EP206: Metaverse Church 101, or Jeff Takes Over His Own Podcast

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast.

Through this podcast, learn about how God is using technology and innovation

in digital and digital environments around the world.

Our goal? To help churches like yours learn to be the church digitally.

Our heart? That churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple-making

that will revolutionize your church.

And now, your host, here's Jeff Reed.

All right, you got episode 206 of the Church Digital Podcast.

Hey, it's Jeff Reed here, founder of the Church Digital, Digital Church Network,

and a whole bunch of other things we'll get to here in just a minute.

We're going to get to the deeper stuff.

But for right now, I want to tell you about some awesome stuff we're doing here

at the Church Digital to help churches like yours wrestle and experiment

with this idea of a metaverse church.

See, with the Church Digital, we started, you know, on this road,

helping churches figure out how to thrive, grow, and multiply.

Digital, digital only, digital first, so much stuff.

But we've really started leaning in in the past couple months

into this idea of a metaverse church.

What resources, what training, what coaching?

How can we help churches that are interested in exploring and testing out the idea of metaverse?

Metaverse being virtual reality, augmented reality, a mixed reality.

You've got blockchain, you've got crypto, artificial intelligence, machine learning,

this whole decentralization that comes as a result of engaging with this Web3 technology.

It's going to be a fascinating road here in the next 10 years culturally.

Not even talking about the church, but more interesting is how's the church going to respond

to these opportunities when they come.

Yeah, so that's going to be fun.

So if you are looking for some help, if you're interested in someone walking with you on this

journey, whether it's world building or online courses or cohorts, content, whatever it is,

somebody to hold your hand as you're doing the experiment.

We at The Church Digital would love to do that.

Here's what I'm going to ask you to do.

Check out the website, metachurch.digital.

That's M-E-T-A, church.digital.

Yeah, did a little spin on thechurch.digital.

I made it metachurch.digital.

And yeah, I may be considering rebranding.

I'm not saying that officially.

It's just you that's listening right now.

You and whoever else is in the Nebulous podcast audience out there.

Maybe later conversation.

But check it out now to redirect to the page of metachurch.digital.

If you're looking for some help in taking those steps, we at The Church Digital would love to help you with that.

Check out the website, which actually, all that segues real good, to today's podcast takeover episode.

Now, for the past month, I've been letting other people take over my podcast.

You see, back in January, we started, actually maybe December, we started a podcast network.

We call it the TCD Podcast Network.

Guys like Tom Pounder started it off with TCD Sidekick Podcast.

And then we brought on Chesley Lundy, Andy Mage, Pocket Pulpit Podcast, John Pyle.

And just we started really platforming other content creators in an effort to give you a more nuanced approach to digital ministry.

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.

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.

And so, like, we really just wanted to give you a multiplied approach towards some of this nuance.

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.

Well, it's time to get back to work, Jeff.

Now, you know what?

I changed my mind.

I'm going to let one more person take over my podcast.

This week, someone has taken over my podcast, and his name is Jeffrey.

Okay, that may have got weird.

How can I take over my own podcast?

Well, one of the things that I'm doing here is I actually have another role with Leadership Network.

If you've heard of it, great.

If not, that's on you.

Check out leadnet.org, L-E-A-D-N-E-T.org.

Leadership Network's been around for a couple decades, really championing the idea of innovation and research in context of churches.

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.

And I have the honor to work with Leadership Network now towards this idea of Metaverse Church.

Yeah, my title is literally Director of Metaverse Church Next.

So let's talk about the next version of church that's going to exist in the Metaverse.

That's what I do.

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.

And so the podcast, the live show is every Wednesday, 1230 p.m. Eastern on Exponentials Hub.

And so you can sign up.

We'll put a link in the show notes to get connected to that.

But essentially, it's available virtually almost every Wednesday, 1230 p.m. Eastern, the Metaverse Church Next show.

And so we've had great people on.

DJ Soto has been on recently.

Jason Poling, lead pastor of Cornerstone, Yuba City.

Cornerstone VR has been on recently.

And we've got a great show, guest list coming up here very soon.

Alan Hirsch.

Alan Hirsch is coming on the Metaverse Church Next show to talk about the idea of Metaverse Church.

If you don't know who Alan Hirsch is, once again, that's on you.

Google him.

You'll find it.

You'll be like, wow.

If you know who Alan Hirsch is, can you believe I got Alan Hirsch to come on my show?

Like, okay.

All right.

Scene.

Get back to where we are here.

So anyway, look.

Here's the deal.

What I wanted to do for the takeover is let you all have the first episode.

I'm going to give it to you right here.

Call it Metaverse Church 101.

Where do we start?

At the beginning.

And look, check it out.

If you love it, come hang out with me.

Wednesdays, 1230.

We're working on getting the podcast set up so it can be distributed to you all of your podcast listeners.

But definitely hang out with me in the live environment.

