WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.820 Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. 00:00:02.340 --> 00:00:06.340 Through this podcast, learn about how God is using technology and innovation 00:00:06.340 --> 00:00:09.400 in digital and digital environments around the world. 00:00:09.860 --> 00:00:13.800 Our goal? To help churches like yours learn to be the church digitally. 00:00:14.460 --> 00:00:19.420 Our heart? That churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple-making 00:00:19.420 --> 00:00:21.440 that will revolutionize your church. 00:00:21.840 --> 00:00:24.460 And now, your host, here's Jeff Reed. 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:28.420 All right, you got episode 206 of the Church Digital Podcast. 00:00:28.420 --> 00:00:32.680 Hey, it's Jeff Reed here, founder of the Church Digital, Digital Church Network, 00:00:32.800 --> 00:00:35.620 and a whole bunch of other things we'll get to here in just a minute. 00:00:35.700 --> 00:00:37.220 We're going to get to the deeper stuff. 00:00:37.360 --> 00:00:40.740 But for right now, I want to tell you about some awesome stuff we're doing here 00:00:40.740 --> 00:00:44.780 at the Church Digital to help churches like yours wrestle and experiment 00:00:44.780 --> 00:00:47.920 with this idea of a metaverse church. 00:00:48.080 --> 00:00:52.380 See, with the Church Digital, we started, you know, on this road, 00:00:52.440 --> 00:00:54.900 helping churches figure out how to thrive, grow, and multiply. 00:00:55.320 --> 00:00:58.880 Digital, digital only, digital first, so much stuff. 00:00:58.940 --> 00:01:01.360 But we've really started leaning in in the past couple months 00:01:01.360 --> 00:01:04.780 into this idea of a metaverse church. 00:01:05.020 --> 00:01:08.280 What resources, what training, what coaching? 00:01:08.440 --> 00:01:13.440 How can we help churches that are interested in exploring and testing out the idea of metaverse? 00:01:13.840 --> 00:01:19.100 Metaverse being virtual reality, augmented reality, a mixed reality. 00:01:19.100 --> 00:01:26.020 You've got blockchain, you've got crypto, artificial intelligence, machine learning, 00:01:26.520 --> 00:01:32.360 this whole decentralization that comes as a result of engaging with this Web3 technology. 00:01:32.580 --> 00:01:37.340 It's going to be a fascinating road here in the next 10 years culturally. 00:01:37.720 --> 00:01:42.380 Not even talking about the church, but more interesting is how's the church going to respond 00:01:42.380 --> 00:01:46.440 to these opportunities when they come. 00:01:47.080 --> 00:01:48.420 Yeah, so that's going to be fun. 00:01:48.540 --> 00:01:53.800 So if you are looking for some help, if you're interested in someone walking with you on this 00:01:53.800 --> 00:02:00.760 journey, whether it's world building or online courses or cohorts, content, whatever it is, 00:02:00.800 --> 00:02:03.660 somebody to hold your hand as you're doing the experiment. 00:02:03.800 --> 00:02:05.420 We at The Church Digital would love to do that. 00:02:05.740 --> 00:02:06.700 Here's what I'm going to ask you to do. 00:02:06.740 --> 00:02:10.020 Check out the website, metachurch.digital. 00:02:10.020 --> 00:02:13.520 That's M-E-T-A, church.digital. 00:02:13.600 --> 00:02:16.240 Yeah, did a little spin on thechurch.digital. 00:02:16.340 --> 00:02:17.780 I made it metachurch.digital. 00:02:18.240 --> 00:02:20.280 And yeah, I may be considering rebranding. 00:02:20.340 --> 00:02:21.240 I'm not saying that officially. 00:02:21.440 --> 00:02:23.480 It's just you that's listening right now. 00:02:23.540 --> 00:02:27.560 You and whoever else is in the Nebulous podcast audience out there. 00:02:27.920 --> 00:02:29.340 Maybe later conversation. 00:02:29.480 --> 00:02:33.540 But check it out now to redirect to the page of metachurch.digital. 00:02:33.740 --> 00:02:38.000 If you're looking for some help in taking those steps, we at The Church Digital would love to help you with that. 00:02:38.400 --> 00:02:44.720 Check out the website, which actually, all that segues real good, to today's podcast takeover episode. 00:02:44.840 --> 00:02:49.060 Now, for the past month, I've been letting other people take over my podcast. 00:02:49.320 --> 00:02:54.260 You see, back in January, we started, actually maybe December, we started a podcast network. 00:02:54.360 --> 00:02:56.060 We call it the TCD Podcast Network. 00:02:56.560 --> 00:03:00.780 Guys like Tom Pounder started it off with TCD Sidekick Podcast. 00:03:00.780 --> 00:03:08.080 And then we brought on Chesley Lundy, Andy Mage, Pocket Pulpit Podcast, John Pyle. 00:03:08.640 --> 00:03:18.560 And just we started really platforming other content creators in an effort to give you a more nuanced approach to digital ministry. 00:03:18.700 --> 00:03:27.440 Let's look at the content angle from Andy Mage or the practicalness of Tom Pounder or the strategy component of Chesley or the soul care. 00:03:29.620 --> 00:03:39.300 Honestly, the heart-wrenching ministry, the way that John Pyle leads, or the social media aspects of discipleship in context of the Pocket Pulpit team. 00:03:39.760 --> 00:03:44.900 And so, like, we really just wanted to give you a multiplied approach towards some of this nuance. 00:03:45.040 --> 00:03:54.200 And I was so gracious to, like, you know, take a month off a podcast and start to let them take over my show so that, you know, I, Jeffrey, didn't have to do that much work. 00:03:54.520 --> 00:03:56.180 Well, it's time to get back to work, Jeff. 00:03:56.420 --> 00:03:57.080 Now, you know what? 00:03:57.100 --> 00:03:57.660 I changed my mind. 00:03:57.700 --> 00:04:00.340 I'm going to let one more person take over my podcast. 00:04:00.540 --> 00:04:04.200 This week, someone has taken over my podcast, and his name is Jeffrey. 00:04:05.120 --> 00:04:06.200 Okay, that may have got weird. 00:04:06.260 --> 00:04:07.380 How can I take over my own podcast? 00:04:08.200 --> 00:04:13.420 Well, one of the things that I'm doing here is I actually have another role with Leadership Network. 00:04:13.960 --> 00:04:15.140 If you've heard of it, great. 00:04:15.220 --> 00:04:16.600 If not, that's on you. 00:04:16.760 --> 00:04:21.420 Check out leadnet.org, L-E-A-D-N-E-T.org. 00:04:21.540 --> 00:04:28.920 Leadership Network's been around for a couple decades, really championing the idea of innovation and research in context of churches. 00:04:29.780 --> 00:04:42.780 Megachurch movement, the multisite movement in many ways came about because of Leadership Network resourcing and helping and training and gathering together for research purposes some of the innovators in those spaces. 00:04:43.560 --> 00:04:49.720 And I have the honor to work with Leadership Network now towards this idea of Metaverse Church. 00:04:49.720 --> 00:04:55.220 Yeah, my title is literally Director of Metaverse Church Next. 00:04:55.880 --> 00:05:00.180 So let's talk about the next version of church that's going to exist in the Metaverse. 00:05:00.360 --> 00:05:01.600 That's what I do. 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:18.220 And so with research projects that we're working on and as well as blogs and even live shows, that's some of the noise that we're making and some of the attention that we're bringing and starting to gathering together these experts that are doing church in the Metaverse. 00:05:18.480 --> 00:05:27.960 And so the podcast, the live show is every Wednesday, 1230 p.m. Eastern on Exponentials Hub. 00:05:28.080 --> 00:05:29.100 And so you can sign up. 00:05:29.400 --> 00:05:31.520 We'll put a link in the show notes to get connected to that. 00:05:31.600 --> 00:05:40.360 But essentially, it's available virtually almost every Wednesday, 1230 p.m. Eastern, the Metaverse Church Next show. 00:05:40.820 --> 00:05:43.100 And so we've had great people on. 00:05:43.200 --> 00:05:44.920 DJ Soto has been on recently. 00:05:45.480 --> 00:05:49.080 Jason Poling, lead pastor of Cornerstone, Yuba City. 00:05:49.280 --> 00:05:51.040 Cornerstone VR has been on recently. 00:05:51.220 --> 00:05:55.900 And we've got a great show, guest list coming up here very soon. 00:05:56.040 --> 00:05:56.640 Alan Hirsch. 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:02.240 Alan Hirsch is coming on the Metaverse Church Next show to talk about the idea of Metaverse Church. 00:06:02.320 --> 00:06:05.100 If you don't know who Alan Hirsch is, once again, that's on you. 00:06:05.200 --> 00:06:05.580 Google him. 00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:06.340 You'll find it. 00:06:06.360 --> 00:06:06.920 You'll be like, wow. 00:06:06.980 --> 00:06:11.440 If you know who Alan Hirsch is, can you believe I got Alan Hirsch to come on my show? 00:06:11.840 --> 00:06:12.300 Like, okay. 00:06:12.420 --> 00:06:12.700 All right. 00:06:12.960 --> 00:06:13.260 Scene. 00:06:13.500 --> 00:06:14.640 Get back to where we are here. 00:06:14.880 --> 00:06:15.560 So anyway, look. 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:16.220 Here's the deal. 00:06:16.580 --> 00:06:21.520 What I wanted to do for the takeover is let you all have the first episode. 00:06:21.760 --> 00:06:23.160 I'm going to give it to you right here. 00:06:23.560 --> 00:06:25.000 Call it Metaverse Church 101. 00:06:25.320 --> 00:06:26.000 Where do we start? 00:06:26.080 --> 00:06:26.860 At the beginning. 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:28.760 And look, check it out. 00:06:28.820 --> 00:06:30.840 If you love it, come hang out with me. 00:06:31.080 --> 00:06:32.020 Wednesdays, 1230. 00:06:32.240 --> 00:06:37.320 We're working on getting the podcast set up so it can be distributed to you all of your podcast listeners. 00:06:37.900 --> 00:06:40.000 But definitely hang out with me in the live environment. 00:06:40.120 --> 00:06:44.580 Throw questions, and it's going to be great over on Exponentials Hub. 00:06:44.940 --> 00:06:47.400 So for the first episode, here's who we're bringing in. 00:06:47.460 --> 00:06:53.320 For this 101, for this basic ground-level conversation, here's who we're bringing into the conversation. 00:06:53.400 --> 00:06:53.940 You ready for this? 00:06:53.980 --> 00:06:54.240 You ready? 00:06:54.340 --> 00:06:54.600 You ready? 00:06:54.680 --> 00:06:55.300 I don't think you're ready. 00:06:55.380 --> 00:06:55.600 Okay. 00:06:55.960 --> 00:06:56.760 We'll pretend you're ready. 00:06:57.240 --> 00:06:58.220 We're bringing in Goose. 00:06:58.720 --> 00:06:59.760 Yeah, you know, the guy from Top Gun. 00:06:59.760 --> 00:07:01.420 Okay, not the guy from Top Gun. 00:07:01.960 --> 00:07:08.240 Michael Used to Venice is a Metaverse pastor who lives in Fort Lauderdale. 00:07:08.360 --> 00:07:14.300 Now, what's interesting is he lives in Fort Lauderdale, but his church is located in California. 00:07:14.940 --> 00:07:22.440 So Michael Used to Venice works for Cornerstone VR, which is Cornerstone Yuba City, which is located in Northern California. 00:07:22.920 --> 00:07:25.700 So he and his church are located in opposite sides of the country. 00:07:25.800 --> 00:07:26.480 That's interesting. 00:07:26.480 --> 00:07:30.880 But he's also a Metaverse Church pastor. 00:07:31.180 --> 00:07:35.400 His job is to literally pastor, shepherd, and care for people in the Metaverse. 00:07:35.540 --> 00:07:37.120 That's interesting in itself. 00:07:37.460 --> 00:07:40.180 He does a lot of world building, which is also interesting. 00:07:40.780 --> 00:07:43.380 I mean, this is a really fascinating conversation. 