast. But talk to me a little bit here about your passion uh for for metaverse, for virtual reality church planting.

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, what's interesting is my wife and I, we went through a church planting assessment um probably about eight years ago now, and we thought that God was calling us into church planting. Um, and Peyton Jones was actually a very influential voice for me at the time when I was looking into it. So right, very fun. Um, but the assessment, um, the the final project that all the church potential church planters, um, the assignment that we all had to go through was we had to figure out how to not just plant a church but by the time the assessment was over, we had to figure out how to plant 100 churches.

In ten years, right? So it was there at Expo where that phraseology popped back out of my mouth again for the first time in over eight years. And when we decided that maybe God wasn't calling us to plant a church, the one thing that kind of stuck for me was I may not be called to plant a church, but I might be called to plant churches. And so I think all of that is kind of God planted that seed, you know, eight years ago, and I had no idea that I was ever going to be doing virtual reality ministry because that's definitely not what I went to school for. It's definitely not what I came to Lakeland for. But now I'm doing it. But I think it's what I felt God was calling me to do, and where he has me right now, I just feel like this has just been God working behind the scenes as he does, going, "I'm going to take what you're passionate about, and I'm gonna show you where this is going to be put into play, and it's going to come through planting churches in virtual reality." And so that's just the passion right now.

I just believe that, you know, the ministry was never really intended to be closed fists, but to be open-handed. And I believe that there are people who they have the gifting to teach, to reach people, to evangelize. They need to get into these spaces. There are people who are more on fire for like digital ministry and metaverse ministry as a whole, then probably than even I'm on fire for it. And I want to equip these people to get into these spaces. Like I've said it before, like I might, by the time that's all said and done, Jeff, I'm probably no longer going to be the expert in this field, and I'm okay with that. And because I want somebody who's got the passion for it to take that passion in alongside with Jesus and set the metaverse on fire for the kingdom of God and just watch that happen all over the world.

So my passion is let's get the people who God is really calling into these spaces into these spaces, get them trained up, equipped, and let them run wild in reaching people. And to see it, like I've said it on our podcast with Goose, the Metaphors Church podcast, I'm like, if there's two hundred million people in the metaverse, there needs to be two hundred million churches. And I don't see—somebody asked me once, like, if you start putting more and planting more churches in the metaverse, you kind of see that turning into like a competition within the churches that for like face time and you know, all that kind of stuff. I was like, no. In fact, what I see more is I see more collaboration happening within the churches in VR than I see in real life. And so I see like the VR is going to be the place where the bride of Christ actually gets to be the bride of Christ and gets to be more of a representation of the capital C Church than the individual expressions of church.

But you know, there's Oasis VR, there's Lakeland VR, there's Fox River, there's Cornerstone, there's VR Church MMO, and all of us—and there's more than that for sure—but all of us, we all don't reach the same person and we don't speak to the same person. And that's why it's so important that we get more and more churches in there because even for the sake of one, if we're able to reach one more person, that's enough reason to plant another church within virtual reality. So it's just my passion. I believe that God has just planted that a long time ago, and I'm just now starting to see what he, why he planted that, and it's just been a season of cultivating and growth, and that's where we're at today.

I love it. Just because you're not the long-term expert doesn't mean you're not the expert today. And the fact that you know you're not the long-term expert and that you want to help platform the long-term expert, I mean, honestly, that's Jeff Reed's playbook. So thank you for doing what you're doing and helping to start, you know, you didn't—I don't remember if I heard a number, maybe you said it—but a hundred churches, a hundred churches in virtual reality, coming, wanting to be planted, wanting to come out of Lakeland Church. Like, this is a huge undertaking to get there.

Yeah, and to be honest with you, Jeff, like I think somebody's gonna hear that and they're gonna think like the single individual church planter. Like, we have at Lakeland right now, we have a system that is set up in place. Like, we're ready to launch this thing. We're ready to start the first cohort of people who want to plant a church in virtual reality. But we have really two different arms for this in the sense of like, if you're like, if somebody's listening to this and they want to plant their own virtual reality church, like reach out. We'll put you in a cohort with other people that are wanting to plant churches, and we will help you in three months launch your virtual reality church. At least you'll be ready in three months, and whenever you feel like the timeline that God's calling you to plant it happens, that's up to you. But in three months you'll be ready.

