EP040: Daniel Herron & The Robloxian Christians, or doing Gen Z Church in a Video Game

episode 40 of the church digital podcast and this is going to be a fun conversation today

because i gotta tell well let me ask you this question let's just let's just back up i want

to ask you this singular question what were you doing when you were 11 years old like what was

your life what were you obsessed with when you were 11 i can tell you for me it was tim burton's

batman the first batman this is way before the nolan films batman begins this is like uh what

was his name michael uh michael douglas has the wrong one michael keaton yeah michael douglas

michael keaton don't make that confusion michael keaton running around a batman outfit chasing uh

jack nicholson the joker good movie 1989 that was me at 11 i was obsessed with that movie sneaking into

movie theaters at the south dade amc plaza by the way if you're old school miami you understand the

amc a damp back there at the south dade yeah so here's the deal while i was sneaking into movie

theaters at 11 our guest today daniel heron he was starting a church he was starting a church in a

virtual reality platform in a gaming platform called roblox while i was and probably the rest of us

riding our bikes and having fun and goofing off and doing trying to stay as far away from church as

possible this dude was actually creating a church in virtual reality on his own in roblox

completely on his own now let's pump the brakes here a little bit what is roblox this kid's 11

like this this there's a lot of questions that are popping up here's the deal the dude's not 11

anymore the dude's 19 so fast forward getting your delorean eight years into the future into today

he's still running this roblox church the robloxian christians and as a result of this ministry over the

past eight years he has he has touched the lives of 24 000 people through this video game platform called

roblox and he is still going and doing this on a weekly basis it's an incredible story coming from a

and i apologize here from a kid from a young adult from a gen z-er from somebody who should be doing

anything other than running a church in a virtual reality community this guy is doing it and i would

love to understand the why and the how how he got here how he got started what was his motivation

all of these things we ask in this in this podcast so here's the deal i'm bringing to the table ray

the armist online pastor with christ fellowship of course of course uh co-host uh myself jeff with

the church digital and daniel heron uh i don't even know what to call him he's not a pastor

the guy who's running the robloxian church in a conversation sitting around the robloxian church

hey everybody here you go so i am i'm daniel heron i i grew up tacoma washington west side

about an hour south seattle both my parents they met in in college just a few blocks away from where we

live and i sort of grow i've grown up in this like diverse uh lower income area of my city that's

historically been has had some really tough uh it's been tough with gangs and crime and stuff so i

sort of growing up i grew up around a lot of people that didn't look like me which was um i think

important in the work that i do now born and raised in the presbyterian church um my local church is

smaller my great it's actually funny my great great great grandfather actually started the church

that i go to now cool in tacoma which is pretty cool so sort of there's in my family there's this

this uh building of um people that have been in ministry um and sort of has been inspirational to me

uh to do this let me ask you this question do they consider you in ministry right now

they concern me in ministry yeah 18 year old i mean they wouldn't consider i don't they don't

concern me ordained because i'm not ordained okay but they they do definitely consider what i'm doing

to be a church and to be ministry wow and on that note i don't think i've never actually run into

anyone i mean i've shared this with probably thousands of people at this point thousands of

uh individuals pastors i've never run across someone who has like challenged the idea of whether

or not it's a church which i know in a lot of other people doing similar work like they've sort of run

into people that have been opposed to it and in my experience maybe it's just that i'm a cute like

younger kid but um i've never experienced that which is has been a blessing i think but

i think i i think a good way to explain what you're asking is just to sort of tell you this story of the

church and how it came to be well i just want to put you put you into the mindset of what i what i was

in 2011 okay i was a sixth grader i was a sixth grader who loved computer games i would like come home

from school every day and i just played these like uh flash games on random websites where like i get

like you'll probably get malware from it or whatever but i was just like this is fun so i was playing

these games and one day this banner ad you know don't click on the ads but i clicked on an ad and it

changed my life okay it was this little ad for a game called roblox and it was this the ad i don't

remember what the ad was but i joined in it um i created an account and i started playing these