00:07:43.540 --> 00:07:44.940 And why exactly is he named Goose? 00:07:45.340 --> 00:07:46.260 I don't know if we remember. 00:07:46.420 --> 00:07:47.860 I don't know if we talked about it in this episode. 00:07:47.960 --> 00:07:51.740 But that's a fascinating story as well, maybe for another day. 00:07:51.740 --> 00:07:57.940 So, hey, look, I want to get you some exposure to this idea of Metaverse Church and what it can be. 00:07:58.400 --> 00:08:02.480 And so let's even just address the most practical standpoint here in 2022. 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:06.840 Let's talk about this idea of church and virtual reality. 00:08:06.840 --> 00:08:29.700 So for the Metaverse Church next podcast takeover episode here of the Church Digital, I'm bringing in Michael Ustavinis and myself, Jeff with the Church Digital, Digital Church Network, and now Leadership Network in a conversation that I'm simply calling Metaverse Church 101. 00:08:30.480 --> 00:08:32.120 Okay, everybody, here you go. 00:08:32.600 --> 00:08:33.420 All right, hey, everybody. 00:08:33.900 --> 00:08:36.640 Welcome to the Metaverse Church Next show. 00:08:36.760 --> 00:08:42.700 This is a new experience, a new show we're doing with Leadership Network, Metaverse Church Next. 00:08:42.800 --> 00:08:43.760 And my name is Jeff Reed. 00:08:43.940 --> 00:08:47.460 I'm the host of the show, and it is a pleasure to be here with you. 00:08:47.860 --> 00:08:53.100 I'm about ready to say a bunch of words, and hopefully they all make sense when I say them, when you hear them. 00:08:53.100 --> 00:08:59.220 So here with Metaverse Church Next, we're championing the idea of churches in the Metaverse. 00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:15.840 So if we're looking at the church, if we're looking at the church in the Metaverse, seeing the opportunities to disciple people in the Metaverse, to look at the Metaverse as a mission field, and even an opportunity to be the church in Metaverse spaces. 00:09:15.920 --> 00:09:18.440 So I've said the word Metaverse a bunch of times. 00:09:18.480 --> 00:09:21.600 We're going to define what that means here, and we'll do it. 00:09:21.620 --> 00:09:22.340 You know, we'll do it right now. 00:09:22.360 --> 00:09:22.580 It's cool. 00:09:22.760 --> 00:09:27.820 So here with the Metaverse Next show, Metaverse Church Next show, it'll get more of a rhythm. 00:09:27.820 --> 00:09:28.480 This is the first time. 00:09:28.540 --> 00:09:28.980 Give me a break. 00:09:29.340 --> 00:09:30.540 Here's where we're going with this. 00:09:30.920 --> 00:09:33.200 Man, look, you've got virtual reality. 00:09:33.380 --> 00:09:39.300 You've got people wearing headsets like these walking around in these virtual reality environments. 00:09:39.440 --> 00:09:41.400 We're going to be talking more about that today. 00:09:41.500 --> 00:09:47.880 But really, when you look at the Metaverse, you're seeing an expanded other opportunities just beyond virtual reality. 00:09:47.880 --> 00:09:49.780 You're looking at augmented reality. 00:09:49.780 --> 00:10:03.440 And Apple's working on a pair of glasses that look just like these, where you'll be able to have a mixed reality or what they're calling XR, a mixed reality of augmented and virtual reality coming together. 00:10:03.440 --> 00:10:12.300 And this opens up a whole bunch of things with Web 3.0, where you're looking at Bitcoin and how all that's working. 00:10:12.420 --> 00:10:15.380 Blockchain, crypto, AI. 00:10:15.960 --> 00:10:27.040 I had interesting conversations just even today on the ethics surrounded around artificial intelligence and what we, the church, what our stance needs to be in the next three to five years. 00:10:27.160 --> 00:10:28.480 And it was an incredible conversation. 00:10:28.760 --> 00:10:31.920 We're going to have them here on the show probably closer to summer. 00:10:31.920 --> 00:10:43.340 But there's just a whole opportunity to us to dive into and to better understand how we, the church, need to be part of what's happening here in the Metaverse. 00:10:43.500 --> 00:10:47.840 So we're going to be diving into this just to hear in a little bit, a little bit about myself here just as we're kicking it off. 00:10:48.120 --> 00:10:48.880 My name is Jeff Reed. 00:10:49.220 --> 00:10:50.180 Some of you may know me. 00:10:50.240 --> 00:10:50.580 Awesome. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:54.580 If you don't know me, hey, it's great to meet you here in virtual show land. 00:10:55.080 --> 00:10:56.720 And so I run an organization. 00:10:56.720 --> 00:10:57.720 I run several organizations. 00:10:57.860 --> 00:11:04.680 One of them is the Church Digital, helping established churches understand how to do digital ministry more effectively. 00:11:04.840 --> 00:11:09.680 We really get into discipleship and multiplication far more than the streaming aspects of that. 00:11:10.360 --> 00:11:13.360 But in addition, we do a lot with Metaverse. 00:11:13.720 --> 00:11:20.780 And so actually just this past week, we did an install for a church that wanted a Metaverse campus. 00:11:20.780 --> 00:11:27.900 So we built a Metaverse campus for them and drove up and flew up and did some volunteer training and things like that in the Metaverse. 00:11:28.020 --> 00:11:30.620 So lots of opportunities working with physical space. 00:11:30.620 --> 00:11:37.220 And then there's Digital Church Network, where we work with organic movements and digital church planting and Metaverse planting. 00:11:37.460 --> 00:11:39.600 And we'll get on some of those conversations later. 00:11:39.600 --> 00:11:44.200 And honestly, I could talk about myself all day, but you all don't want to hear that. 00:11:44.260 --> 00:11:49.840 You actually want to get into the show and kind of learn here as we're diving into Metaverse 101. 00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:54.860 What are some of the basics if we're looking at Metaverse Church? 00:11:55.080 --> 00:12:02.100 And so for that conversation, I'm bringing in one of the few people in the country who actually have the job title, Metaverse Pastor. 00:12:02.360 --> 00:12:09.960 And that's going to be Michael used to Venice, who is, well, I tell you what, Michael, and I apologize in advance. 00:12:10.020 --> 00:12:14.100 I will call him Goose half the time because his nickname is Goose. 00:12:14.100 --> 00:12:17.740 Fun story, another time, we'll talk about it here, maybe towards the end. 00:12:18.020 --> 00:12:21.260 But Goose, man, just set up yourself here a little bit. 00:12:21.340 --> 00:12:28.420 Tell us your story and tell us kind of what a church, what your role is there with Cornerstone. 00:12:28.720 --> 00:12:29.940 Yeah, thanks for having me. 00:12:30.920 --> 00:12:34.720 Yeah, so I, yeah, my title is Metaverse Pastor. 00:12:35.680 --> 00:12:38.620 I started out for many years just as an attorney. 00:12:39.060 --> 00:12:41.920 That was my trade for about a decade and a half. 00:12:41.920 --> 00:12:51.440 Technically, I still am, but felt the call to ministry a few years back, entered a more traditional ministry in the end of 2017. 00:12:52.500 --> 00:13:00.780 And then all of a sudden, COVID hits and we start talking with some folks that are doing some interesting things in VR. 00:13:01.460 --> 00:13:06.640 And it just so happened that one of the other threads in my life has always been video games. 00:13:06.780 --> 00:13:10.820 I've always been a gamer, but also a game maker. 00:13:10.820 --> 00:13:15.500 So I've always been programming from when I was eight years old and my dad brought home an Apple IIe computer. 00:13:15.760 --> 00:13:19.680 I instantly wanted to know how it worked and instantly was trying to program with it. 00:13:19.880 --> 00:13:21.460 So it's just something I've always done. 00:13:21.900 --> 00:13:33.580 So about 10 years ago, I started playing with this really neat piece of software called Unity and making games with it and was just doing that as part hobby, part business. 00:13:34.120 --> 00:13:43.540 But lo and behold, it turns out that in order to build worlds in these VR spaces, it's all done in unity. 00:13:44.060 --> 00:13:54.420 And so there was this really interesting convergence of the pieces that the Lord had used in my life, all sort of coming together to provide this opportunity. 00:13:54.420 --> 00:14:01.120 When I talked with Pastor Jason at Cornerstone, who one day said, hey, you know, I'm looking for a pastor who knows how to make video games. 00:14:02.040 --> 00:14:05.380 I said, well, that's oddly specific to my life. 00:14:05.980 --> 00:14:14.020 And over many months of discussion with my former church and Jason, we decided this is the Lord is in this. 00:14:14.100 --> 00:14:19.340 It's just too perfect of a setup to pass that up. 00:14:19.540 --> 00:14:22.920 And so that's been my role for almost a year now. 00:14:22.920 --> 00:14:38.680 So what Michael's doing is he's literally running a church in the metaverse, a physical campus or a virtual representation of a lot of the ministry that's happening in physical space. 00:14:38.740 --> 00:14:41.280 And we're going to dive in because there's some nuances. 00:14:41.560 --> 00:14:48.100 There's some things where physical or IRL in real life, where IRL ministry, it parallels. 00:14:48.380 --> 00:14:51.180 And it looks similar to what happens in the metaverse. 00:14:51.540 --> 00:14:54.500 But there's areas where it's completely different. 00:14:54.500 --> 00:14:58.480 And actually, he's mentioned JPO, Jason Poling a couple of times. 00:14:58.840 --> 00:15:01.180 Jason's going to be our guest on the next show. 00:15:01.320 --> 00:15:04.560 Here we do the show next week, Wednesday, 1230 Eastern. 00:15:04.800 --> 00:15:11.360 So kind of got a one-two punch here as we're talking to really like one of the few churches that at this point, 00:15:11.560 --> 00:15:18.340 have taken that step, a physical church, an IRL church that's doing metaverse ministry. 00:15:18.460 --> 00:15:19.200 There are others. 00:15:19.460 --> 00:15:22.800 And there are more and more seem to be coming on each week. 00:15:23.360 --> 00:15:26.720 But really, legacy guys that have been doing this for a while. 00:15:27.260 --> 00:15:33.420 What we're seeing here out of Cornerstone, Yuba City and VR is, man, they're the front runners in that. 00:15:33.880 --> 00:15:36.500 Well, hey, I mean, let's just even open this up here. 00:15:37.480 --> 00:15:40.900 What do churches look like in the metaverse? 00:15:41.100 --> 00:15:43.940 So I just said you're running a campus. 00:15:44.120 --> 00:15:45.380 What does that even mean? 00:15:45.680 --> 00:15:52.900 For us, what it looks like is we've got AltSpace, which is one of the social apps in VR. 00:15:54.060 --> 00:16:02.240 And we have a world that's built out that looks like a church, looks a little bit like our church in Yuba City, although not exact. 00:16:02.640 --> 00:16:04.760 And we've got this campus built out. 00:16:05.720 --> 00:16:09.800 And every Sunday, we hold services there. 00:16:10.540 --> 00:16:13.120 Whoever's preaching, most weeks it's Pastor Jason that preaches. 00:16:13.620 --> 00:16:18.020 But he comes in, he preaches two services in the physical church. 00:16:18.440 --> 00:16:24.220 And then he pops the headset on and he comes there as an avatar and preaches a third service in AltSpace. 00:16:24.640 --> 00:16:32.340 And we have our people who call Cornerstone home, our AltSpace campus, they call it home. 00:16:32.640 --> 00:16:35.900 We've got a lot of people that come in wondering what's going on. 00:16:36.500 --> 00:16:43.900 And it very much has all of the elements that you would expect of a physical church. 