Throw questions, and it's going to be great over on Exponentials Hub.

So for the first episode, here's who we're bringing in.

For this 101, for this basic ground-level conversation, here's who we're bringing into the conversation.

You ready for this?

You ready?

You ready?

I don't think you're ready.

Okay.

We'll pretend you're ready.

We're bringing in Goose.

Yeah, you know, the guy from Top Gun.

Okay, not the guy from Top Gun.

Michael Used to Venice is a Metaverse pastor who lives in Fort Lauderdale.

Now, what's interesting is he lives in Fort Lauderdale, but his church is located in California.

So Michael Used to Venice works for Cornerstone VR, which is Cornerstone Yuba City, which is located in Northern California.

So he and his church are located in opposite sides of the country.

That's interesting.

But he's also a Metaverse Church pastor.

His job is to literally pastor, shepherd, and care for people in the Metaverse.

That's interesting in itself.

He does a lot of world building, which is also interesting.

I mean, this is a really fascinating conversation.

And why exactly is he named Goose?

I don't know if we remember.

I don't know if we talked about it in this episode.

But that's a fascinating story as well, maybe for another day.

So, hey, look, I want to get you some exposure to this idea of Metaverse Church and what it can be.

And so let's even just address the most practical standpoint here in 2022.

Let's talk about this idea of church and virtual reality.

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.

Okay, everybody, here you go.

All right, hey, everybody.

Welcome to the Metaverse Church Next show.

This is a new experience, a new show we're doing with Leadership Network, Metaverse Church Next.

And my name is Jeff Reed.

I'm the host of the show, and it is a pleasure to be here with you.

I'm about ready to say a bunch of words, and hopefully they all make sense when I say them, when you hear them.

So here with Metaverse Church Next, we're championing the idea of churches in the Metaverse.

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.

So I've said the word Metaverse a bunch of times.

We're going to define what that means here, and we'll do it.

You know, we'll do it right now.

It's cool.

So here with the Metaverse Next show, Metaverse Church Next show, it'll get more of a rhythm.

This is the first time.

Give me a break.

Here's where we're going with this.

Man, look, you've got virtual reality.

You've got people wearing headsets like these walking around in these virtual reality environments.

We're going to be talking more about that today.

But really, when you look at the Metaverse, you're seeing an expanded other opportunities just beyond virtual reality.

You're looking at augmented reality.

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.

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.

Blockchain, crypto, AI.

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.

And it was an incredible conversation.

We're going to have them here on the show probably closer to summer.

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.

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.

My name is Jeff Reed.

Some of you may know me.

Awesome.

If you don't know me, hey, it's great to meet you here in virtual show land.

And so I run an organization.

I run several organizations.

One of them is the Church Digital, helping established churches understand how to do digital ministry more effectively.

We really get into discipleship and multiplication far more than the streaming aspects of that.

But in addition, we do a lot with Metaverse.

And so actually just this past week, we did an install for a church that wanted a Metaverse campus.

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.

So lots of opportunities working with physical space.

And then there's Digital Church Network, where we work with organic movements and digital church planting and Metaverse planting.

And we'll get on some of those conversations later.

And honestly, I could talk about myself all day, but you all don't want to hear that.

You actually want to get into the show and kind of learn here as we're diving into Metaverse 101.

What are some of the basics if we're looking at Metaverse Church?

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.

And that's going to be Michael used to Venice, who is, well, I tell you what, Michael, and I apologize in advance.

I will call him Goose half the time because his nickname is Goose.

Fun story, another time, we'll talk about it here, maybe towards the end.

But Goose, man, just set up yourself here a little bit.

Tell us your story and tell us kind of what a church, what your role is there with Cornerstone.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah, so I, yeah, my title is Metaverse Pastor.

I started out for many years just as an attorney.

That was my trade for about a decade and a half.

Technically, I still am, but felt the call to ministry a few years back, entered a more traditional ministry in the end of 2017.

And then all of a sudden, COVID hits and we start talking with some folks that are doing some interesting things in VR.

And it just so happened that one of the other threads in my life has always been video games.

I've always been a gamer, but also a game maker.

So I've always been programming from when I was eight years old and my dad brought home an Apple IIe computer.

I instantly wanted to know how it worked and instantly was trying to program with it.

So it's just something I've always done.

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.

But lo and behold, it turns out that in order to build worlds in these VR spaces, it's all done in unity.

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.

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.

I said, well, that's oddly specific to my life.

And over many months of discussion with my former church and Jason, we decided this is the Lord is in this.

It's just too perfect of a setup to pass that up.

And so that's been my role for almost a year now.

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.

And we're going to dive in because there's some nuances.

There's some things where physical or IRL in real life, where IRL ministry, it parallels.

And it looks similar to what happens in the metaverse.

But there's areas where it's completely different.

And actually, he's mentioned JPO, Jason Poling a couple of times.