But at the same time, we also know that there are churches that are interested in getting into metaverse ministry, into virtual reality. Again, the question is like, how do you do this? And that's what I really love about this Learning Community is I see the learning community and what we're doing with Lakeland right now really going hand in hand. Because if you are a church leader, senior leadership, or you know, an associate pastor, and you want to get into the metaverse, come do this with us. We'll put you in a cohort. In three months, you guys will be ready to launch your church in the metaverse. And the best part is at that point you're not just sent off to go do this by yourself, but you will now be a part of a network with a rallying of churches around you saying, "Dude, we're all in this together. Let's continue learning." Because if there's anything that I've learned about doing church in VR so far is what I know today is irrelevant tomorrow. In fact, the first podcast that, or the second podcast that Goose and I ever launched with the Metaverse Church podcast, was a deep dive on Altspace. And like the day after we launched that episode, Altspace shut down. We're like, "All right, well, episode two of our brand new podcast just became irrelevant." But there's so many more opportunities out there that we just need more. And we're always going to be learning. So you learn to plant a church in three months, and you get a network by the time it's all done.

Yeah, love it. It's and that's what I personally, that's what I love about this, where the Learning Community gives you the opportunity to birth this thing, and then working with Stu's network and coming alongside DCN, where it's underneath, gives it the legs, the long-term stability to have this thing flourish and even multiply again. And so so often, you know, you go to the conference and you're left alone and nothing ever happens. The Learning Community is designed to get action through the mission trips and to empower your people to understand the implications and the contextualizations of the Gospel in that space. It's designed to help you plant that church and to see that church flourish even after the learning community's over because we've got the relationship with Stuart and his virtual reality church network.

What is there? Is there an actual brand to name for the network yet?

I haven't. It's not. Yeah, yeah, I just been calling that VR Church Planning Network.

VR Church Planning Network. Awesome. It sounds right to me. Simple, minimum. That's great. So we'll call it that. But I mean, this is the opportunity before us. Like, if we're really interested in getting into the metaverse and doing ministry in that space, we're better together. Go with somebody who's been there, get vision cast to your people, plant something, and then walk the journey with somebody who's been on that road before, who's especially smart enough to realize that there's somebody smarter than him or her out there that needs to step into it. And so I love it.

Stu, two hundred seventy-two episodes was too long, my friend. And so thank you for jumping on this one, and we'll see you again in two hundred eighty-six with as we're talking church planting over there. But as we're wrapping up the plane here, any closing thoughts?

Yep, I've been thinking about this the entire episode, Jeff, and I'm going to do my research on this. I'm an Enneagram five, so I'm a person that I love research. I love doing studies. I think I'm gonna have to apologize to you on episode two hundred eighty-six because there may have been an episode where I was on before, but I'm just gonna leave it at that.

Okay, I'm not officially apologizing yet. I should know this, right? Like, I should know whether you're on my own podcast. But for love, I don't. I really don't think you were. Like, I will own the guilt of this scenario if you have to apologize. I will accept it publicly. I will take it. I will apologize to you in front of people, Jones, and all of your other listeners. But on top of that, that being said, I just reiterate like, for anybody who's listening to this, you really do want to hop into the Learning Community. I've done a couple of these with you as a participant and have left every single time with something new to chew on, and that's usually enough of a good reason to be a part of this. So this is definitely something you want to be a part of and not miss out on.

Yeah, and so you can go to leadnet.org/mlc for Metaverse Learning Community. Coupon code tsunami, S-T-U-N-A-M-I. We'll put all that info in the show notes, of course. You click over there. Physical meetups in September and December, online in October, November. Take your church on a mission trip and plant a metaverse campus and some metaverse church. And so excited to see this happen.

And I'm gonna start stretching my podcast listing too and see where it's at. Hey, Stu, thanks for jumping on here. By the way, we should say that we're doing this. If you're not interested in virtual reality, but the idea of mission trips and the idea of taking your digital ministry to that next level, in the next podcast we're gonna have Tyler Sansom, lead pastor of First Capital Christian Church and Church Anywhere, on with us. He is going to be leading a digital Learning Community similar to what Stuart's doing. And so it's a similar template with the mission trips. We're challenging people to utilize and to step in the digital community and utilize these digital tools and games to connect with people in digital space and to be on that mission trip. And so you want to check out episode two hundred seventy-three for that, and feel free to come back for two hundred eighty-six and watch Stuart grovel and apologize for ripping me publicly. No, I'm kidding. We'll figure it out.

But hey, so we're gonna land the plane for Stu. This is Jeff with the Church Digital, Digital Church Network, Leadership Networks, Director of Metaverse and Digital Church. Next, thanks for jumping on the podcast here, and we'll see you again next week in season six when we're taking your digital ministry to the next level. You all have a good day.