Not long ago, worship gatherings had to take place within earshot of a pastor. Over the years, advances in AVL technology helped us to fill larger spaces with praise and engage more worshippers. Today, network technology and social media applications have changed the face of worship even more dramatically, streaming online worship into homes and remote campuses around the globe. And there is even more on the horizon with tech moguls lining up to push the boundaries of social networks and expand into a new virtual reality. Is your church ready to take that first virtual step into the metaverse?
The metaverse explained
Neal Stephenson, author of a 1992 science fiction novel, is credited with coining the term "metaverse." In his book entitled "Snow Crash," he describes lifelike avatars who meet in realistic 3D buildings and engage with other virtual reality environments. Since then, technology has steadily moved us closer to a real metaverse.
Online gamers may have been among the first to see virtual reality, augmented reality (where some elements are real and others virtual), 3D holographic avatars, and stunning video coming together into spaces where users can "live" in an all-digital universe. This coalescence of digital techniques and landscapes offers its occupants the allure of boundless social connections, experiences of concerts and conferences, virtual trips around the world, and more. For those who have followed its evolution, the future is clear: As the metaverse expands, it will offer a hyper-real alternative world for just about anything you can imagine, including worship.
Inklings of the metaverse already exist in online game universes such as Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox, and the companies behind those games each have ambitions to be part of its evolution. Epic Games, for example, has held virtual concerts by notable artists like Ariana Grande and Travis Scott, along with offering up new experiences for movie trailers and music debuts. They have even created an "immersive" re-imagining of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 historic "I Have A Dream'' speech. Epic’s MetaHuman Creator, a free, cloud-based app, allows anyone to create photorealistic digital humans complete with hair and clothing for use with its game engines.
While gamers may be closest to the metaverse experience today, game builders are not alone in wanting to stake a claim in this new virtual territory.
The tech giant formerly known as Facebook has rebranded the company, changing its name to Meta, and has made significant investments in virtual reality, most notably the 2014 acquisition of Oculus, a major player in VR (Virtual Reality) as the designer of headsets needed for a true virtual world experience. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has even signaled his belief that a more immersive metaverse could ultimately replace the Internet as we know it. Some workers at Meta now meet in Horizon Workrooms, a trial of virtual meeting spaces where coworkers can join VR meetings using Oculus Quest 2 VR headsets. The same headsets are available to consumers at just under $300.
Similarly, Microsoft is also pushing into the metaverse. The software giant is already using holograms and is developing mixed and extended reality (XR) applications with its Microsoft Mesh platform, which combines the real world with augmented reality and virtual reality. Microsoft has even made plans to bring mixed-reality, including holograms and virtual avatars, to its popular workplace software, Microsoft Teams, before the end of 2022, as well as explorable 3D virtual connected spaces for retail and workplaces.
Life.Church, Oklahoma City, OK, currently hosts its metaverse service on a Microsoft free AltspaceVR app [where] the team created a virtual building using a 3D architectural rendering that looks and feels like one of their physical locations.
Worship in a virtual world
While a fully formed metaverse may still be on the horizon, new VR gear like Oculus headsets and hosting for virtual experiences are arriving all the time. Some churches, like Life.Church, are seizing the opportunity to make the first forays into a digital world of their making, adding metaverse services to augment their current offerings of online and live worship.
Some churches, like Life.Church, are seizing the opportunity to make the first forays into a digital world of their making, adding metaverse services to augment their current offerings of online and live worship.
“As a church, we are passionate about reaching people for Christ,” says Oklahoma City, Oklahoma’s Life.Church online team leader, Greg Gackle. “One of our values is that we will do anything short of sin to reach people who don’t know Christ. To reach people no one else is reaching, we accept that we’re going to have to do things no one else is doing. This drives us to try new things to reach people who need the hope and transforming power of Jesus Christ.” Gackle feels that as more people spend more time in the metaverse, it’s important for the Church to have a presence in that digital space.
Though the look and ways of the metaverse might be different—at least for now—Gackle contends that there are many similarities between more typical online worship and the Life.Church approach to the metaverse. “Both start with high-energy worship,” he says, "followed by a powerful message from our senior pastor, Craig Groeschel. Through both types of services, people can connect with other people all over the world and pray one-on-one with one of our volunteers. Also in both cases, there’s a sense of anonymity that allows people to feel more comfortable letting down their guard and sharing about their struggles more quickly.”
“To reach people no one else is reaching, we accept that we’re going to have to do things no one else is doing.”
Greg Gackle, Online Team Leader, Life.Church, Oklahoma City, OK
The biggest difference between Life.Church online and metaverse services, Gackle notes, is that during a metaverse service worshippers are able to move around in the space—either using a computer or VR headset. “That allows people to talk to each other in the lobby, engage in worship alongside others, and maybe even make a new friend while playing basketball in the game room.” He contends that unlike an online service, engagement in the metaverse “world” lets people better sense the presence of others around them, providing the ability to observe and respond to someone’s body language, something he has found to be extremely helpful when building person-to-person connections. “We continue to learn more every week,” he says.
Is now the time?
12Stone Church’s creative director, Timmy Allen, appreciates the benefits that a new technology can bring to a worship community. Addressing the challenges presented by COVID through technology not only transformed worship at 12Stone Church, but made them leaders in online worship. “At one point, we realized that offering our worship experience only on our website wasn’t optimal,” he recalls. “We realized that our environment lacked many of the powerful features that YouTube had spent years perfecting. So we started asking ourselves: ‘Why offer something that you have to bring people into rather than offering the experience where people already are?’” As a result, Allen and his team now utilize YouTube and are keeping a pulse on worship opportunities in the metaverse. “If people are having experiences and community with others in VR, we should be offering our Sunday experience there, too. If people are already there, why not serve them something they might get something out of and, perhaps, find a connection to God? I would love to see how a virtual experience could someday be used to share the Gospel of Jesus.”