Jason's going to be our guest on the next show.

Here we do the show next week, Wednesday, 1230 Eastern.

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,

have taken that step, a physical church, an IRL church that's doing metaverse ministry.

There are others.

And there are more and more seem to be coming on each week.

But really, legacy guys that have been doing this for a while.

What we're seeing here out of Cornerstone, Yuba City and VR is, man, they're the front runners in that.

Well, hey, I mean, let's just even open this up here.

What do churches look like in the metaverse?

So I just said you're running a campus.

What does that even mean?

For us, what it looks like is we've got AltSpace, which is one of the social apps in VR.

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.

And we've got this campus built out.

And every Sunday, we hold services there.

Whoever's preaching, most weeks it's Pastor Jason that preaches.

But he comes in, he preaches two services in the physical church.

And then he pops the headset on and he comes there as an avatar and preaches a third service in AltSpace.

And we have our people who call Cornerstone home, our AltSpace campus, they call it home.

We've got a lot of people that come in wondering what's going on.

And it very much has all of the elements that you would expect of a physical church.

And so we do that in AltSpace.

Again, that's one of the apps in VR that you can do.

You can also do it on a desktop browser.

And then we go over to VRChat, which is another social app very much.

Well, it's like AltSpace in the sense that it is an app.

It's very different in terms of the kind of the feel and the culture over there.

But we go over there and we do the same thing.

We've got a church that's built out in there.

We go in as avatars.

We preach.

We do Q&A.

And again, we see both of those as churches with congregations, with a flock that we care for.

And there are people that show up there, the people that we have, where they don't have another church.

So me and Jason are their pastors.

Cornerstone is their church.

He touched on briefly.

It's so good.

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.

You and Jason live on opposite sides of the United States.

Jason's over on the Pacific side and you're down over here with me in South Florida in Florida, Lauderdale.

And so I want to come back to that.

But the idea here is with these platforms.

So you've got all VR.

You've got a platform called VRChat.

You've got another platform that's called Rec Room.

Facebook just came out with one called Horizons.

You know, this may not be a true apples to apples comparisons, but I kind of look at them like social media networks.

They're communities.

And within the community, they attract the type of person.

They have some have stronger rules and regulations.

Some have weaker rules and regulations.

And so you're kind of looking at all four of these platforms within virtual reality, these communities within virtual reality.

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.

It's run by Microsoft.

And I would call it the Facebook of these communities.

It kind of reaches an older crowd.

It's been around for a while.

Everybody seems to have an account.

They may or may not be in there all the time.

But everyone's had some experience in Alt VR.

And then you get into the Rec Room, which is maybe it's a little more like the TikTok crowd.

It's attracting a younger crowd because Rec Room is based off of Xbox VR and PlayStation VR.

So the gaming kind of attracts the younger.

You're more likely to be in Rec Room and get cussed out by a 14-year-old.

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.

Welcome to Rec Room.

The 14-year-old needs Jesus.

Like, you need to get in there as the mission field.

But that's some of the challenges.

And then you've got VR Chat, which is like the wild, wild west.

That has no parental filters.

And so you're likely to have a conversation with an avatar who's not wearing any clothes.

Or, you know, and I've had people estimate.

I don't know that this is the truth.

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.

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?

They just moved that over to VR.

And that's the thing.

And then you've got the Facebook Horizons, which honestly is too soon to tell what this thing's going to be.

Like, it's just come out recently.

And so, Michael, you're doing it in, you're running the church.

You started in Alt-VR.

Talk to me a little bit here.

Like, how did you move over?

Why did you move over?

Because now you're in VR Chat, which is, that's an aggressive world.

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.

But you're basically moving into the red light district and you set up a church in that space.

Like, what was the mindset behind that with y'all?

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.

So, we had a young man who was absolutely entrenched in the VR Chat culture, all of the things that you were talking about.

And he's very open about sharing that.

And he ended up coming to an Alt-Space church service.

And through that service and through the relationship that he developed with Pastor Jason, he gave his life to Christ.

And when he did that, he turned around and said, we have to reach the people that I've been running with.

Like, they need Jesus really badly.

And so, he kind of took it upon himself to just start creating the world there.

And Cornerstone just kind of wrapped around that vision of this idea that essentially what we had was a native.

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.

And so, to have that has been absolutely invaluable.

And that was really kind of the motivation where we say, like, look, look at what the Lord's doing.

How can we not go there?

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.

And now, we've got another young lady who came to Christ who is doing, it's the exact same thing with Rec Room.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Let's try and go to these places.

But also, some of it has been the Lord just opening doors for us.

You told the story, you know, just here about the Satan worshiper.

And so, is that, I'm going to ask a question, that's future queen of hell, right, in the story?

That was her screen name.

She showed up as the future queen of hell was her screen name, yeah.

And what's interesting is even the trolls need Jesus.

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?