roblox games and what roblox is for people that um are not of my generation they label themselves as

an entertainment platform where they everything on there there's tons of millions of games that you

can play that are all created by different users on the platform so none of this the games that you play

have been created by the actual roblox team the roblox uh corporation it's all uh user created

user generated content then there's also like there's a virtual economy where you can like create

and design uh clothing for your little avatar and you can sell it and you can earn virtual currency and

can make groups for your games and all sorts of it's a really dynamic platform to make friends and play

games with each other which is really cool and the little sixth grader me back in 2011 got hooked real

fast i started just eating this stuff up i remember playing a lot of games for a lot of time and it was

really fun not gonna lie i really enjoyed it but there was this this time as time went on while i was on

this platform i was like there's these different groups that you can join to be in community with one

another online and i kept looking for a christian community because at the time and today my faith

is a large portion of my life it's a big thing to me so i kept looking and searching for this like

christian community you know i found one actually i found it was a group on roblox called the christians

of robloxia and the christians of robloxia which is a very interesting name it's very robloxia name

they were sort of just like a fan club for jesus so they were like a group on the roblox site that

was just like join this group if you're a christian so it was just a big collection of people that said

that they are christian didn't really do anything about it they just sort of just sort of like put

this on your profile there wasn't much participation and i didn't i sort of didn't like that very much so

i was like huh um and after a while i decided to actually leave that group and some time passed and

i was still just searching for this community that was like i want people that that are passionate

about their faiths just like i am so i left this this group that was really didn't do all that much

in terms of participation engagement and some time went by and i was just like there's still this like

place in my heart where i want to be involved with other people my age um and do this sort of work but

there wasn't one that existed on the platforms i remember very distinctly um it was the day after

christmas of 2011 i just received for christmas my very first um roblox little gift card uh to get the

premium membership which was really exciting for the sixth grade me i was like oh yes i'm gonna be

cool now i'm gonna be special and i can do things again so that was awesome but i got the membership

and with that membership you can create group so i created this group having no intention whatsoever

what would be uh called the robloxian christians it started out um in the first couple of weeks it's

just a place where i would invite a few of my friends to come like this flat block really large block

where we would join together with our little avatars and we would just uh pray together online for

whatever was going on in our lives we would just chat and pray um through the platform because i was

familiar with the platform it didn't seem weird or odd to me that i was doing it like this and really

i don't really have words to describe how it transformed over time it was sort of just like

somehow by god's grace and god's blessing more people started to show up each week we'd invite

more people and they would come and eventually we were like oh boy we got that we got like 50 people

coming now we need to like should we do something should we like make it more than just a

base plate so we designed or i mean i designed there wasn't really much of a staff at that point but

we designed this uh this little virtual church building that kind of resembles like a one a one

room uh church schoolhouse on the plains i don't know um it was very basic i was 12 at the time but

um that was interesting we started having these virtual gatherings where we would um it was really it really

resembled um what my church looked like in real life so i would i would look at like the service

um that i would go to on a sunday and then i would think about what are the different aspects so we

would have like a worship and then we would have a time of prayer and we would have a sermon and then

i sort of replicated those in the online service in the afternoon which is really cool 12 right you're 12

yeah i was 12 at that point in time how are the people who are coming to this that's that's actually

a tricky thing roblox never gives us demographics because it's like a kids platform right a kids

gaming platform so over time what we've done is um for our volunteer application which is sort of a

like an off-site thing it's like users can choose to uh uh give information about themselves just

demographic information and of the 1800 uh application or like staff applications that we've received

um we're able to get a picture of demographics and our average age ranges from i think the range is from