00:16:44.580 --> 00:16:45.920 And so we do that in AltSpace. 00:16:46.100 --> 00:16:49.920 Again, that's one of the apps in VR that you can do. 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:51.460 You can also do it on a desktop browser. 00:16:51.460 --> 00:16:56.840 And then we go over to VRChat, which is another social app very much. 00:16:57.740 --> 00:17:00.660 Well, it's like AltSpace in the sense that it is an app. 00:17:00.880 --> 00:17:05.320 It's very different in terms of the kind of the feel and the culture over there. 00:17:05.420 --> 00:17:07.220 But we go over there and we do the same thing. 00:17:07.280 --> 00:17:08.980 We've got a church that's built out in there. 00:17:09.400 --> 00:17:10.860 We go in as avatars. 00:17:11.060 --> 00:17:11.880 We preach. 00:17:12.560 --> 00:17:13.760 We do Q&A. 00:17:15.380 --> 00:17:24.640 And again, we see both of those as churches with congregations, with a flock that we care for. 00:17:24.980 --> 00:17:30.500 And there are people that show up there, the people that we have, where they don't have another church. 00:17:31.180 --> 00:17:33.880 So me and Jason are their pastors. 00:17:34.320 --> 00:17:35.700 Cornerstone is their church. 00:17:35.700 --> 00:17:37.380 He touched on briefly. 00:17:37.560 --> 00:17:38.080 It's so good. 00:17:38.200 --> 00:17:45.940 And I want to come back to the fact that you and Jason are those pastors because there's an interesting nuance that you haven't mentioned yet. 00:17:46.060 --> 00:17:49.620 You and Jason live on opposite sides of the United States. 00:17:50.260 --> 00:17:55.520 Jason's over on the Pacific side and you're down over here with me in South Florida in Florida, Lauderdale. 00:17:55.820 --> 00:17:57.140 And so I want to come back to that. 00:17:57.500 --> 00:18:01.520 But the idea here is with these platforms. 00:18:01.640 --> 00:18:02.560 So you've got all VR. 00:18:03.160 --> 00:18:05.740 You've got a platform called VRChat. 00:18:06.040 --> 00:18:08.320 You've got another platform that's called Rec Room. 00:18:09.080 --> 00:18:11.560 Facebook just came out with one called Horizons. 00:18:12.100 --> 00:18:19.140 You know, this may not be a true apples to apples comparisons, but I kind of look at them like social media networks. 00:18:19.140 --> 00:18:20.260 They're communities. 00:18:21.100 --> 00:18:24.040 And within the community, they attract the type of person. 00:18:24.580 --> 00:18:27.340 They have some have stronger rules and regulations. 00:18:27.340 --> 00:18:29.620 Some have weaker rules and regulations. 00:18:29.620 --> 00:18:36.720 And so you're kind of looking at all four of these platforms within virtual reality, these communities within virtual reality. 00:18:36.880 --> 00:18:42.960 And so the majority, to be honest, the majority of churches, when they start out, start out in this one that's called Alt VR. 00:18:43.140 --> 00:18:44.960 It's run by Microsoft. 00:18:44.960 --> 00:18:50.580 And I would call it the Facebook of these communities. 00:18:51.200 --> 00:18:53.060 It kind of reaches an older crowd. 00:18:53.240 --> 00:18:54.440 It's been around for a while. 00:18:55.320 --> 00:18:57.240 Everybody seems to have an account. 00:18:57.680 --> 00:18:59.520 They may or may not be in there all the time. 00:18:59.660 --> 00:19:02.880 But everyone's had some experience in Alt VR. 00:19:03.120 --> 00:19:08.480 And then you get into the Rec Room, which is maybe it's a little more like the TikTok crowd. 00:19:08.620 --> 00:19:18.800 It's attracting a younger crowd because Rec Room is based off of Xbox VR and PlayStation VR. 00:19:18.980 --> 00:19:20.560 So the gaming kind of attracts the younger. 00:19:20.900 --> 00:19:24.180 You're more likely to be in Rec Room and get cussed out by a 14-year-old. 00:19:24.180 --> 00:19:32.360 Like, that's what's going to happen in Rec Room because you got 14-year-olds running around with, you know, unfiltered language dropping F-bombs. 00:19:32.860 --> 00:19:34.280 Welcome to Rec Room. 00:19:34.940 --> 00:19:36.320 The 14-year-old needs Jesus. 00:19:36.560 --> 00:19:38.440 Like, you need to get in there as the mission field. 00:19:38.800 --> 00:19:39.980 But that's some of the challenges. 00:19:40.120 --> 00:19:43.640 And then you've got VR Chat, which is like the wild, wild west. 00:19:44.640 --> 00:19:46.380 That has no parental filters. 00:19:46.720 --> 00:19:51.300 And so you're likely to have a conversation with an avatar who's not wearing any clothes. 00:19:51.940 --> 00:19:53.920 Or, you know, and I've had people estimate. 00:19:54.040 --> 00:19:55.260 I don't know that this is the truth. 00:19:55.260 --> 00:20:02.820 But I've had people in that space tell me that as much as 40% to 50% of VR Chat traffic are people having virtual sex. 00:20:03.460 --> 00:20:10.260 So if you're around for like the early AOL days with the chat rooms, if you go back that far, it's like, hey, you know what? 00:20:10.300 --> 00:20:12.220 They just moved that over to VR. 00:20:12.440 --> 00:20:13.420 And that's the thing. 00:20:14.380 --> 00:20:21.540 And then you've got the Facebook Horizons, which honestly is too soon to tell what this thing's going to be. 00:20:21.720 --> 00:20:23.700 Like, it's just come out recently. 00:20:24.040 --> 00:20:29.920 And so, Michael, you're doing it in, you're running the church. 00:20:30.020 --> 00:20:32.560 You started in Alt-VR. 00:20:33.480 --> 00:20:34.920 Talk to me a little bit here. 00:20:35.080 --> 00:20:37.140 Like, how did you move over? 00:20:37.320 --> 00:20:38.380 Why did you move over? 00:20:38.460 --> 00:20:43.140 Because now you're in VR Chat, which is, that's an aggressive world. 00:20:43.140 --> 00:20:54.580 Like, I don't want to oversell this, but it's, I have people telling me, no, church does not belong in VR Chat because of the environment and the people that are in there. 00:20:54.700 --> 00:20:59.660 But you're basically moving into the red light district and you set up a church in that space. 00:20:59.740 --> 00:21:02.580 Like, what was the mindset behind that with y'all? 00:21:02.580 --> 00:21:13.340 Well, you know, for Cornerstone, a key aspect of going into VR Chat was something that happened with one of the people that came to Alt-Space. 00:21:13.940 --> 00:21:23.700 So, we had a young man who was absolutely entrenched in the VR Chat culture, all of the things that you were talking about. 00:21:23.740 --> 00:21:25.140 And he's very open about sharing that. 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:31.220 And he ended up coming to an Alt-Space church service. 00:21:31.660 --> 00:21:36.780 And through that service and through the relationship that he developed with Pastor Jason, he gave his life to Christ. 00:21:37.620 --> 00:21:46.540 And when he did that, he turned around and said, we have to reach the people that I've been running with. 00:21:47.020 --> 00:21:48.840 Like, they need Jesus really badly. 00:21:49.840 --> 00:21:55.720 And so, he kind of took it upon himself to just start creating the world there. 00:21:56.520 --> 00:22:03.980 And Cornerstone just kind of wrapped around that vision of this idea that essentially what we had was a native. 00:22:03.980 --> 00:22:21.140 Like, it would be the equivalent of going to, you know, some mission field and raising up a native that would be able to help us navigate their tribes or their culture and their language and all of that. 00:22:22.220 --> 00:22:27.060 And so, to have that has been absolutely invaluable. 00:22:27.920 --> 00:22:34.860 And that was really kind of the motivation where we say, like, look, look at what the Lord's doing. 00:22:34.980 --> 00:22:36.120 How can we not go there? 00:22:37.420 --> 00:22:44.700 And so, that's really, really having that, having the person that was championing that who was a native was a big part of that. 00:22:45.420 --> 00:22:53.180 And now, we've got another young lady who came to Christ who is doing, it's the exact same thing with Rec Room. 00:22:53.340 --> 00:23:09.240 She is a Rec Room native, Rec Room expert builder, came to us as a Satan worshiper, came to our alt space campus as someone who came to troll us, came to just cause chaos. 00:23:10.480 --> 00:23:18.980 Found out that we weren't going to respond with hate, we were going to respond with love and acceptance and tell her, God loves trolls and so do we. 00:23:19.920 --> 00:23:30.920 And through the relationships that she built, in particular with one of the ladies at the church, she, this young lady ended up giving her life to Christ and then turned around and said, I'm going to build your church in Rec Room. 00:23:32.440 --> 00:23:40.100 So, some of it has been vision in terms of, you know, as far as Pastor Jason and myself and saying, hey, where else can we go? 00:23:40.200 --> 00:23:42.160 Let's try and go to these places. 00:23:42.780 --> 00:23:46.680 But also, some of it has been the Lord just opening doors for us. 00:23:47.140 --> 00:23:50.800 You told the story, you know, just here about the Satan worshiper. 00:23:51.940 --> 00:23:56.400 And so, is that, I'm going to ask a question, that's future queen of hell, right, in the story? 00:23:56.460 --> 00:23:57.540 That was her screen name. 00:23:58.560 --> 00:24:01.760 She showed up as the future queen of hell was her screen name, yeah. 00:24:02.440 --> 00:24:05.700 And what's interesting is even the trolls need Jesus. 00:24:06.060 --> 00:24:17.840 And through the relationship of many people, you know, and some of them through your church, that was a nine month, a 12, like how long was that story maybe from beginning to end? 00:24:18.140 --> 00:24:18.340 Yeah. 00:24:18.500 --> 00:24:19.900 Came in as a troll to Jesus. 00:24:20.400 --> 00:24:22.140 Yeah, that's probably about a nine month process. 00:24:22.140 --> 00:24:31.040 And so, I mean, you're really starting to pull the thread here on the relational aspects of what you can find in these metaverses. 00:24:31.200 --> 00:24:37.080 And in physical church, we often find that people find Jesus and then they join the community. 00:24:37.700 --> 00:24:45.040 In digital and really in meta, it's the exact opposite, where we're finding that people are finding the community. 00:24:45.540 --> 00:24:49.480 And through the community, then they're getting connected to Jesus. 00:24:49.480 --> 00:24:59.540 You know, I've heard stories of people that weren't saved serving on the tech team for a metaverse church, literally running the slide software. 00:24:59.660 --> 00:25:07.360 The equivalent to the pro presenter operator in the metaverse was somebody who didn't even believe in Jesus, but he was friends within the community. 00:25:07.680 --> 00:25:11.340 And so, we're finding more and more of that kind of happen. 00:25:11.380 --> 00:25:12.320 Well, let me ask you this. 00:25:12.820 --> 00:25:14.940 It talks about some of the attributes. 00:25:14.940 --> 00:25:23.800 So, you know, you've got the physical type of person, and I would say that who we're reaching in the metaverse doesn't really challenge. 00:25:24.320 --> 00:25:32.760 It's not like we're competing with it because we're finding, really, like with the future queen of hell here, it's a different type of person that we're reaching. 00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:36.740 Like, who are you reaching with your metaverse church? 00:25:36.820 --> 00:25:41.620 To maybe parallel it to the type of person that Yuba City is reaching there with Cornerstone. 