Yeah.

Came in as a troll to Jesus.

Yeah, that's probably about a nine month process.

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.

And in physical church, we often find that people find Jesus and then they join the community.

In digital and really in meta, it's the exact opposite, where we're finding that people are finding the community.

And through the community, then they're getting connected to Jesus.

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.

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.

And so, we're finding more and more of that kind of happen.

Well, let me ask you this.

It talks about some of the attributes.

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.

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.

Like, who are you reaching with your metaverse church?

To maybe parallel it to the type of person that Yuba City is reaching there with Cornerstone.

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.

The vast majority of the people that we're talking to, that's not the thought in their head, and it won't be.

So, that is one.

And that spans a really broad range of demographics, you know, from age to culture to race.

Like, there's just a lot of people who are not thinking, I need to go to church today.

So, we talked to a lot of people that are in that spot.

We talked to quite a few people who are very vocal about their mental and emotional issues.

And they say, they may even actually desire to go to a church, but they can't be around crowds for whatever reason.

There's a variety of reasons why.

Some of them are physical.

We have one of our key, key leaders is a man who cannot leave his house.

He has such physical ailments that he cannot leave his house.

But in the metaverse, he's one of our most effective evangelists, one of our most effective.

He's actually the head of our discipleship right now.

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.

And he won't be able to do that physically.

So, we have people who just simply cannot go even if they wanted to.

We have quite a few de-churched people.

Quite a few people that I talk to say, I haven't been to church in 20 years.

And they're there and you can just kind of sense in their voice that they're looking for someone to trust.

That they know that church is where they should be.

But for whatever reason, they have a hurt that they have not been able to get over.

And actually, we have helped some of those people get over that.

And so, we've got that.

We have people who go to church.

We have people that when they show up, they say, hey, we heard something like this in our physical church this morning.

Here's how it relates.

And they just, they do physical church and then they come hang out with us too.

And the one narrative I have not yet heard ever is someone that says, yeah, I was going to physical church.

And then I found you guys and I stopped going there.

I've never heard that.

That has never happened as far.

Now, maybe it has, but I've never had that narrative.

I've never talked with anybody in that narrative.

We have had people come to VR church, come to our metaverse campuses, and then start going to physical church.

That we have had happen.

So, yeah.

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.

But generally, that's kind of the, some of the big buckets that we encounter.

You know, that physical digital or physical meta kind of narrative reminds me a little bit.

I did a podcast with you over on the Church Digital with you and some of your team.

And I remember Angel.

Angel, I think, got baptized in the metaverse.

And somebody's probably freaking out on me.

Like, I don't mean to be that.

Like, you can baptize it in the metaverse.

But what was interesting with Angel, she's like, yeah, and I hope to get baptized in physical space too.

Like, for her, it was a both thing.

It wasn't an exclusive.

You know, and I've met some people that do think metaverse is exclusive.

And I've met people that, like Angel, that see it as both.

And the ecclesiology, I'm not going to argue.

It's funny.

I used to try to argue this.

But I don't want to argue the ecclesiology of a meta-church today here in 2022.

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.

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.

What are the functions?

Start with Acts 2 and, you know, go from there.

But beyond that, it's an experiment.

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.

It's going to be different than how Stuart's reading it for Lakeland VR.

And so, like, we all get these different perspectives as we're experimenting with this.

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.

Let's not be mad at.

Let's not stop the innovation.

Let's embrace it.

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.

Like on YouTube, I get 10x the number of people yelling at me compared to that.

So, you know, recognizing that it's an experiment.

What are you feeling?

Do you feel, let me ask, let me ask this question.

Do you feel negative from the outside?

And do you feel negative from people within the church?

I'd be interested in your perspective there.

So, I don't.

I don't feel negative for a few reasons.

There are some of the noise that's now starting to emerge and it's getting louder and louder.

It really is coming from voices that don't really understand what it is.

They've got a few minor data points.

But they don't really get it.

And it's a little bit like, for those I just feel like, you know, you've got kids, I've got four.

It's a little bit like hearing someone with no kids tell me how to parent.

It's like, okay, thanks, but you don't know what you're talking about.

And that's okay.

I know you mean well.

So, I don't hold it against them.

But it's not useful.

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.

What are the pitfalls we might need to watch out for?

We value those conversations.

Pastor Jason and I are all the time saying, okay, let's do this.

But wait, is this okay?

Like, what about this?

What about that?

Like, we're not just going into this saying, like, let's just do whatever and let the chips fall where they may.

We are aggressive.

We're always saying, just pull the trigger, let's go.

But we are thinking deeply about the theological implications of some of the things that we are saying, let's do.

So, for the people who have actually looked into this and are offering, you know, points and counterpoints, those are super valuable.

We love having those conversations.

So, the noise in that space and the challenges, it really is a matter of kind of filtering it out.

But also, for me, the noise to me is positive.