6 to like 26 but the average where most people are is middle school high school um 14 15 yeah so middle

school or high schoolers don't want to sit in a in an average physical church building but they'll go

and they'll experience a like a virtual service in a virtual building with that's kind of comprised the

same way utilizing virtual elements like that's crazy and i think what's what's really special about it

is that we're not making it challenging for them to go it's for them to attend they can show up at

really any time and someone will be there they can participate in our discord server or on our like our

discussion wall on the group page which is an area for prayer requests and such what's what's beautiful

about having a church on a video game platform is it's where young people are already at i always like to

think of uh the story of zacchaeus when jesus was preaching and he uh zacchaeus was up in the old

tree and he said gee zacchaeus i'm going to your house today i'm actually going to where you're at

i'm going to talk to you i'm going to help you change your spirit and change your heart he actually

went to where he was at he wasn't like hey zacchaeus come meet me at the synagogue or come meet me in

the upper room or wherever he was like right here right now this is where i'm going to meet you and

i think that's something that we're replicating and we're trying to do online it's been really

meaningful and successful everything's really special so 12 years ago you were reaching 50

or so people uh or excuse me when you were 12 seven years ago yes seven eight years ago this was about 50

people today um we're still doing roblox church like what what does it look like in a given sunday

we are definitely still doing roblox church one of the limitations of roblox is that in the actual

virtual world um there's like capacities on how many people you can actually fit because of the

technical issues the the maximum that we can fit is uh 50 people um at one time but at our services we

always have people joining and leaving so we're not going to have just 50 come what we consider

membership in the church is actually joining that group that i talked about uh once someone attends

either a service or one of our outreach events or uh visits our one of our outreach uh our god is love

prayer ministry um which i can talk about in a minute but once they visit that we encourage them to join

the group and get involved in the church and that's how we track like the total membership of the church

okay um the roblox service is just really the front door that funnels into yes and and i sort of think

of the the community group as like as the group hub a hub or a portal to a bunch of other um where

where the ministry actually happens online um but like to answer your question in our in our community group we

we have um just under 24 000 um youth members um at a given service we might uh range from 400 to 800 people

that would come at some point in time in that given service based on the stats that roblox gives us

um so you've got you've got 24 000 names in a database that somehow engaged with a roblox

service which you funneled into this database and then with the database what are you challenging

them to do like what's what's the end game what's what's the goal of of this what we really challenge

the people in the group to do um is to attend the virtual services to get involved um ultimately our

our mission statement in the entirety of the church is to share the love and word of god with

all young people online and part of what we're doing at the at the service is what we're preaching and

what we're talking about um especially in the sermon series that we're in right now is once you've made

the the claim um once you've decided to follow jesus how do you go out and live out that um how do

you live out um as a christian what's that lifestyle like how do you respond to people how do you act

around other people especially on roblox um and on other gaming platforms and in your life what does it

look like to follow jesus and trying to equip people to equipping these young people to uh live

differently and to live as as a light in a place where there's not much light that's that's really

good dan um so tell me more about uh like are you taking them through like a discipleship process is

there a strategy that you're walking them through because that's that's some amazing stuff that you guys

have been able to accomplish in such a short period of time really may feel like a long period of time

but really in the life of a church it's a short period of time to reach the number of people that

you're reaching yeah um but that's actually one of the challenges too i think i think that there's

something that's a challenge on a lot of the larger brick and mortar churches as well is the as we've

grown larger it's harder and harder to engage people one-on-one um and harder to stay connected

we definitely have we have things that we try to do we encourage people to continue to attend services

to get involved in um our we have life groups going on um they meet on saturdays and then they're in

breakout groups uh we really we also encourage them to get into the discord because the discord

unlike the roblox group we're able to uh there's less uh censorship and filtered uh chat so we're able

to share more and post more and it's more active in terms of like being vulnerable and sharing about

your life um and it's more of a everyday sort of thing um and building community with others

as opposed to only when you're only when you choose um on the group on the roblox group there's more

interaction on the discord and that's one of the big things that's important to me in this church is

that just it's amazing to me how vulnerable people are um young people how much they share about their

lives with people that if they were in a brick and mortar setting they might not feel comfortable

sharing it yeah which is there's that level of anonymity online which some people might say is

like that's dangerous because people are just going to take advantage of it but in my experience that

hasn't been true at all people have actually used it to be more comfortable sharing which with what is

actually going on in their life and being open to support others in that process as well sorry to