00:25:42.600 --> 00:25:50.620 We're certainly reaching people who, outside of a miracle of God, are not going to get up on Sunday and say, I think I'm going to go to a church today. 00:25:52.020 --> 00:25:57.400 The vast majority of the people that we're talking to, that's not the thought in their head, and it won't be. 00:25:58.240 --> 00:25:59.900 So, that is one. 00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:07.680 And that spans a really broad range of demographics, you know, from age to culture to race. 00:26:07.840 --> 00:26:11.480 Like, there's just a lot of people who are not thinking, I need to go to church today. 00:26:12.760 --> 00:26:17.660 So, we talked to a lot of people that are in that spot. 00:26:19.060 --> 00:26:27.500 We talked to quite a few people who are very vocal about their mental and emotional issues. 00:26:28.160 --> 00:26:35.640 And they say, they may even actually desire to go to a church, but they can't be around crowds for whatever reason. 00:26:35.700 --> 00:26:36.920 There's a variety of reasons why. 00:26:37.440 --> 00:26:38.320 Some of them are physical. 00:26:39.540 --> 00:26:46.920 We have one of our key, key leaders is a man who cannot leave his house. 00:26:47.020 --> 00:26:50.840 He has such physical ailments that he cannot leave his house. 00:26:52.220 --> 00:26:56.300 But in the metaverse, he's one of our most effective evangelists, one of our most effective. 00:26:56.300 --> 00:26:58.520 He's actually the head of our discipleship right now. 00:26:58.940 --> 00:27:08.980 Like, we just installed him as head of discipleship because he is so effective at discipleship and bringing in others to, you know, get in the discipleship pathway. 00:27:09.540 --> 00:27:14.100 And he won't be able to do that physically. 00:27:15.260 --> 00:27:18.660 So, we have people who just simply cannot go even if they wanted to. 00:27:20.080 --> 00:27:22.620 We have quite a few de-churched people. 00:27:24.020 --> 00:27:28.100 Quite a few people that I talk to say, I haven't been to church in 20 years. 00:27:29.480 --> 00:27:36.180 And they're there and you can just kind of sense in their voice that they're looking for someone to trust. 00:27:36.420 --> 00:27:41.440 That they know that church is where they should be. 00:27:41.660 --> 00:27:47.080 But for whatever reason, they have a hurt that they have not been able to get over. 00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:51.500 And actually, we have helped some of those people get over that. 00:27:52.780 --> 00:27:55.600 And so, we've got that. 00:27:55.720 --> 00:27:57.040 We have people who go to church. 00:27:57.460 --> 00:28:03.460 We have people that when they show up, they say, hey, we heard something like this in our physical church this morning. 00:28:03.920 --> 00:28:04.920 Here's how it relates. 00:28:05.120 --> 00:28:07.800 And they just, they do physical church and then they come hang out with us too. 00:28:09.280 --> 00:28:19.180 And the one narrative I have not yet heard ever is someone that says, yeah, I was going to physical church. 00:28:19.180 --> 00:28:21.560 And then I found you guys and I stopped going there. 00:28:22.300 --> 00:28:23.580 I've never heard that. 00:28:23.880 --> 00:28:25.620 That has never happened as far. 00:28:25.780 --> 00:28:27.640 Now, maybe it has, but I've never had that narrative. 00:28:27.640 --> 00:28:29.560 I've never talked with anybody in that narrative. 00:28:31.420 --> 00:28:39.200 We have had people come to VR church, come to our metaverse campuses, and then start going to physical church. 00:28:39.660 --> 00:28:40.880 That we have had happen. 00:28:42.380 --> 00:28:43.220 So, yeah. 00:28:43.340 --> 00:28:50.980 So, that's, you know, and there's lots of nuances as far as the, you know, the stories that we hear and some of the other narratives that we encounter. 00:28:51.120 --> 00:28:55.400 But generally, that's kind of the, some of the big buckets that we encounter. 00:28:55.400 --> 00:29:01.680 You know, that physical digital or physical meta kind of narrative reminds me a little bit. 00:29:01.780 --> 00:29:05.900 I did a podcast with you over on the Church Digital with you and some of your team. 00:29:05.980 --> 00:29:07.420 And I remember Angel. 00:29:07.800 --> 00:29:11.640 Angel, I think, got baptized in the metaverse. 00:29:11.740 --> 00:29:13.120 And somebody's probably freaking out on me. 00:29:13.160 --> 00:29:14.720 Like, I don't mean to be that. 00:29:14.860 --> 00:29:16.740 Like, you can baptize it in the metaverse. 00:29:16.880 --> 00:29:23.360 But what was interesting with Angel, she's like, yeah, and I hope to get baptized in physical space too. 00:29:23.360 --> 00:29:26.240 Like, for her, it was a both thing. 00:29:26.380 --> 00:29:27.860 It wasn't an exclusive. 00:29:28.040 --> 00:29:31.380 You know, and I've met some people that do think metaverse is exclusive. 00:29:32.160 --> 00:29:37.300 And I've met people that, like Angel, that see it as both. 00:29:38.460 --> 00:29:40.740 And the ecclesiology, I'm not going to argue. 00:29:41.380 --> 00:29:41.820 It's funny. 00:29:41.880 --> 00:29:42.920 I used to try to argue this. 00:29:42.980 --> 00:29:46.600 But I don't want to argue the ecclesiology of a meta-church today here in 2022. 00:29:46.600 --> 00:29:56.180 I think it'll work itself out in the next 10 or 15, 20 years as culture accepts more of it and as the strength of the technology defines. 00:29:57.080 --> 00:30:10.100 I think that we, and guys like Michael that are so aggressive in this season, in this space, there's an opportunity to cling to the biblical narrative, what the Bible calls the church to be. 00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:10.980 What are the functions? 00:30:11.400 --> 00:30:13.700 Start with Acts 2 and, you know, go from there. 00:30:14.060 --> 00:30:16.940 But beyond that, it's an experiment. 00:30:17.540 --> 00:30:27.080 How Michael is interpreting it through Cornerstone VR is going to be different than how DJ Soto is going to read it over for VR Church. 00:30:27.140 --> 00:30:30.440 It's going to be different than how Stuart's reading it for Lakeland VR. 00:30:30.440 --> 00:30:36.640 And so, like, we all get these different perspectives as we're experimenting with this. 00:30:36.800 --> 00:30:45.960 And one of the things, honestly, I love about guys like Goose and DJ and some of the others is, hey, let's not yell at. 00:30:46.020 --> 00:30:46.920 Let's not be mad at. 00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:48.380 Let's not stop the innovation. 00:30:48.980 --> 00:30:50.440 Let's embrace it. 00:30:50.440 --> 00:31:07.160 Let's recognize it as an experiment and encourage these guys that are going out there and that are being innovative when culture is not, I mean, I hate to say this, but probably the most controversial thing that I've ever said in a digital environment is there can be a metaverse church. 00:31:07.460 --> 00:31:12.020 Like on YouTube, I get 10x the number of people yelling at me compared to that. 00:31:12.380 --> 00:31:14.540 So, you know, recognizing that it's an experiment. 00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:15.400 What are you feeling? 00:31:15.520 --> 00:31:17.820 Do you feel, let me ask, let me ask this question. 00:31:18.140 --> 00:31:19.680 Do you feel negative from the outside? 00:31:19.880 --> 00:31:21.800 And do you feel negative from people within the church? 00:31:21.860 --> 00:31:23.360 I'd be interested in your perspective there. 00:31:23.360 --> 00:31:24.700 So, I don't. 00:31:25.300 --> 00:31:28.260 I don't feel negative for a few reasons. 00:31:30.200 --> 00:31:37.440 There are some of the noise that's now starting to emerge and it's getting louder and louder. 00:31:38.920 --> 00:31:45.740 It really is coming from voices that don't really understand what it is. 00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:48.460 They've got a few minor data points. 00:31:49.320 --> 00:31:50.920 But they don't really get it. 00:31:51.000 --> 00:31:58.100 And it's a little bit like, for those I just feel like, you know, you've got kids, I've got four. 00:31:58.360 --> 00:32:01.880 It's a little bit like hearing someone with no kids tell me how to parent. 00:32:02.680 --> 00:32:07.580 It's like, okay, thanks, but you don't know what you're talking about. 00:32:07.740 --> 00:32:08.460 And that's okay. 00:32:08.560 --> 00:32:09.640 I know you mean well. 00:32:09.900 --> 00:32:11.280 So, I don't hold it against them. 00:32:11.300 --> 00:32:12.340 But it's not useful. 00:32:13.100 --> 00:32:26.460 For the people who have taken the time to actually look into it, not necessarily that they're trying to get into metaverse ministry, but try to understand it to see what is going on and what are the questions that we need to look out for. 00:32:26.560 --> 00:32:29.640 What are the pitfalls we might need to watch out for? 00:32:29.940 --> 00:32:31.760 We value those conversations. 00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:36.660 Pastor Jason and I are all the time saying, okay, let's do this. 00:32:36.660 --> 00:32:37.560 But wait, is this okay? 00:32:38.100 --> 00:32:39.160 Like, what about this? 00:32:39.220 --> 00:32:39.760 What about that? 00:32:39.840 --> 00:32:45.600 Like, we're not just going into this saying, like, let's just do whatever and let the chips fall where they may. 00:32:45.680 --> 00:32:46.280 We are aggressive. 00:32:46.660 --> 00:32:48.720 We're always saying, just pull the trigger, let's go. 00:32:48.880 --> 00:32:56.760 But we are thinking deeply about the theological implications of some of the things that we are saying, let's do. 00:32:56.760 --> 00:33:04.820 So, for the people who have actually looked into this and are offering, you know, points and counterpoints, those are super valuable. 00:33:04.980 --> 00:33:06.920 We love having those conversations. 00:33:07.980 --> 00:33:14.780 So, the noise in that space and the challenges, it really is a matter of kind of filtering it out. 00:33:15.620 --> 00:33:22.880 But also, for me, the noise to me is positive. 00:33:25.040 --> 00:33:35.500 When I was making video games and I was actually publishing them for sale, one of the greatest moments for me was when I found out one of my games was really like kind of heavily being pirated. 00:33:36.100 --> 00:33:38.620 Like, people were stealing the game and not paying for it. 00:33:39.220 --> 00:33:43.200 And I saw that and I said, you know, I mean, obviously, that's not a good thing. 00:33:44.200 --> 00:33:45.620 But it meant something. 00:33:45.980 --> 00:33:48.580 Like, that was like a weirdly proud moment. 00:33:49.220 --> 00:33:54.340 And so, you know, I hear this isn't, I'm not pulling this from scripture. 00:33:54.440 --> 00:34:00.340 I'm pulling this from Reggie Jackson, who, when they asked him, how does it feel when everybody boos you at opposing stadiums? 00:34:00.760 --> 00:34:02.580 And he says, fans don't boo nobodies. 00:34:03.320 --> 00:34:07.080 So, if the boos are coming, we're on to something. 00:34:07.600 --> 00:34:08.840 We tease this a little bit. 00:34:09.040 --> 00:34:10.620 You're based in Fort Lauderdale. 00:34:10.900 --> 00:34:13.000 There's some questions, by the way, in the chat. 00:34:13.480 --> 00:34:14.080 Keep them coming. 00:34:14.320 --> 00:34:15.860 I'm going to address some of those at the end. 00:34:15.940 --> 00:34:18.020 A couple of those are really good, the ones that I'm seeing. 00:34:18.620 --> 00:34:22.560 But for you, you are, you're a pastor. 00:34:22.700 --> 00:34:23.560 You live in Fort Lauderdale. 