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.

Like, people were stealing the game and not paying for it.

And I saw that and I said, you know, I mean, obviously, that's not a good thing.

But it meant something.

Like, that was like a weirdly proud moment.

And so, you know, I hear this isn't, I'm not pulling this from scripture.

I'm pulling this from Reggie Jackson, who, when they asked him, how does it feel when everybody boos you at opposing stadiums?

And he says, fans don't boo nobodies.

So, if the boos are coming, we're on to something.

We tease this a little bit.

You're based in Fort Lauderdale.

There's some questions, by the way, in the chat.

Keep them coming.

I'm going to address some of those at the end.

A couple of those are really good, the ones that I'm seeing.

But for you, you are, you're a pastor.

You live in Fort Lauderdale.

And Cornerstone, Yuba City, is in Northern California.

Four time zones away.

And I know you do that flight.

What is that, like a 12-hour flight, an 8, 10-hour flight?

Feels like it.

Yeah.

So, like, what?

But you're pastoring Metaverse.

So, you're working with people.

You know, the little bit I know of your core team volunteers.

One lives in Georgia.

One lives in the Carolinas.

Like, you're spread out.

Are there challenges with that?

Are communication connection issues?

Like, what is it for you to work at a church championing a Metaverse thing when you're not

actually rubbing shoulders physically?

Yeah, it's challenging.

I miss, you know, walking the halls and seeing people and throwing bouncing ideas off of each

other and having that sort of connection.

I miss that a lot.

At the same time, you know, we maintain that it's possible to still have effective ministry

through a digital medium.

And so far, it has been very effective.

I mean, the fruit that has been born from it speaks for itself.

And so, you know, I take the challenges and some of the drawbacks of that and just say,

you know, this is just a difficulty that, you know, we kind of have to walk through.

And it's, in the end, as long as we're being effective, it's not, you know, it's not about

my happiness necessarily.

It's about, are we being effective to advance the gospel?

And that, so far, has been, I think, the fruit has proven that it is being effective.

The Lord is working.

And so, even with the difficulties, we say, onward, let's keep going.

We're also figuring it out.

When Pastor Jason and I talked initially, and Pastor Roby, my former pastor, had some

really great questions in the space saying, hey, but what about this?

What about this?

Like, how are you going to deal with that?

And some of them were like, I don't know.

We're going to have to get into it and see and make sure.

And so, you know, I just have a multitude of wise voices that speak into the situation

and are looking out for me.

The elders of Cornerstone are so great about checking in on me in particular, knowing that

I'm out on an island, sort of, in terms of staff and in terms of the ministry implications

of that.

And so, they're just very good about making sure that everything is okay.

And frankly, there have been more than a few times where, you know, they've reached out

and, you know, I was not in a great place.

You know, I was kind of in a lonely place.

And, you know, people in a lonely place don't necessarily have the wherewithal to reach out

and say, I'm lonely.

You know, I just kind of sit in it.

And so, them being proactive, Pastor Jason being proactive and saying, how are you doing?

How are you doing?

That ultimately is the thing that kind of keeps it all going.

And that really is the essence of metaverse ministry.

Like, if you really boil it down to what is the most effective thing in metaverse ministry,

it is just letting people talk.

Like, just going and saying, how are you doing?

And being an empathetic listener so that you can respond.

Boil it down.

What I just heard you say is the most important thing that you as a metaverse pastor can do

is empathetically listen to people.

So, like, how does that, let's just roll that idea out.

How does that idea influence what you do?

So, like, you know, your church services, the conversations during the week,

unpack and through the lens of empathetically listening,

what does it actually mean to pastor somebody in a metaverse church?

Yeah, it means seeing everything as two-way.

Everything is two-way communication.

It's always a two-way street.

And that informs how we do our services.

A huge part of our service is Q&A.

Like, at the end, I mean, if you look at our service,

it would look probably very much like most of the churches in the United States right now,

where we have a kind of a pre-service time.

We do worship.

And then we do a sermon.

And sometimes we do communion.

And so all of that would generally look the same.

But for us, we basically open it up to the audience, to the congregation, whoever's there, and say,

okay, cool.

What questions do you have?

You know, raise your hand and we'll get to it.

And it's as bonkers as you might think.

We get some amazing insight from our people.

We have really seasoned Christians that call Cornerstone home.

And they'll come up, you know, and they'll add to what we've talked about.

Or they'll ask a very, very deep question, a very important question.

And that discussion sometimes is the mechanism where people experience their spiritual growth.

And so, but, and then some people just need to be heard.

And that, and for the people that have that opportunity to come in and say, I'm struggling with this.

It may not have anything to do with the sermon.

But they may come in and just say, you know, here's what I'm struggling with.

Or here's what my lifestyle is.

Does Jesus still love me?

Can I come to Jesus like this?

And it's like week after week in both all space and VR chat.

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.