kick you off there in a previous episode we talked to uh dj soto and one of the things we talked about

because he's doing church and vr which has a lot of overlap in terms of your experiences we talked

about how this serves almost like a digital confessional if you will that having that layer

in between you really helps somebody to kind of open up and you're seeing that right there's this one

example i don't use it because it's a dramatic example but i use it because it it really was powerful

in my own life um to see what the work of the church is it was actually a really hard hard time in in the

life of my faith actually but we had three young people who were battling with depression and anxiety

we had three attempted suicides in the course of three weeks all unrelated i'm so we're so blessed that

everyone survived and is doing better today um but there's there was this in one of them there was

this awesome beauty of seeing the interconnectedness of the of the online church um that because they

had because uh because sally had built such strong friendships and relationships through the church

and through the discord ministry she had actually talked about what she was going through before she

had attempted um attempted suicide she communicated so so like frequently that uh when she was actually

doing it it was someone from the church uh several states away she was in alabama and the person that

actually called 911 um or emergency services to rescue her was calling from wisconsin wow into her town so

the friendships and relationships that were built through the online church um and the the level of what was

shared in those relationships i think is incredibly powerful and i think that this is only three people just imagine

what's happening i don't i don't know what's going on and with everyone's relationships but i know that there's

these are pretty common these sort of strong relationships that are being built let's let's

park on this for a second uh that great story but so you've got somebody in alabama and somebody in

wisconsin and and even though they're in different time zones even though they're on different sides of

the country even though they're not breathing the same air there's a friendship a relationship a

comfortableness that in that desperate moment of need to reach out isn't to mom

isn't to dad it's not to a school teacher it's not to anybody within the state it's in wisconsin

the church today would would say that doesn't that doesn't happen um that you can't have

community they can't have relationships that tight that intimate online yet strangely this the story

here with with sally and whoever has so what as a young person what about online helps that

relationships connect when you're 19 and you're making connections with someone through roblox

church or through discord or whatever the platform how can you connect with someone like that that

maybe us as non-20 30 40 year olds as an older person maybe we struggle with that what's the

younger generation looking for that they're getting online i think i think to answer that question

we have to consider the fact that to my generation at least i don't think that technology is so much

i want to say that's not seen as a tool but it's not like something special it's something that we've

grown up around that we've been surrounded in it's like second nature to us so like communicating

online whether it's on discord or roblox or facebook or instagram or snapchat or any of those things

and building relationships with people all the way around the world it's not it's not foreign it's not

hard i think the way that i've been able to build these relationships with people that have been a

part of my church and people that haven't been part of my church is just the ability to communicate with

them and the willingness to to have the trust that they're taking it seriously and that it's a real

relationship because i know i know that my friend gabe over in texas i know that he's a real person i know

that he has real emotions and he's really caring so when i talk to him i don't feel this level of

a disconnection because of technology i feel this greater level of connectivity because without it

i wouldn't know who he was and i wouldn't be able to talk to him and as a i'm not a millennial what

am i a gen z gen z born past 2000 yeah no offense sorry to discategorize you earlier i take it back

that's all right i'm a millennial in the group i felt agged by gif i was like gif what are you talking

about man i'm oh my gosh i'm a proud lazy millennial just kidding yeah go on anyways like i like what i just

said is that techno since technology is not foreign it's like it doesn't feel much different to text

someone on discord than it feels to talk to them over the phone right in fact i think talking them to

them over the phone might even be slightly more uncomfortable than talking to them with one of

the other platforms and i think that a lot of people on on these platforms feel the same way

because it's just we've grown up around it it's it's what we're used to and it's what we're acclimated

to what we're finding is it's not it's not just a generational thing in that you know but but it is

becoming more and more common in your age group and you know jeff and i got kids in you know that

are that are gen z and so what's coming behind this is folks who are growing up into this you know and

i was introduced to roblox a few years ago and so at first when jeff told me hey we're gonna be

talking to dan and you know he's got this robloxian christian group at first i thought it was a