00:34:24.200 --> 00:34:28.760 And Cornerstone, Yuba City, is in Northern California. 00:34:29.280 --> 00:34:30.520 Four time zones away. 00:34:31.020 --> 00:34:32.360 And I know you do that flight. 00:34:32.440 --> 00:34:35.000 What is that, like a 12-hour flight, an 8, 10-hour flight? 00:34:35.400 --> 00:34:36.080 Feels like it. 00:34:36.600 --> 00:34:36.840 Yeah. 00:34:37.020 --> 00:34:37.920 So, like, what? 00:34:39.200 --> 00:34:42.220 But you're pastoring Metaverse. 00:34:42.220 --> 00:34:44.320 So, you're working with people. 00:34:44.640 --> 00:34:47.560 You know, the little bit I know of your core team volunteers. 00:34:47.940 --> 00:34:49.040 One lives in Georgia. 00:34:49.240 --> 00:34:50.520 One lives in the Carolinas. 00:34:51.240 --> 00:34:53.420 Like, you're spread out. 00:34:54.200 --> 00:34:56.780 Are there challenges with that? 00:34:57.200 --> 00:34:59.120 Are communication connection issues? 00:34:59.300 --> 00:35:05.700 Like, what is it for you to work at a church championing a Metaverse thing when you're not 00:35:05.700 --> 00:35:07.280 actually rubbing shoulders physically? 00:35:07.640 --> 00:35:08.860 Yeah, it's challenging. 00:35:09.200 --> 00:35:15.220 I miss, you know, walking the halls and seeing people and throwing bouncing ideas off of each 00:35:15.220 --> 00:35:17.260 other and having that sort of connection. 00:35:17.380 --> 00:35:18.240 I miss that a lot. 00:35:19.260 --> 00:35:26.560 At the same time, you know, we maintain that it's possible to still have effective ministry 00:35:26.560 --> 00:35:29.460 through a digital medium. 00:35:30.080 --> 00:35:33.140 And so far, it has been very effective. 00:35:33.340 --> 00:35:36.560 I mean, the fruit that has been born from it speaks for itself. 00:35:37.280 --> 00:35:43.660 And so, you know, I take the challenges and some of the drawbacks of that and just say, 00:35:44.140 --> 00:35:47.960 you know, this is just a difficulty that, you know, we kind of have to walk through. 00:35:48.580 --> 00:35:53.140 And it's, in the end, as long as we're being effective, it's not, you know, it's not about 00:35:53.140 --> 00:35:54.400 my happiness necessarily. 00:35:54.400 --> 00:35:57.700 It's about, are we being effective to advance the gospel? 00:35:58.320 --> 00:36:04.660 And that, so far, has been, I think, the fruit has proven that it is being effective. 00:36:04.740 --> 00:36:06.100 The Lord is working. 00:36:06.280 --> 00:36:11.820 And so, even with the difficulties, we say, onward, let's keep going. 00:36:12.160 --> 00:36:13.460 We're also figuring it out. 00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:19.360 When Pastor Jason and I talked initially, and Pastor Roby, my former pastor, had some 00:36:19.360 --> 00:36:22.140 really great questions in the space saying, hey, but what about this? 00:36:22.240 --> 00:36:23.060 What about this? 00:36:23.060 --> 00:36:24.520 Like, how are you going to deal with that? 00:36:25.060 --> 00:36:26.260 And some of them were like, I don't know. 00:36:26.360 --> 00:36:28.540 We're going to have to get into it and see and make sure. 00:36:28.720 --> 00:36:34.480 And so, you know, I just have a multitude of wise voices that speak into the situation 00:36:34.480 --> 00:36:35.820 and are looking out for me. 00:36:35.880 --> 00:36:44.200 The elders of Cornerstone are so great about checking in on me in particular, knowing that 00:36:44.200 --> 00:36:50.660 I'm out on an island, sort of, in terms of staff and in terms of the ministry implications 00:36:50.660 --> 00:36:51.120 of that. 00:36:51.500 --> 00:36:55.680 And so, they're just very good about making sure that everything is okay. 00:36:56.060 --> 00:37:00.620 And frankly, there have been more than a few times where, you know, they've reached out 00:37:00.620 --> 00:37:02.500 and, you know, I was not in a great place. 00:37:02.580 --> 00:37:04.040 You know, I was kind of in a lonely place. 00:37:04.380 --> 00:37:08.940 And, you know, people in a lonely place don't necessarily have the wherewithal to reach out 00:37:08.940 --> 00:37:09.660 and say, I'm lonely. 00:37:09.780 --> 00:37:10.960 You know, I just kind of sit in it. 00:37:11.120 --> 00:37:16.100 And so, them being proactive, Pastor Jason being proactive and saying, how are you doing? 00:37:16.200 --> 00:37:16.700 How are you doing? 00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:23.520 That ultimately is the thing that kind of keeps it all going. 00:37:23.860 --> 00:37:28.260 And that really is the essence of metaverse ministry. 00:37:28.420 --> 00:37:34.480 Like, if you really boil it down to what is the most effective thing in metaverse ministry, 00:37:34.860 --> 00:37:38.840 it is just letting people talk. 00:37:39.040 --> 00:37:41.860 Like, just going and saying, how are you doing? 00:37:41.920 --> 00:37:46.380 And being an empathetic listener so that you can respond. 00:37:46.920 --> 00:37:47.540 Boil it down. 00:37:47.660 --> 00:37:53.900 What I just heard you say is the most important thing that you as a metaverse pastor can do 00:37:53.900 --> 00:37:57.120 is empathetically listen to people. 00:37:58.820 --> 00:38:02.560 So, like, how does that, let's just roll that idea out. 00:38:03.020 --> 00:38:06.600 How does that idea influence what you do? 00:38:07.260 --> 00:38:12.340 So, like, you know, your church services, the conversations during the week, 00:38:12.780 --> 00:38:16.300 unpack and through the lens of empathetically listening, 00:38:16.900 --> 00:38:20.640 what does it actually mean to pastor somebody in a metaverse church? 00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:23.760 Yeah, it means seeing everything as two-way. 00:38:24.580 --> 00:38:26.420 Everything is two-way communication. 00:38:26.640 --> 00:38:27.840 It's always a two-way street. 00:38:28.820 --> 00:38:30.720 And that informs how we do our services. 00:38:31.380 --> 00:38:35.400 A huge part of our service is Q&A. 00:38:36.280 --> 00:38:38.260 Like, at the end, I mean, if you look at our service, 00:38:38.480 --> 00:38:43.820 it would look probably very much like most of the churches in the United States right now, 00:38:43.820 --> 00:38:46.880 where we have a kind of a pre-service time. 00:38:47.200 --> 00:38:48.200 We do worship. 00:38:49.220 --> 00:38:51.160 And then we do a sermon. 00:38:52.400 --> 00:38:55.000 And sometimes we do communion. 00:38:57.060 --> 00:38:59.300 And so all of that would generally look the same. 00:38:59.300 --> 00:39:05.620 But for us, we basically open it up to the audience, to the congregation, whoever's there, and say, 00:39:06.100 --> 00:39:06.520 okay, cool. 00:39:06.600 --> 00:39:07.600 What questions do you have? 00:39:08.420 --> 00:39:10.540 You know, raise your hand and we'll get to it. 00:39:11.520 --> 00:39:14.880 And it's as bonkers as you might think. 00:39:15.040 --> 00:39:19.280 We get some amazing insight from our people. 00:39:19.420 --> 00:39:24.040 We have really seasoned Christians that call Cornerstone home. 00:39:24.320 --> 00:39:29.800 And they'll come up, you know, and they'll add to what we've talked about. 00:39:29.860 --> 00:39:33.980 Or they'll ask a very, very deep question, a very important question. 00:39:34.320 --> 00:39:39.620 And that discussion sometimes is the mechanism where people experience their spiritual growth. 00:39:40.080 --> 00:39:42.960 And so, but, and then some people just need to be heard. 00:39:44.400 --> 00:39:49.900 And that, and for the people that have that opportunity to come in and say, I'm struggling with this. 00:39:49.960 --> 00:39:51.080 It may not have anything to do with the sermon. 00:39:51.740 --> 00:39:54.900 But they may come in and just say, you know, here's what I'm struggling with. 00:39:54.940 --> 00:39:56.800 Or here's what my lifestyle is. 00:39:56.860 --> 00:39:57.860 Does Jesus still love me? 00:39:57.900 --> 00:39:59.160 Can I come to Jesus like this? 00:40:00.160 --> 00:40:04.900 And it's like week after week in both all space and VR chat. 00:40:05.540 --> 00:40:15.820 I just, I step away from that, just amazed at some of the, some of the things and the, and the, and the transformations that I've just like, you can hear happening to someone far away. 00:40:17.080 --> 00:40:20.400 All because we, we, we just put some headsets on. 00:40:21.080 --> 00:40:22.320 It's, it's, it's amazing. 00:40:22.860 --> 00:40:27.260 You know, you're trying to be an empathetic listener and I'm going to hit one of the questions from the, from the audience. 00:40:27.360 --> 00:40:31.320 Uh, cause, cause really they're asking, how do you read body language? 00:40:31.860 --> 00:40:37.360 You know, so much of, of having a conversation in physical space, you know, I'm, I'm pastoring somebody. 00:40:37.520 --> 00:40:38.840 I'm looking somebody in the eye. 00:40:39.160 --> 00:40:41.020 They're diverting their attention away from me. 00:40:41.060 --> 00:40:42.340 They, they won't look me in the eye. 00:40:42.420 --> 00:40:43.740 I know something else is going on. 00:40:43.780 --> 00:40:46.940 I can dig in, um, and body language. 00:40:47.060 --> 00:40:48.460 Do you, do you have that level? 00:40:49.000 --> 00:40:55.980 Um, what, what, what does it, what does it look like kind of inferring and understanding when you're having conversations like that in the metaverse? 00:40:56.280 --> 00:40:56.660 That's great. 00:40:56.660 --> 00:40:57.680 That's a great question. 00:40:57.680 --> 00:41:04.280 Um, obviously we don't get body language in the same way that we would in the physical space. 00:41:04.280 --> 00:41:10.680 We certainly don't get any sort of, you know, like anything is sort of like the facial recognition or anything like that. 00:41:11.260 --> 00:41:18.360 So that is, um, I wouldn't call a weakness, but it's one aspect of communication that we don't get. 00:41:19.200 --> 00:41:35.500 It doesn't invalidate it because it's, once you are communicating in, in that through this medium enough, you start to understand what other nuances might be happening and start to pick up on it. 00:41:35.720 --> 00:41:42.800 Um, you know, um, you know, the example that pastor Jason uses all the time is, you know, we would never say that somebody who's visually impaired couldn't be a counselor. 00:41:43.340 --> 00:41:47.620 We would never say that there can be, there are very effective people who can't see that can be a counselor. 00:41:48.120 --> 00:41:49.420 So what about them? 00:41:49.640 --> 00:41:54.480 Like if, if it would invalidate that to say that this is not a valid way of communicating. 00:41:54.480 --> 00:42:05.320 Now, again, like I said, it's, it, there are some things that you have to make up for, but there are things that we get that you don't get in the physical space. 00:42:05.540 --> 00:42:19.820 And what I think we're going to realize down the road is, and, and, and psychologists and psychiatrists or whoever are going to come into the space and really start to understand what communication in this medium really means. 00:42:20.340 --> 00:42:30.360 And we're going to, we're, we are going to realize that there are strengths in this space that you don't get in the physical and actually start using it appropriately. 00:42:30.500 --> 00:42:46.240 Where I do believe at some point, we're going to get to the, we're going to get to the spot where somebody in a physical space is going to be communicating or counseling or whatever it may be and say, you know what, this is going to be better if we do it in VR or XR or whatever it may be. 00:42:47.560 --> 00:42:54.540 The anonymity that we've got gives us access to people in an unprecedented way. 00:42:54.920 --> 00:43:00.760 And that is a strength that, that has, again, is just shown to yield so much fruit. 