All because we, we, we just put some headsets on.

It's, it's, it's amazing.

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.

Uh, cause, cause really they're asking, how do you read body language?

You know, so much of, of having a conversation in physical space, you know, I'm, I'm pastoring somebody.

I'm looking somebody in the eye.

They're diverting their attention away from me.

They, they won't look me in the eye.

I know something else is going on.

I can dig in, um, and body language.

Do you, do you have that level?

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?

That's great.

That's a great question.

Um, obviously we don't get body language in the same way that we would in the physical space.

We certainly don't get any sort of, you know, like anything is sort of like the facial recognition or anything like that.

So that is, um, I wouldn't call a weakness, but it's one aspect of communication that we don't get.

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.

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.

We would never say that there can be, there are very effective people who can't see that can be a counselor.

So what about them?

Like if, if it would invalidate that to say that this is not a valid way of communicating.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The anonymity that we've got gives us access to people in an unprecedented way.

And that is a strength that, that has, again, is just shown to yield so much fruit.

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.

There, many people are, are, are, are there to just unburden themselves about things.

Many people are there and say, I feel safe to tell you all of this because you have no idea who I am.

You, you don't even know what continent I live on if you can't really tell.

So I feel safe enough to tell you all of that.

And, and so that is, is, is something.

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.

So let's, let, let's, let's get to counseling on that.

Uh, and it's, it's interesting.

Even when talking, we, we had a conversation recently with it, with the church and it was like, don't ask the real names.

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.

Because now I know who the person is.

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.

Like you don't, you don't need, whereas in physical, you shake hands.

Hey, I'm Jeff.

What's your name?

And it's, and it's so natural in physical space to do that.

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.

Thank you for saying that, Michael.

So, so good.

Hey, we had talked to another question that I see here.

Um, and if there are other questions, feel free to throw them in and, and we'll, we'll address them.

We kind of, kind of, um, ping pong around here a little bit.

Um, so I, I know you're, we, we talked about different platforms that you're on.

We talked about, um, you know, you're, you're in all VR, you're in, uh, VR chat.

It sounds like you're exploring, um, uh, rec room and starting to build something in that space.

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.

Uh, I, I don't, I don't think you're doing that now.

Have you explored that?

Kind of, uh, talk to me a little bit about the idea of, uh, of utilizing some of these gaming platforms.

As I said, I, I'm, I've been a gamer my whole life.

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.

It was, I was slightly surprised to find that it's not as much of a gaming community as I thought.

It's much, much more of a social community.

That said, we, uh, gamers are still here and there are a lot of vibrant communities around, uh, games as well.

And yes, we have looked at a few different games.

One, the one MMO that we've, we've sort of thought about was new world, which was, which is the Amazon one.

We haven't gotten any traction on that yet.

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?

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?

And so for me so far, the most fruit, uh, and, and, and the, and the landscape seems mostly designed for outreach.

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.

That's kind of the, the, the shorthand for it, but we will go in and we will pop open a public lobby.

We'll call it Bible study, pop one Bible study, whatever it is, we put Bible study in it.

And we will just play, we'll just play games.

We'll play matches, keep going.

And people will come in a hundred percent of the people that come in, think it's a joke.

They, nobody thinks that it's an actual Bible study.

And then about 45 minutes in, after we have hung out, we've gotten to know each other a little bit.

They see that, Hey, like, you know, we like, we're like shooting you.

You like shooting us.

And we play the game together.

There there's a connection.

I'll circle everybody up and say, okay, it's time for the Bible study.

And we will get people that drop out.

We will get people that say, you know, I'm going to stay and I'm going to troll.

So many weeks I will just preach a message with somebody unloading magazine after magazine into me with their MP5.

And that's just how it goes.

But quite a few people actually have stuck around and have made connections.

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.

This is awesome.

Like, yeah, you know, I, I go to church here and, and, but I never thought about doing ministry in this space.

And this is great.

And it's like turning on light bulbs for people.

And then for people that have never heard the gospel, I, the one kid that I still remember had to be about 13.

Somewhere in America, you know, you can just tell.

And he came up afterwards, he goes, what were you talking about?

And I said, oh, it was, you know, it's from the Bible, you know, like the Bible story of Jesus.

He's like, no, I don't know.

I don't have no idea what you're talking about.

I said, well, like, okay, you've seen the cross outside of a church.

You know why there's a cross outside of a church, right?

He's like, no, I've seen a cross.

I have no idea.

Like this kid, Jesus dying on the cross meant absolutely nothing to this kid.

Just no idea.

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.

And, you know, it was a seed planted.

I mean, he didn't just stop and say, okay, I want to do it.

In fact, I said, what do you think?

He goes, that's a lot to take in.

I said, yeah, it is.

But hey, if you want to, you know, if you want to connect, if you want to ask questions or whatever.

And, you know, we friended up and that was it.

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.