denomination to be honest with you i was looking it up like man i never heard

dead serious and then and then i was like oh this is the game this is awesome you know um but it's

but it's become much more than that because it's become this platform for interaction for people

which is where so many people are finding connections because of mutual interest

which then opens the doors for ministry and so i think what god has enabled you to do

as a sixth grader i mean my gosh as a sixth grader man is powerful that you recognize hey i'm gonna

leverage uh this platform that god's given me and i'm just gonna bring my faith here along with me

and then you know the seed was planted and god caused it to grow which i think is amazing dan uh can

you take me through um can you take me through what a service looks like this is the question that

everyone asks and it's really challenging to describe if you're not like showing them the actual video

however that's cool i'll do my best you have uh you have an avatar which is like it's like a little

blocky lego guy kind of a cross between if you know what minecraft is it's a cross between like a

minecraft avatar and like a lego minifigure and you can dress it up however you want so you have this

little avatar and when you click join into the virtual church space your little guy spawns in

like in the middle of our lobby um in the church you can come in you can explore the different rooms

our main worship area is where a lot of our services take place it's it's basically just a

small little amphitheater it's a lot of little avatars in it um at one time there's like we have pews

or benches that you can actually come and sit your little avatar on and it'll look like you're sitting

in it which is pretty cool and then we have a little stage where our coordinators come and they sit up

there and they're able to help lead the service and what the services actually look like for the most

part they're pretty uh standard to what you might think about when you think of a typical church

service we have we open in worship we have our announcements we uh pray together um everything on

roblox though is text chat so there's there's no uh voice aspect of it however with that said we are able

to play mp3 audios in the background so during our our worship time we'll be playing um uh worship music

that's actually been recorded and played by our worship team prior to the service whoa you guys are recording

your own music and then playing it that that's that's a different level of innovation the archers

we were talking about they were playing like videos from like youtube and stuff you see we used to do

that we used to do that and it was so much easier to be quite honest with you sure it was so much

easier but then into that late 2017 roblox cracked down on all of the like copyrighted material yeah

yeah because they yeah they they reached a point where it was like people started to care now we are

unable to upload copyrighted material even if we have like licenses that allow us to have it which was

like what are we going to do we're either going to play like some open source like organ music from

whatever they whatever's available or we play the same songs but we encourage like members of the church

to step up and record it and we play it that way so that's what we've done wow um during worship so

while music is playing i feel like since it's all text to type sometimes it can be a little bit boring

or like people will lose interest um but i think when we have the music playing in the background it sort

of engages people and continues to draw people in which is really special i think also when i say text

to chat to people that are not on roblox it it sounds like that would not work it doesn't work but

that's part of the idea of reaching people where they're at is that we're reaching people that are

familiar with the platform um they know how roblox works already so when they enter the church it's not

some crazy foreign world that's like this is what i'm used to and this is like this is like an actual

community on here that i can engage in a little bit more about our services usually after a few songs

of worship we'll enter into like the time of learning or the sermon um and usually on sundays i give that

on our services throughout the week um our other volunteer leaders will um lead that and usually it's

thinking about scripture and how it applies and the situations that we're facing as young people

um so it's really oriented towards younger our younger audience so it feels like it's uh you mentioned

earlier like presbyterian raising you're basically executing a presbyterian service style kind of

church right or somewhat but we call ourselves a non-denominational church

for the sake of yeah we're a melting pot of lots of denominational traditions with that said the

services also feel semi not presbyterian they feel it feels very mixed like when i think of the

presbyterian church i think of hymns and um pews and uh the frozen shows and nobody raises their hands you

know our church the church that we have online is not like that we listen to them we play the modern

worship music that um large uh larger churches play our services are more engaging and there's a lot of

that like call and response not call and response that's a person the whole like say amen yeah everybody

says amen and stuff there's a lot of that i myself am presbyterian and clearly it wears in but when other

people are our other leaders are also leading i think they reflect some of their traditions as well into

it so sure that's sort of a good mix what you're talking about the the volunteers and the leaders like

what's the leadership structure of this you got 24 25 000 names in in a database you're trying