00:43:00.760 --> 00:43:12.180 And it really has microwaved relationships rather than having to, you know, sort of like pull information from people that they may not want to give. 00:43:13.680 --> 00:43:19.280 There, many people are, are, are, are there to just unburden themselves about things. 00:43:19.580 --> 00:43:25.440 Many people are there and say, I feel safe to tell you all of this because you have no idea who I am. 00:43:25.680 --> 00:43:29.060 You, you don't even know what continent I live on if you can't really tell. 00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:32.300 So I feel safe enough to tell you all of that. 00:43:32.740 --> 00:43:36.620 And, and so that is, is, is something. 00:43:36.720 --> 00:43:44.320 So, so we kind of just lean into that and say, I may not be able to tell if you're bored talking to me, but I did just hear about all of your childhood trauma. 00:43:44.460 --> 00:43:47.880 So let's, let, let's, let's get to counseling on that. 00:43:48.100 --> 00:43:49.480 Uh, and it's, it's interesting. 00:43:49.480 --> 00:43:55.620 Even when talking, we, we had a conversation recently with it, with the church and it was like, don't ask the real names. 00:43:56.280 --> 00:44:07.900 Don't because when you ask the real name and they tell you there's a little bit of that, that innocence, a little bit of that privacy, a little bit of that openness that, that goes away. 00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:10.080 Because now I know who the person is. 00:44:10.700 --> 00:44:23.260 And so it's, it's, it's almost like you don't, you do ministry with the person, even though they have a handle, even though it's, it's goose or it's, you know, future queen of hell or, or whatever it is. 00:44:23.260 --> 00:44:26.940 Like you don't, you don't need, whereas in physical, you shake hands. 00:44:27.000 --> 00:44:27.520 Hey, I'm Jeff. 00:44:27.560 --> 00:44:28.160 What's your name? 00:44:28.440 --> 00:44:31.760 And it's, and it's so natural in physical space to do that. 00:44:32.100 --> 00:44:47.720 But when you're really looking at, at metaverse, if you can hold that question, what's your name and start to dive into, oh my gosh, the things that open up, the conversations that you can have by, by listening in these environments is, is, is beautiful, man. 00:44:47.780 --> 00:44:48.780 Thank you for saying that, Michael. 00:44:48.880 --> 00:44:49.560 So, so good. 00:44:49.900 --> 00:44:52.020 Hey, we had talked to another question that I see here. 00:44:52.340 --> 00:44:56.320 Um, and if there are other questions, feel free to throw them in and, and we'll, we'll address them. 00:44:56.380 --> 00:44:59.340 We kind of, kind of, um, ping pong around here a little bit. 00:44:59.340 --> 00:45:03.780 Um, so I, I know you're, we, we talked about different platforms that you're on. 00:45:03.860 --> 00:45:10.080 We talked about, um, you know, you're, you're in all VR, you're in, uh, VR chat. 00:45:10.160 --> 00:45:18.160 It sounds like you're exploring, um, uh, rec room and starting to build something in that space. 00:45:18.160 --> 00:45:27.520 Uh, and, but there's, there's the idea of, uh, reaching people through, uh, gaming through, you know, some of the MMO games, games that are out there. 00:45:27.520 --> 00:45:30.320 Uh, I, I don't, I don't think you're doing that now. 00:45:30.380 --> 00:45:31.340 Have you explored that? 00:45:31.420 --> 00:45:36.000 Kind of, uh, talk to me a little bit about the idea of, uh, of utilizing some of these gaming platforms. 00:45:36.320 --> 00:45:38.280 As I said, I, I'm, I've been a gamer my whole life. 00:45:38.320 --> 00:45:44.100 That's, that's really the world, like the world that I'm most comfortable with coming into places like alt space and VR chat. 00:45:44.160 --> 00:45:50.940 It was, I was slightly surprised to find that it's not as much of a gaming community as I thought. 00:45:50.940 --> 00:45:53.100 It's much, much more of a social community. 00:45:53.880 --> 00:46:01.280 That said, we, uh, gamers are still here and there are a lot of vibrant communities around, uh, games as well. 00:46:02.080 --> 00:46:06.380 And yes, we have looked at a few different games. 00:46:06.700 --> 00:46:13.600 One, the one MMO that we've, we've sort of thought about was new world, which was, which is the Amazon one. 00:46:13.760 --> 00:46:15.980 We haven't gotten any traction on that yet. 00:46:16.020 --> 00:46:25.820 I kind of want to see how it goes, but anytime a new game comes out, we've got eyes on it as, is it a place where we can do some form of ministry? 00:46:25.820 --> 00:46:37.900 And for me, the big sort of like the, the, the different again, sort of buckets really kind of fall into, are we looking at doing church there or are we looking to do outreach there? 00:46:38.300 --> 00:46:50.080 And so for me so far, the most fruit, uh, and, and, and the, and the landscape seems mostly designed for outreach. 00:46:50.440 --> 00:47:05.960 So for, for quite a while now, um, me and my boy stone cargo have been going into population one and, and along with a few of our, a few of our other friends, but, but week in and week out, we have been going into population one, which is the VR version of fortnight. 00:47:05.960 --> 00:47:13.960 That's kind of the, the, the shorthand for it, but we will go in and we will pop open a public lobby. 00:47:13.960 --> 00:47:19.460 We'll call it Bible study, pop one Bible study, whatever it is, we put Bible study in it. 00:47:20.060 --> 00:47:23.100 And we will just play, we'll just play games. 00:47:23.160 --> 00:47:24.640 We'll play matches, keep going. 00:47:24.860 --> 00:47:29.760 And people will come in a hundred percent of the people that come in, think it's a joke. 00:47:29.900 --> 00:47:32.080 They, nobody thinks that it's an actual Bible study. 00:47:33.260 --> 00:47:39.060 And then about 45 minutes in, after we have hung out, we've gotten to know each other a little bit. 00:47:39.440 --> 00:47:43.980 They see that, Hey, like, you know, we like, we're like shooting you. 00:47:44.040 --> 00:47:44.760 You like shooting us. 00:47:44.800 --> 00:47:45.960 And we play the game together. 00:47:46.120 --> 00:47:47.160 There there's a connection. 00:47:48.120 --> 00:47:50.680 I'll circle everybody up and say, okay, it's time for the Bible study. 00:47:51.660 --> 00:47:54.880 And we will get people that drop out. 00:47:54.880 --> 00:47:59.200 We will get people that say, you know, I'm going to stay and I'm going to troll. 00:47:59.820 --> 00:48:06.920 So many weeks I will just preach a message with somebody unloading magazine after magazine into me with their MP5. 00:48:07.260 --> 00:48:08.480 And that's just how it goes. 00:48:09.740 --> 00:48:14.760 But quite a few people actually have stuck around and have made connections. 00:48:15.400 --> 00:48:28.560 And we, you know, we, we send them to discord, which is kind of our hub, but, but many times we have, we've had people stop and say like, that you could, you could do something like this. 00:48:28.580 --> 00:48:29.300 This is awesome. 00:48:30.020 --> 00:48:35.240 Like, yeah, you know, I, I go to church here and, and, but I never thought about doing ministry in this space. 00:48:35.240 --> 00:48:35.960 And this is great. 00:48:36.060 --> 00:48:38.100 And it's like turning on light bulbs for people. 00:48:38.340 --> 00:48:45.100 And then for people that have never heard the gospel, I, the one kid that I still remember had to be about 13. 00:48:45.400 --> 00:48:49.560 Somewhere in America, you know, you can just tell. 00:48:50.480 --> 00:48:52.860 And he came up afterwards, he goes, what were you talking about? 00:48:53.680 --> 00:48:56.760 And I said, oh, it was, you know, it's from the Bible, you know, like the Bible story of Jesus. 00:48:56.760 --> 00:48:57.640 He's like, no, I don't know. 00:48:57.800 --> 00:48:59.000 I don't have no idea what you're talking about. 00:48:59.720 --> 00:49:03.020 I said, well, like, okay, you've seen the cross outside of a church. 00:49:03.880 --> 00:49:05.900 You know why there's a cross outside of a church, right? 00:49:05.900 --> 00:49:07.360 He's like, no, I've seen a cross. 00:49:07.460 --> 00:49:08.100 I have no idea. 00:49:08.780 --> 00:49:12.340 Like this kid, Jesus dying on the cross meant absolutely nothing to this kid. 00:49:12.600 --> 00:49:13.820 Just no idea. 00:49:13.820 --> 00:49:22.720 So I had literally like two minutes to give him the story of the entire Bible, which I, you know, I did my best to. 00:49:23.780 --> 00:49:25.900 And, you know, it was a seed planted. 00:49:26.040 --> 00:49:28.060 I mean, he didn't just stop and say, okay, I want to do it. 00:49:28.080 --> 00:49:29.020 In fact, I said, what do you think? 00:49:29.060 --> 00:49:30.380 He goes, that's a lot to take in. 00:49:31.360 --> 00:49:32.360 I said, yeah, it is. 00:49:32.460 --> 00:49:36.120 But hey, if you want to, you know, if you want to connect, if you want to ask questions or whatever. 00:49:36.240 --> 00:49:37.620 And, you know, we friended up and that was it. 00:49:37.680 --> 00:49:44.940 But it's just about planting those seeds, planting the seeds, planting that's what we talk a lot about, just planting seeds and using games to do that. 00:49:45.640 --> 00:49:49.260 It's an amazing opportunity because of that shared connection. 00:49:49.900 --> 00:50:00.980 The one thing that gaming has always done is that I don't know what, I may know nothing about you, but if you play a game I like, at the very least, I know I got one thing in common with you. 00:50:01.120 --> 00:50:06.120 And if you can make that one connection, they just might listen to something else you have to say. 00:50:06.220 --> 00:50:10.260 You're going to go plant a church in Cape Town, South Africa. 00:50:10.400 --> 00:50:13.000 I have no idea why that popped into my head, but let's run with it. 00:50:13.720 --> 00:50:15.060 You're going to move there. 00:50:15.200 --> 00:50:16.300 You're going to meet the people. 00:50:16.480 --> 00:50:17.500 You're going to walk around. 00:50:18.200 --> 00:50:19.520 You're going to learn the culture. 00:50:19.980 --> 00:50:23.240 You're going to learn how people think in that space. 00:50:23.480 --> 00:50:29.960 You're going to find the person of peace, maybe somebody that's friendly to the ideas and maybe friendly to God. 00:50:30.960 --> 00:50:36.280 And so as we look at even video games, I think there's an opportunity to do that. 00:50:36.340 --> 00:50:37.980 Once again, controversial idea. 00:50:38.080 --> 00:50:41.520 Somebody out there is probably writing a very angry email. 00:50:41.960 --> 00:50:43.040 And so feel free to send it over. 00:50:43.540 --> 00:50:48.580 But the heart of this is, and there are, we'll have DJ Soto with VR Church. 00:50:48.600 --> 00:50:50.740 He's been on in a couple weeks. 00:50:51.000 --> 00:50:51.980 I think he's week three. 00:50:51.980 --> 00:51:00.560 And so he's been doing some things, probably one of the few guys I know that's doing an organized movement into MMO video games where he's doing Rust. 00:51:00.800 --> 00:51:03.760 He's doing Final Fantasy. 00:51:04.320 --> 00:51:06.580 I want to say they're doing Black Desert online. 00:51:06.840 --> 00:51:09.440 I know some individuals that are doing Black Desert online. 00:51:10.600 --> 00:51:16.220 And so like there's an opportunity, I think, to look at it as a mission field. 00:51:16.440 --> 00:51:17.720 Now, can you do it as a church? 