It's an amazing opportunity because of that shared connection.

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.

And if you can make that one connection, they just might listen to something else you have to say.

You're going to go plant a church in Cape Town, South Africa.

I have no idea why that popped into my head, but let's run with it.

You're going to move there.

You're going to meet the people.

You're going to walk around.

You're going to learn the culture.

You're going to learn how people think in that space.

You're going to find the person of peace, maybe somebody that's friendly to the ideas and maybe friendly to God.

And so as we look at even video games, I think there's an opportunity to do that.

Once again, controversial idea.

Somebody out there is probably writing a very angry email.

And so feel free to send it over.

But the heart of this is, and there are, we'll have DJ Soto with VR Church.

He's been on in a couple weeks.

I think he's week three.

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.

He's doing Final Fantasy.

I want to say they're doing Black Desert online.

I know some individuals that are doing Black Desert online.

And so like there's an opportunity, I think, to look at it as a mission field.

Now, can you do it as a church?

I don't know.

But I know you can a mission field.

I know there's plenty of people who need Jesus.

There's an estimated 24 million people who play Final Fantasy online each week, active each week.

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.

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.

Even experimenting with it as a church.

Hey, talking about another experiment here, another question came in.

Kids ministry.

And I know we've had this conversation recently.

So the context for this question was more about digital, which I think actually may loosen some of it up.

And ma'am, if you want to reach out to me directly, I'm assuming it's a ma'am.

That may have been misconstrued on my part.

I apologize.

Whoever you are, if you want to reach out to me, Jeff at the Church Digital, you can email me directly.

We can talk digital on that.

But for this question, I would love to unpack.

And so Bruce, the producer, it was a man.

So, sir, I do apologize seriously for that.

It's not the worst thing I'm going to do today, believe me.

But answer this for me.

Metaverse, kids ministry.

What are some challenges?

What are some obstacles, opportunities?

As you've looked at for the church, what have you seen there with Metaverse?

It's complex.

The online, you know, so COPPA is the act that protects children under 13.

And so technically, if you look at the T's and C's of any of these platforms, you cannot be under 13.

There are definitely kids under 13 on these platforms, but that's technically the rule.

And so that's the first thing is like, you know, we just have to be very, very careful with that.

And then even under 18, you know, so that 13 to 18 range, also, you're still dealing with a minor.

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.

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.

And use as much of the physical church principles in this space and do not get lax.

There is a tendency to think, well, because we're not in the same room physically, we can loosen up our restrictions.

We can loosen up what we know are best practices.

And I would just say to anybody that's going to enter the space, do not do that.

Have huge, wide boundaries over the interactions that you have with kids.

That being said, you're going to have them.

And you won't always know that you're having them.

I mean, it's just, you just won't know.

But, you know, just the kind of simple things where it's just like never have an individual interaction.

Always have two people.

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.

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.

But it's, yeah, mainly that.

Now, the question probably was more about like, how do we actually service those kids?

But my, instantly my lawyer hat was on.

I think that there are, there are going to emerge opportunities for that crowd, for the, for the, for the, for the younger crowd.

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.

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.

And so the interactions are just, it can, it can kind of get a little bit strange.

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.

So like, I love that my kids play and I, you know, like my children are, you know, 15 and under.

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.

And there's no chatting with other people.

Like I have that, I have that locked down pretty, pretty well because I know like there's going to be adults in there.

So I think there's something that might emerge that, that adults stay out of.

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.

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.

We just don't have any way to do that.

Well said there, there's no bouncer in, in, in metaverse kids.

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.

And I shouldn't say kids.

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.

That won't let a 12 year old on, but 13 up, there seems to be more gray or more open to it.

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.

And it was started by, by a guy on a platform called Roblox.

And so if you're really bad at math, he started when he was like 11 and, and, and building this Robloxian church.

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.

It's more mimicking physical instead of really doing something in digital and meta.

And so it's, um, it's just, it's a little interesting.

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.

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.

And guys like Daniel are being the church and trying to build relationships and disciple in that space.

And what's interesting is Daniel's now 22 and Daniel's like, I think I'm aging out of Robloxian Christians.

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.

And so it's, it's just this really interesting paradigm with trying to lead student led movements in that space.

Uh, there may be obstacles and, and, and I can tell Goose's, uh, law hat is a lawyer hat.

It's getting ready to come back on at some point here.

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.

But that's, that's often the challenge is how do you embrace the mission field, um, in that.

Hey, well, let's do this.

We just, we got a couple minutes left and I realized, oh man, we didn't, I didn't ask that question.

We got to talk about discord, right?

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.

Um, maybe define a little bit here, Michael, what, what discord is, uh, just briefly as we're landing the plane.

So discord is, um, it's really just a chat program.

Uh, so you can, you know, you can do text chat, you can also do video, you can do audio.

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.

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.

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.

It's a, it's a way to communicate either through text, video, or audio all in one place.