your the goal is to create the services as an evangelical arm so like what how are you pulling this off what

what are the volunteers look like yeah so actually we're in a time of transition right now um previously

well i guess i'll just kind of start from the top so there's myself who sort of oversees everything

and does a lot of the my work is really in the past couple of years has gone to a lot of the

administrative behind the scenes funding development all that sort of stuff um as well as the pastoral

stuff on sundays the next the next sort of tier of level of leaders is like we have our director of

hiring our director of like facilities um our development people for actually building the people

or building the places and all of that sort of thing and then we have a tier of coordinators

that are all hired and trained so that they really understand the the functions of the church and

what to do when like a troll comes in or how to respond to prayer requests or all these sorts of

things they're really trained across all the different parts of the church and they are mentors to a

subgroup of volunteers so we have a volunteer staff then that's like the next tier down that

really makes up all of the different ministries of the church so we have this is where the transition

is at actually we we used to have these formal teams that we would place volunteers on like our

prayer team worship team outreach team music team but we've sort of gotten rid of that and just made

a large pool of volunteers that are able to be assigned to different tasks at different times

so they're all trained sort of equally and we we have this hiring process where our hiring director

there's this really we use google forms for our staff applications and people can just fill that out

and then our hiring director reads them and makes decisions on placing people and aligning the skills

that they list on their application with which team might best which tasks might best suit them

so how many how many volunteers roughly are we talking about in this that's a good question i have to

think about that for a second um i i know that we just graduated our new class our like new cohort of

coordinators so i think we have eight okay i'm i'm gonna be honest when i was 19 i didn't even know

what the word cohort meant oh god you've got you just launched the new cohort with eight coordinators

we have about 50 to 60 volunteers right now really sort of which is actually it's not where i want

it to be it's challenging because i want i want to have an opportunity for if someone wants to serve in

the church i want to let them um that's good but we also want to have a system where we're able to train

people and uh show them how to support other people in the church so my goal hopefully maybe by christmas

maybe by easter is 120 volunteers i feel like that's a good number but we're at about 50 right now and

those different coordinators are the ones that are managing all the activities of the volunteers as well

well the tension you feel is the tension that every pastor in america feels i know

there's never enough volunteers and there's ever there's always a desire um and a passion to do more

in ministry so um but but but sounds like you're doing it right by getting the coordinators up top

casting the vision to them letting them break down and and and lead you know an organization with with

24 25 000 you know names obviously that's that's more than a 19 year old college kid

and on spending the pacific northwest can handle uh and so kind of spreading that out and letting some

others uh join in is is awesome absolutely what's the one thing and i've been thinking about this

question i'm not sure how to ask it but uh let's just see what happens here okay what's the one thing

that a roblox church can do that a physical church can't there's so many things that i could say to this

question that i think there are really good answers to i think the thing that's most beautiful to me

about the online church and it sort of is two things in one when you're constrained by brick and

brick and mortar your walls and you're restrained by your geographic location i think what's most

beautiful about our online church is how we are able to create community real community vulnerable community

with young people across borders across nations across states how our church represents every continent and

every um u.s state i think it's beautiful when we are having a worship service and my friend from the

philippines is online at the same time as my friend from the uk i think that's beautiful even though it's

like way different time zones but it's still i think it's awesome that when when you're in church and

you're singing a song and you're singing praise to god your language um doesn't matter because you're

singing one song of praise to god and that there's that sort of when we when we look at the church we're

supposed to be one body united together and i see looking across all of the all of the places where

this church represents all the situations all the circumstances all the backgrounds of everyone in

this big diverse melting pot of a church how we can still come together and honor god and love love

people on roblox and love people in the outside world i think that's beautiful that isn't necessarily

available in brick and more churches also our online church is cheap i don't know there's always that

how i was gonna ask how much does does it cost what it was a year a year up until 2017 and 2018 i started

like uh we had some people that donated so that i can do this for my like job during school so the cost of

the actual church by itself was under 500 for the first six years so we were reaching tens of thousands

