We're kind of one church in many metaverses.
If you go to church, you probably go by car, public transport, maybe you even walk there.
But today, I'm going by something a little different.
I'm going by a VR headset because this church happens in virtual reality.
In nearly an hour's time, I'm going to VR Church.
How do I get there is the question.
Hi Pastor DJ!
How are you? Hey everyone!
No flying today!
Some people have come obviously looking like how they would dress in real life.
There are a couple of robots here as well.
Hey Sophia, nice to see you. Thanks for coming today.
Thank you. It's the first time I've ever been to a service with a flying preacher.
Sometime we do crazy things. One day it was the summer of 2016 and I was blown away I
was like man, look at this this world in 360'. And in that moment I thought 'you
know what I'd like to do, it'd be fun to start a church here'. It's just a
whim of a thought. We started out with just a handful of
people using this one service and then many people from Europe were like 'Pastor
we love VR Church but it's like one or two in the morning' so we expanded to
VR Church Europe. And then many people were from
New Zealand and Asian countries saying 'We want to be a part of VR Church'.
We probably have several hundred people that are part of the church. Our
vision is to spread our love to establish these faith communities across
different time zones but not just time zones, metaverses. So AltSpace is a metaverse,
it's like a virtual city. There's a few other ones called Rec Room and VR Chat
and they're populated like virtual cities you can kind of think of it like
Paris and London and Tokyo and we want to plant churches in these different
virtual cities.
I'm really passionate to help people who can't
otherwise find a community. And then also I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old
and I don't think their attention spans would do well here.
So worshiping as a family, that's something that we that we still do in the
physical church as well.
Do you attend physical church as well as VR church?
I do not. I'm actually one of those people that are physically disabled and
confined to my home. So yes I only attend here.
Where are you from?
I'm from the Netherlands.
How long have you been coming to VR Church?
This is actually my first time. It is a very new
experience for me because I'm used to physical churches but I have autism and
I'm really really sensitive to sounds and all people around me. Right now I
think most people are muted so you don't hear all the sounds around you so it's
way less tiring and that's really nice.
I have to say, that I like to think I am digitally quite advanced. This was my first time in a headset
and it did take quite a long time to set everything up, get to grips with things.
And now I'm here and I've spent about an hour or two in the experience I'm feeling comfortable.
But do you think there is a big technological leap that people have to make that they might be put off by?
Yes absolutely. At the birth of any technology there's going to be that
period of time where it's early adopters, early innovators. In the
diffusion of this technology we're already seeing these leaps and bounds
into form factor, price, where it's going to make it more accessible.
All that technology is being worked on - billions of dollars being spent at
Google, Apple, Facebook, to create an experience and I don't even think
we've seen the full fruition of what that technology is going to be, I think
we're just starting.