Again, it does some more things than that, but that's kind of the nuts and bolts of it.

And for us, it's our, it's really our metaverse ministry hub.

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.

But, but, but 24, seven, seven days a week, our discord server is where we really do the bulk of our ministry.

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?

Um, if somebody has got a theological question, you know, it, we may not be in VR at that moment.

So what do they do?

They come over to discord.

We've got our channel questions about Christianity.

They pop it in there and we've got people that are able to respond and we kick it around.

We have a daily Bible reading plan in there so that somebody, you know, will post scripture each day, talk about it.

And then we just hang out.

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.

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?

Let's go.

Uh, that kind of thing we have, you know, and, and we just, we joke, joke around with each other, post memes.

We'll share our art.

That's another thing.

We've got some amazing artists, um, in our, in our congregation and they'll post their art there and we'll celebrate that.

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.

And we have people in there that we pastor, that we, that we counsel that actually never actually even go into VR.

They just don't, they're not, they don't like some of them don't even have a headset.

So, so discord really is, um, is the, the place where most of the relationships get forged.

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.

It's crucial.

I had somebody at a, a metaverse pastor tell me once that, uh, the, the, the headsets, that's what we do on Sunday.

Um, the discord is what we do Monday through Saturday.

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.

And so incredible opportunities to extend the reach.

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.

Uh, and so it's just some, some great opportunities there.

Well, Hey, uh, Michael, this has been an, an incredible show.

Um, um, let me ask in the first of its kind, I only offended one person in the show.

So I am, uh, I'm proud that we made it through one and, and looking forward to more conversations.

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.

We'll be talking about pastoring, what that looks like practical steps.

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.

And so, uh, a phenomenal story of, of multiplication and discipleship and trusting people around you.

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.

Figure out how to take these next steps in, uh, digital and metaverse ministry.

And so feel free to check out the website.

I think the link should be in the chat, metachurch.digital.

Feel free to click on that.

You can grab time with me.

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.

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.

And on that note, man, we're going to land a plane.

This has been great.

Uh, so for, for myself, Jeff and, and Goose here as well.

Thanks for jumping on Metaverse Church Next here with, uh, Leadership Network.

Thanks for, uh, Expo for hosting this.

And, uh, we'll see you next week, Wednesday, 1230 here at, uh, Meta Church Next.

Y'all have a good day.

Hey, Goose.

Thanks for doing that episode.

Friends, I am excited to talk to you about this.

Here with the Church Digital, we are passionate about helping churches like yours explore the metaverse.

And once again, through metachurch.digital, M-E-T-A church.digital.

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.

So look at that.

Check out the website, metachurch.digital.

I want to brag on my friend Goose here for a second.

Michael used to Venice.

Uh, first off, uh, like, Guy has, and is an excellent pastor and has been doing a great job pastoring people in the metaverse.

And honestly, there's not that many people who can say that they are pastoring in virtual reality.

And, and, and Goose, Michael has been doing a great job of that.

Secondly, he has the gift, uh, of programming in this platform called Unity within this framework.

And this, this Unity framework is what's used to program the metaverse in VR chat and, and Alt-VR.

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.

And, and look, it's, I'm, I'm honored.

I'm, I'm like, Hey, Goose, man, I got some churches that are asking some questions about maybe looking for a world builder.

Are you, you interested?

And, and Goose was like, yes, yes, I am.

And so look, if you want us to come along and help you, uh, develop, build, build a world, build a church.

Maybe it's even, Hey, look, I don't want to do something fully custom, but I got to have something.

Help me get started with something, a more, more template approach.

We got that too.

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.

And learn something from this, from a metaverse experiment, uh, here in, in 2022.

So do this.

If you've got any questions on metaverse, I want you to reach out to me.

Uh, well, first off, go to the website, metachurch.digital or Hey, you know what?

You've listened to this podcast for this long.

I'm going to give you my cell phone number.

You ready for that?

484-324-8724.

That's number four, the church on your telephone, Apple bet.

484-324-8724.

Text me, reach out to me, holler at me.

You can even call me.

I, I, I rarely answer.

Who talks on the phone anymore?

I don't, I don't get that.

Anyway, holler at me.

Let's, let's get in touch and let me, let, let us figure out how we can help you with these metaverse steps.

Hey guys, this is going to be the end of season two right here.

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.

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.

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.

And this is not a heretical thing.

At least I don't think it is, but maybe today's heresy is tomorrow's orthodoxy.

Somebody said that.

I'll, I'll let you Google that and you can figure that out.

Hey guys, it's been a great season two.

Thank you for this.

Thank you, Michael, for jumping on at this point, dude, I'm just stalling and I got to hang up.

Hey, this is Jeff.

Hey, have a great one.

Thanks for joining, uh, for the podcast.

Hey, we'll see you next time here, the church digital podcast.

Y'all have a good day.