00:51:18.440 --> 00:51:19.240 I don't know. 00:51:20.060 --> 00:51:21.720 But I know you can a mission field. 00:51:21.860 --> 00:51:23.980 I know there's plenty of people who need Jesus. 00:51:23.980 --> 00:51:31.500 There's an estimated 24 million people who play Final Fantasy online each week, active each week. 00:51:32.080 --> 00:51:41.420 And to say that, oh, there's nobody in there that doesn't know Jesus, I suggest probably a large majority of them need Jesus in their lives. 00:51:41.640 --> 00:51:51.400 And so would love the opportunity to even engage and to help churches get in there into even the video game stuff as a mission field. 00:51:51.400 --> 00:51:54.380 Even experimenting with it as a church. 00:51:54.820 --> 00:51:58.480 Hey, talking about another experiment here, another question came in. 00:51:59.200 --> 00:52:00.020 Kids ministry. 00:52:00.140 --> 00:52:01.940 And I know we've had this conversation recently. 00:52:02.780 --> 00:52:12.600 So the context for this question was more about digital, which I think actually may loosen some of it up. 00:52:13.280 --> 00:52:16.260 And ma'am, if you want to reach out to me directly, I'm assuming it's a ma'am. 00:52:16.360 --> 00:52:18.820 That may have been misconstrued on my part. 00:52:18.900 --> 00:52:19.300 I apologize. 00:52:19.960 --> 00:52:24.500 Whoever you are, if you want to reach out to me, Jeff at the Church Digital, you can email me directly. 00:52:24.560 --> 00:52:26.000 We can talk digital on that. 00:52:26.040 --> 00:52:28.440 But for this question, I would love to unpack. 00:52:29.540 --> 00:52:33.540 And so Bruce, the producer, it was a man. 00:52:33.820 --> 00:52:35.900 So, sir, I do apologize seriously for that. 00:52:36.400 --> 00:52:38.520 It's not the worst thing I'm going to do today, believe me. 00:52:39.140 --> 00:52:40.380 But answer this for me. 00:52:41.080 --> 00:52:42.900 Metaverse, kids ministry. 00:52:43.160 --> 00:52:44.740 What are some challenges? 00:52:44.920 --> 00:52:47.140 What are some obstacles, opportunities? 00:52:47.540 --> 00:52:52.780 As you've looked at for the church, what have you seen there with Metaverse? 00:52:53.440 --> 00:52:54.440 It's complex. 00:52:58.440 --> 00:53:03.020 The online, you know, so COPPA is the act that protects children under 13. 00:53:03.560 --> 00:53:09.340 And so technically, if you look at the T's and C's of any of these platforms, you cannot be under 13. 00:53:10.300 --> 00:53:14.780 There are definitely kids under 13 on these platforms, but that's technically the rule. 00:53:15.520 --> 00:53:22.340 And so that's the first thing is like, you know, we just have to be very, very careful with that. 00:53:22.460 --> 00:53:29.180 And then even under 18, you know, so that 13 to 18 range, also, you're still dealing with a minor. 00:53:29.180 --> 00:53:35.000 So this is where, you know, I've got both my pastor hat and my lawyer hat on when I'm talking to my people. 00:53:35.640 --> 00:53:45.800 But mostly the way that we've dealt with it right now is we have just said, look, we need to be very, very careful about this. 00:53:45.800 --> 00:53:54.440 And use as much of the physical church principles in this space and do not get lax. 00:53:55.060 --> 00:54:03.500 There is a tendency to think, well, because we're not in the same room physically, we can loosen up our restrictions. 00:54:03.500 --> 00:54:05.760 We can loosen up what we know are best practices. 00:54:06.120 --> 00:54:09.920 And I would just say to anybody that's going to enter the space, do not do that. 00:54:10.080 --> 00:54:15.380 Have huge, wide boundaries over the interactions that you have with kids. 00:54:16.040 --> 00:54:17.980 That being said, you're going to have them. 00:54:18.000 --> 00:54:20.200 And you won't always know that you're having them. 00:54:20.340 --> 00:54:23.320 I mean, it's just, you just won't know. 00:54:24.420 --> 00:54:30.300 But, you know, just the kind of simple things where it's just like never have an individual interaction. 00:54:30.900 --> 00:54:32.200 Always have two people. 00:54:32.200 --> 00:54:51.820 If you're out, you know, if you're going to go out evangelizing or if you're going to have a meeting or something like that, it's just make sure that you've got, you know, you've got two people in the room at all times monitoring that conversation so that, you know, the child is protected and you know that the person is protected against an allegation that is false. 00:54:52.100 --> 00:55:02.500 So we haven't had any issues with that, but it doesn't mean that we don't have, you know, one reason I think is just because we try to have really, really, you know, again, those wide boundaries. 00:55:03.520 --> 00:55:06.920 But it's, yeah, mainly that. 00:55:07.040 --> 00:55:11.160 Now, the question probably was more about like, how do we actually service those kids? 00:55:11.280 --> 00:55:13.040 But my, instantly my lawyer hat was on. 00:55:13.640 --> 00:55:23.140 I think that there are, there are going to emerge opportunities for that crowd, for the, for the, for the, for the younger crowd. 00:55:24.700 --> 00:55:31.660 But because right now it's such a mix, like you go to rec room and yes, it's a lot of kids, but there are plenty of adults to play that. 00:55:32.280 --> 00:55:40.420 So while that, while the common narrative is that it's for kids and certainly more often you will see that there are plenty of adults in there. 00:55:40.880 --> 00:55:47.480 And so the interactions are just, it can, it can kind of get a little bit strange. 00:55:47.920 --> 00:55:56.640 And so it's not, even rec room, my point is this, even rec room, which is kind of designed for kids, isn't only kids in there. 00:55:57.800 --> 00:56:03.600 So like, I love that my kids play and I, you know, like my children are, you know, 15 and under. 00:56:03.600 --> 00:56:11.740 And so, but they, they have VRs, but like, they're not going into rec room by themselves, or at least I know, I'm going to know exactly what they're doing. 00:56:11.840 --> 00:56:14.200 And there's no chatting with other people. 00:56:14.200 --> 00:56:19.580 Like I have that, I have that locked down pretty, pretty well because I know like there's going to be adults in there. 00:56:19.820 --> 00:56:23.500 So I think there's something that might emerge that, that adults stay out of. 00:56:23.660 --> 00:56:31.160 It's, it's, you're just always going to have to be on guard that it's hard to, it's hard to put that gate up. 00:56:31.160 --> 00:56:39.440 Like it's that, that you, you don't have the, the security guard at the front of kids men saying like, you can't come in unless you got your tag. 00:56:40.320 --> 00:56:42.260 We just don't have any way to do that. 00:56:42.260 --> 00:56:45.820 Well said there, there's no bouncer in, in, in metaverse kids. 00:56:46.560 --> 00:56:57.120 What, what I've seen a couple places do is it's student led movements where it's, it's kids and students utilizing the platform to reach students. 00:56:57.120 --> 00:56:58.560 And I shouldn't say kids. 00:56:58.720 --> 00:57:08.980 I don't, I don't know, I don't know anybody that's sub 12 because of all of the issues centered around the terms and conditions, the T's and C's that aren't lining up. 00:57:08.980 --> 00:57:14.620 That won't let a 12 year old on, but 13 up, there seems to be more gray or more open to it. 00:57:15.000 --> 00:57:23.380 And so like, you know, there are several, they're the oldest digital church that I know of has been running probably 12 or 13 years at this point. 00:57:23.380 --> 00:57:28.320 And it was started by, by a guy on a platform called Roblox. 00:57:28.880 --> 00:57:37.140 And so if you're really bad at math, he started when he was like 11 and, and, and building this Robloxian church. 00:57:37.140 --> 00:57:49.300 Now, I mean, it's, it's a, and a lot of times with these student led movements, theologies a little over the map, um, even understanding of discipleship and what this is. 00:57:49.320 --> 00:57:53.460 It's more mimicking physical instead of really doing something in digital and meta. 00:57:53.800 --> 00:57:58.040 And so it's, um, it's just, it's a little interesting. 00:57:58.180 --> 00:58:16.120 Uh, but what you're finding specifically with this Daniel Heron, this guy that's been doing it for 12 years, Robloxian Christians, um, I mean, he's, he's probably impacted 50, 75,000 people through his, his digital church on this Robloxian platform. 00:58:16.120 --> 00:58:26.120 My kid spends, I don't know, probably 10 hours a week playing in this Roblox world and, and, and just going around to different places. 00:58:26.120 --> 00:58:31.940 And guys like Daniel are being the church and trying to build relationships and disciple in that space. 00:58:32.100 --> 00:58:38.880 And what's interesting is Daniel's now 22 and Daniel's like, I think I'm aging out of Robloxian Christians. 00:58:38.880 --> 00:58:45.240 It's time to get somebody else because now I'm the creepy old guy talking with a bunch of little kids and I don't, I don't want to do that. 00:58:45.320 --> 00:58:51.480 And so it's, it's just this really interesting paradigm with trying to lead student led movements in that space. 00:58:51.660 --> 00:58:57.400 Uh, there may be obstacles and, and, and I can tell Goose's, uh, law hat is a lawyer hat. 00:58:57.480 --> 00:58:59.140 It's getting ready to come back on at some point here. 00:58:59.320 --> 00:59:12.460 But, uh, there, there's definitely challenges in that space to reach a new kid, a new type of person, somebody that you're more familiar with, that you're comfortable with, that, that knows you like maybe a little safer in that space. 00:59:12.460 --> 00:59:17.680 But that's, that's often the challenge is how do you embrace the mission field, um, in that. 00:59:18.280 --> 00:59:19.480 Hey, well, let's do this. 00:59:19.480 --> 00:59:24.020 We just, we got a couple minutes left and I realized, oh man, we didn't, I didn't ask that question. 00:59:24.660 --> 00:59:26.280 We got to talk about discord, right? 00:59:26.320 --> 00:59:36.380 Like discord's a major part, if we're really looking at a one-on-one approach here towards metaverse ministry, what we're doing in platforms like discord and asynchronous connection. 00:59:36.740 --> 00:59:42.940 Um, maybe define a little bit here, Michael, what, what discord is, uh, just briefly as we're landing the plane. 00:59:42.940 --> 00:59:47.220 So discord is, um, it's really just a chat program. 00:59:47.600 --> 00:59:54.060 Uh, so you can, you know, you can do text chat, you can also do video, you can do audio. 00:59:54.500 --> 01:00:10.880 It's really kind of this like holistic solution to communicating digitally and mainly, uh, a rose for gamers to, to link up, you know, if you're playing MMOs or something like that, where, where you, you want to get your guild together, like that would be one way to do it. 01:00:10.880 --> 01:00:19.620 And, and there are many, many other uses, um, for discord it's, it's, if you know, Slack, it's kind of like Slack in that way too. 01:00:19.700 --> 01:00:29.440 So there's a lot of productivity, uh, uses for it also as an alternative to Slack, but that's kind of the general idea is, is that's, that that's functionally what you can do. 01:00:29.440 --> 01:00:33.880 It's a, it's a way to communicate either through text, video, or audio all in one place. 