of people for the less than the cost of the new iphone so that was really there's always that that

that's that's unbelievable so roblox is just it's it's a it's a relatively free platform i mean you said

something about like uh advanced membership something you can get the membership you can get that for

five bucks a month wow if we didn't have a website to upkeep we could be doing this for five bucks a

month so it's it's really encouraging to see with with all of the platforms that are existing now all

the different places these are all places that have the possibility to have other ministries and such

hop on there and people passionate about this yeah so let me let me ask this when you were eight years ago

whatever you were 11 just starting this thing 11 and 12 did you know did you have a picture in your mind

of what today would have looked like or are you figuring this thing out as you're going yeah i had no idea

i had absolutely no idea what i was doing i was just making a place for me and my friends to pray

together online and god took it and ran with it which was pretty awesome that is awesome that's not pretty

awesome that's amazing that is ridiculous in such a great way that god has used this

and and you know to think that something that that started as just me and my friends online

playing this awful game that i had no idea what i was doing would be something that has been used to

to inspire and motivate pastors around the world and would someday lead to be my job during college i

just think that that is not only is an incredible story but it's it's just amazing to see how god is

working in in this online church and also in people that are passionate about doing similar work

um just to show that god moves and it's really incredible so it's good we've talked about this

recently about how churches are often they're afraid to experiment with things and and the reason that

they're afraid to experiment uh we talked about this in in episode 26 i actually went off on apple like

just and i don't want to get into it i'm unearthing like painful stuff i mean you were going off on apple a few

minutes ago yeah it's it's it's it's there's always something to go off on apple well done um but and

i'm number one fan but here's the thing like like church when they look at this technology and especially

because they're not native they're not like grown up in it it's still this outside it's still this

external thing they're not like you gen z kid who has grown up with this as as just part of normal life

they're afraid to experiment and as a result a lot of times they're afraid to to try something until

they figure out where the finish line is and one of the things that i love love about you dan is at age

11 and 12 man you're just playing around with the kids your your friends and you see something and oh

let's let's build on that okay let's build on that let's try that then all of a sudden you got 24

25 000 names in a in a database that you've touched at some point and now you've got 50 plus volunteers

with a vision and a passion to double that number you know by the end of the year um and so you didn't

know that when you were 11 and 12 most people don't know that um but the fact that i mean honestly

you've stuck with this idea for eight years that's right um that's i'm just gonna tell you right now

i've in my life i have never had a job eight years um i got issues there's other things that we can talk

about that but i've just i've always bailed ship going this going to something else and so yeah you've

reached 24 000 in eight years really quickly um but at the same time the longevity i just want to

praise you man compliment you with this the longevity of you to stick with this idea um through the

fruition to where it is today and still have passion to drive to run it even further man that's that's

awesome well done with that i think real quick if i want to add i there have been lots of people real

real quick uh there have been lots of people that have done similar work on roblox not necessarily to

the scale that my church has grown to um but have sort of off have like shoot it off from our ministry

to uh try and do their own sort of things and i know that there have been other attempts um by other

organizations to do similar work i just think in my experience the number one thing that has

allowed for this success other than god's grace and god's blessing has just been staying committed

to kept showing up because i remember in 2013 2014 there would be times when we had one or two people

show up to a service and you're like should i cancel this should i should i not should i just keep going

with it and we would have the service even with those one or two people there because we are still

being able to um we're still able to be a blessing to someone and to um to offer a space for someone who

might need it so yeah i think that staying committed in whatever whatever ministry or mission or career

that you're in is um super um important what advice would you give to somebody who's starting up so

maybe it's not roblox maybe it's blah blah blah video game platform they want to start um a church in

playstation voo whatever i don't know your i don't know that world i confess but somebody wants somebody

some kids got some idea what's your advice i would not necessarily recommend going the route that i went

starting with something that you don't know what it what you want it to be like if you have a goal in

mind of what you want to accomplish that is excellent i think it's significantly harder if if you went the

route that i went that was like i don't know what i'm doing and i'm just going to go and go with it

um it has shown awesome rewards and it's been a beautiful blessing but with that like i don't know

mentality um it's also presented a lot of challenges so i would recommend talking to your

friends talking to your family maybe a mentor and figuring out uh what do i want to accomplish

um i'd also i can't i can't echo enough how much having um mentors and adults in my life that have

been supportive of it have uh made it easier and taken the burden off when some days you just

some days you get off of this and it's just stressful because people are just being crazy and you just want

to scream or you want to cry or whatever it is and you get off and you're just like you're able to talk

to someone who maybe they've been through this sort of thing before or they um are just there to listen

but having someone that you can talk to and um pray with and um who's willing to support you

through the work you're doing is really important i think there's hard i mean there's hard times in

that right the service for one or two uh people show up i mean i'll be honest when i have conversations

with church planners it's the same what you just said is is the same advice you know uh stay committed

stick through it have people around that can can mentor you uh have people around that can give you

advice um you're not alone and and really i mean there there have been times in my life doing ministry

especially in online circles we've talked about it in past episodes but i felt alone too i felt like

nobody was thinking the way that i was um you know and i didn't have that support base around me and so

dan you know well done getting that support base around you to help out um to to coach you as you

develop this idea as an 11 year old to now a still a young 19 year old um running this this uh this

thing this organization this this church online so that's great hey hey ray as we're wrapping up um

any any thoughts yeah you know um as as we look to innovation you know in the future um then i love how

how you just followed the string of curiosity and even though you know it's been riddled with questions

that i'm sure have bottled your mind and uh i'm sure it's been tough man i just want to encourage you

and i want to encourage others man to you know stay curious and stay hungry man and keep keep finding

new paths for people because you know roblox is your way dan i don't know what what jeff's daughter

what my daughter what's going to be their way to reach people for christ and so it's just a powerful

thing to see people utilize this so thanks dan for for being part of this yeah yeah i i can promise

this there's going to be more dan's out there as as technology gets more and more in the hands of

of individuals and not companies and organizations i and i do believe this and i've blogged this uh

historically i i think innovation is not going to come from the church it's going to come from

individuals like dan who are driving innovation for the church uh and when you look at innovations

historically even like billy graham using his message and satellites to bounce it to a million

people that wasn't the church that was billy graham in a ministry to help the church in that context

even paul writing the letters that he did uh maybe that was the big c church back in back in the new

testament but it was really paul taking the time to write the letters and then mailing them off to

individual churches so oftentimes it's the individual who stands up and and uh dan thanks for you know

being that 12 year old kid instead of um you know doing the stupid stuff that i was probably doing

when i was 11 or 12 i'm trying to think what movie you know what it was it was batman it was the uh

it was the first batman the the was it michael keaton jack he doesn't know he doesn't know what that

is he knows the dark knight he doesn't know i'm just saying older people out there listening no no

listen i watched batman 40 times in the theater that was me you know the guy that they make fun

of the watch uh in game like 87 times that was me with with um uh the the batman the first batman

before batman begins so uh way to like not be that guy and actually like accomplish something with your

life and make the rest of us look bad so dan as we're as we're landing the plane uh man if somebody

listening wanted to get more information or wanted to find out or volunteer help out and support you guys

where should they go uh yeah um if they want to get involved or learn more about us or see some

media about us um they can just go to our website at the robloxian christians.org um and there's

plenty of information on there uh to help you all out so awesome so we'll put that in the show notes

robloxian the robloxian christians.org that's awesome and very clear so hey listen this has been

been a great podcast i love hanging around kids that i forgive me dan you know what young adults

are doing listen i am not one but i love hanging around young adults um who uh you know embrace this

technology piece for the kingdom and do phenomenal things as a result and the the community the

connections i mean i'm just even thinking back to sally's story i mean there's just a phenomenal

engagement of technology that the younger generation is seeing that the older generation has yet to to

realize and so dan man thanks for being on the cutting edge of this uh for ray for dan my name is jeff

with the church digital thanks again for being here and uh we'll see you next time you all have a good day