01:00:34.120 --> 01:00:37.640 Again, it does some more things than that, but that's kind of the nuts and bolts of it. 01:00:38.280 --> 01:00:41.140 And for us, it's our, it's really our metaverse ministry hub. 01:00:41.640 --> 01:00:54.860 So we go in and we've got people in our VR, you know, places, not just on Sunday, they will go in and, and, you know, do events and, and hang out and play games, whatever it may be. 01:00:55.440 --> 01:01:04.200 But, but, but 24, seven, seven days a week, our discord server is where we really do the bulk of our ministry. 01:01:04.640 --> 01:01:12.880 Like when, when somebody needs prayer, if somebody is struggling, one of our, one of our flock or somebody that we know needs prayer, like they're going to go to discord and say, Hey, can somebody pray with me? 01:01:13.520 --> 01:01:19.120 Um, if somebody has got a theological question, you know, it, we may not be in VR at that moment. 01:01:19.220 --> 01:01:20.060 So what do they do? 01:01:20.080 --> 01:01:20.920 They come over to discord. 01:01:21.000 --> 01:01:23.280 We've got our channel questions about Christianity. 01:01:23.540 --> 01:01:27.620 They pop it in there and we've got people that are able to respond and we kick it around. 01:01:27.840 --> 01:01:35.780 We have a daily Bible reading plan in there so that somebody, you know, will post scripture each day, talk about it. 01:01:36.160 --> 01:01:37.600 And then we just hang out. 01:01:37.680 --> 01:01:46.880 It's also just the place where our community gets to know each other, um, you know, at the pace that they, that they want to go at. 01:01:46.880 --> 01:01:51.180 And so some of us will like link up to go play a game and say, Hey, you guys want to drop into pop one? 01:01:51.260 --> 01:01:51.620 Let's go. 01:01:52.160 --> 01:01:57.240 Uh, that kind of thing we have, you know, and, and we just, we joke, joke around with each other, post memes. 01:01:57.240 --> 01:01:58.080 We'll share our art. 01:01:58.180 --> 01:01:58.700 That's another thing. 01:01:58.700 --> 01:02:05.280 We've got some amazing artists, um, in our, in our congregation and they'll post their art there and we'll celebrate that. 01:02:05.600 --> 01:02:11.660 So it, it really ends up being, like I said, I call it like the hub because that, that really is what it, what it, what it, what it, it is. 01:02:12.180 --> 01:02:20.320 And we have people in there that we pastor, that we, that we counsel that actually never actually even go into VR. 01:02:21.640 --> 01:02:24.360 They just don't, they're not, they don't like some of them don't even have a headset. 01:02:24.840 --> 01:02:33.920 So, so discord really is, um, is the, the place where most of the relationships get forged. 01:02:34.660 --> 01:02:42.680 And it's that it's, it's kind of like a link to, to our VR experiences or in any of the other places that we might do ministry. 01:02:42.680 --> 01:02:43.560 It's crucial. 01:02:43.560 --> 01:02:50.980 I had somebody at a, a metaverse pastor tell me once that, uh, the, the, the headsets, that's what we do on Sunday. 01:02:51.620 --> 01:02:54.500 Um, the discord is what we do Monday through Saturday. 01:02:54.500 --> 01:03:02.360 Like that's, that's, that's the, the lifeblood of the church lives in asynchronously through, you know, devices like the iPhone and things like that. 01:03:02.360 --> 01:03:05.580 And so incredible opportunities to extend the reach. 01:03:05.580 --> 01:03:13.960 And actually discipleship typically lives more in that asynchronous environments and, and, and, and, and, and the discord than it does in the actual headsets itself. 01:03:14.480 --> 01:03:17.320 Uh, and so it's just some, some great opportunities there. 01:03:17.380 --> 01:03:21.760 Well, Hey, uh, Michael, this has been an, an incredible show. 01:03:21.860 --> 01:03:26.340 Um, um, let me ask in the first of its kind, I only offended one person in the show. 01:03:26.520 --> 01:03:31.960 So I am, uh, I'm proud that we made it through one and, and looking forward to more conversations. 01:03:31.960 --> 01:03:41.200 I know, um, next week we're going to have, uh, Jason polling, Michael's literal boss, uh, from, uh, Cornerstone Ubi City and VR. 01:03:41.320 --> 01:03:44.960 We'll be talking about pastoring, what that looks like practical steps. 01:03:44.960 --> 01:03:54.100 He literally went from, uh, this joke doesn't offend, I've said it in front of his face, but he literally didn't even know how to spell VR to running a VR church in, in less than a year. 01:03:54.100 --> 01:04:02.060 And so, uh, a phenomenal story of, of multiplication and discipleship and trusting people around you. 01:04:02.120 --> 01:04:14.840 And so looking forward to him telling the story, uh, with, with Michael and, and Jason and these guys, we, we worked together, uh, through a website called metachurch.digital, uh, basically helping churches like yours. 01:04:14.960 --> 01:04:20.640 Figure out how to take these next steps in, uh, digital and metaverse ministry. 01:04:20.840 --> 01:04:22.700 And so feel free to check out the website. 01:04:23.140 --> 01:04:26.540 I think the link should be in the chat, metachurch.digital. 01:04:26.720 --> 01:04:27.840 Feel free to click on that. 01:04:27.900 --> 01:04:28.860 You can grab time with me. 01:04:28.940 --> 01:04:36.540 We can talk in person, but we'd love to hear what you all are thinking, what you all are, are dreaming about when it comes to the metaverse. 01:04:36.680 --> 01:04:47.500 And maybe help you figure out what some of those basic steps are to now to get you going to the place, uh, where you can be, um, multiplying even into a metaverse church. 01:04:48.040 --> 01:04:50.000 And on that note, man, we're going to land a plane. 01:04:50.080 --> 01:04:50.740 This has been great. 01:04:50.740 --> 01:04:55.300 Uh, so for, for myself, Jeff and, and Goose here as well. 01:04:55.380 --> 01:05:00.160 Thanks for jumping on Metaverse Church Next here with, uh, Leadership Network. 01:05:00.680 --> 01:05:03.100 Thanks for, uh, Expo for hosting this. 01:05:03.260 --> 01:05:08.620 And, uh, we'll see you next week, Wednesday, 1230 here at, uh, Meta Church Next. 01:05:08.960 --> 01:05:09.480 Y'all have a good day. 01:05:09.780 --> 01:05:10.140 Hey, Goose. 01:05:10.200 --> 01:05:11.440 Thanks for doing that episode. 01:05:11.800 --> 01:05:14.660 Friends, I am excited to talk to you about this. 01:05:14.760 --> 01:05:20.360 Here with the Church Digital, we are passionate about helping churches like yours explore the metaverse. 01:05:20.360 --> 01:05:26.620 And once again, through metachurch.digital, M-E-T-A church.digital. 01:05:26.720 --> 01:05:43.020 We want to help churches like yours take some next steps here in recognizing the metaverse as a mission field, as a place where discipleship can happen, and as an opportunity to do church, biblically stable church in the metaverse. 01:05:43.220 --> 01:05:44.060 So look at that. 01:05:44.140 --> 01:05:46.420 Check out the website, metachurch.digital. 01:05:46.420 --> 01:05:48.940 I want to brag on my friend Goose here for a second. 01:05:48.940 --> 01:05:50.420 Michael used to Venice. 01:05:50.920 --> 01:05:58.040 Uh, first off, uh, like, Guy has, and is an excellent pastor and has been doing a great job pastoring people in the metaverse. 01:05:58.120 --> 01:06:04.000 And honestly, there's not that many people who can say that they are pastoring in virtual reality. 01:06:04.000 --> 01:06:07.600 And, and, and Goose, Michael has been doing a great job of that. 01:06:08.000 --> 01:06:16.320 Secondly, he has the gift, uh, of programming in this platform called Unity within this framework. 01:06:16.320 --> 01:06:22.980 And this, this Unity framework is what's used to program the metaverse in VR chat and, and Alt-VR. 01:06:23.320 --> 01:06:33.960 And he has done a phenomenal job of, of coding and world building and developing these, these environments for Cornerstone VR as, as well as others. 01:06:33.960 --> 01:06:36.380 And, and look, it's, I'm, I'm honored. 01:06:36.960 --> 01:06:43.040 I'm, I'm like, Hey, Goose, man, I got some churches that are asking some questions about maybe looking for a world builder. 01:06:43.040 --> 01:06:44.040 Are you, you interested? 01:06:44.180 --> 01:06:46.800 And, and Goose was like, yes, yes, I am. 01:06:46.940 --> 01:06:53.140 And so look, if you want us to come along and help you, uh, develop, build, build a world, build a church. 01:06:53.360 --> 01:06:57.580 Maybe it's even, Hey, look, I don't want to do something fully custom, but I got to have something. 01:06:57.640 --> 01:07:00.580 Help me get started with something, a more, more template approach. 01:07:00.660 --> 01:07:01.400 We got that too. 01:07:01.880 --> 01:07:13.440 If it's coaching, if, if it's help, like we, as a, as a team working with Jason Poling and others, we are, we are gung ho to help churches like yours figure out this metaverse thing. 01:07:13.440 --> 01:07:19.720 And learn something from this, from a metaverse experiment, uh, here in, in 2022. 01:07:20.180 --> 01:07:21.160 So do this. 01:07:21.180 --> 01:07:25.740 If you've got any questions on metaverse, I want you to reach out to me. 01:07:26.100 --> 01:07:31.040 Uh, well, first off, go to the website, metachurch.digital or Hey, you know what? 01:07:31.060 --> 01:07:32.720 You've listened to this podcast for this long. 01:07:32.800 --> 01:07:34.060 I'm going to give you my cell phone number. 01:07:34.140 --> 01:07:34.740 You ready for that? 01:07:35.440 --> 01:07:38.340 484-324-8724. 01:07:38.620 --> 01:07:42.740 That's number four, the church on your telephone, Apple bet. 01:07:43.060 --> 01:07:46.100 484-324-8724. 01:07:46.640 --> 01:07:48.900 Text me, reach out to me, holler at me. 01:07:48.960 --> 01:07:49.840 You can even call me. 01:07:49.980 --> 01:07:51.240 I, I, I rarely answer. 01:07:51.620 --> 01:07:53.300 Who talks on the phone anymore? 01:07:53.300 --> 01:07:54.360 I don't, I don't get that. 01:07:54.680 --> 01:07:55.940 Anyway, holler at me. 01:07:56.000 --> 01:08:03.920 Let's, let's get in touch and let me, let, let us figure out how we can help you with these metaverse steps. 01:08:04.460 --> 01:08:07.960 Hey guys, this is going to be the end of season two right here. 01:08:08.220 --> 01:08:22.640 And we're moving away from the takeovers and we're going to get back into it right around the corner as we are going to start to talk about season three and digging into this idea of the digital church network. 01:08:22.860 --> 01:08:35.040 Oh, there are so many conversations I have been geeking out over the past couple of weeks, just dreaming of, of the conversations and the people that I want to start to dig into and start to learn from as we're talking about. 01:08:35.280 --> 01:08:49.340 Maybe, maybe, maybe it's a unique approach, but a more decentralized approach to, to ministry, to what church in the future can look like if, if, if we lean into it. 01:08:49.620 --> 01:08:51.620 And this is not a heretical thing. 01:08:51.720 --> 01:08:55.520 At least I don't think it is, but maybe today's heresy is tomorrow's orthodoxy. 01:08:55.580 --> 01:08:56.500 Somebody said that. 01:08:56.800 --> 01:08:58.560 I'll, I'll let you Google that and you can figure that out. 01:08:58.800 --> 01:09:01.160 Hey guys, it's been a great season two. 01:09:01.260 --> 01:09:01.900 Thank you for this. 01:09:02.000 --> 01:09:05.920 Thank you, Michael, for jumping on at this point, dude, I'm just stalling and I got to hang up. 01:09:06.220 --> 01:09:06.920 Hey, this is Jeff. 01:09:07.300 --> 01:09:07.960 Hey, have a great one. 01:09:08.020 --> 01:09:09.920 Thanks for joining, uh, for the podcast. 01:09:10.000 --> 01:09:12.760 Hey, we'll see you next time here, the church digital podcast. 01:09:12.860 --> 01:09:13.360 Y'all have a good day.