Trauma, Time, and True Hope: Missionary Work in VRChat

So I was asked to speak on the difficulties of being a missionary in VRChat. VRChat is, as Jeff likes to call it, the red light district of VR, of digital. Many of you have probably heard about VRChat, and your thoughts may instantly go to a black cat style public world, kids running around, trolls focused group of people. But I want to set the scene on the depths of VRChat, the depths of the communities and the hopelessness that is in the space to try and give you a glimpse of the difficulties of being a missionary there. I'm not sure slide wise how we're working, but if we are able to make it work, the pictures behind me are from inside of VRChat. VRChat pushes the limits on how real virtual reality can be. It provides the most means for your body to be picked up in the space in real time. These extra levels of immersion shifts virtual reality from a place that feels like a screen that you're looking at or feels like a distant location to where it can move to people feeling embodied in the space. It's common for people in this space to spend 12 hours every day of their life in here. As you can see, the abilities for world creation in VRChat is pretty impressive. Just like spatial and other VR platforms, the worlds and the avatars are user-created. Since VRChat offers that extra depth to immersion, thousands of these worlds cater to the depths of the evil desires in our heart. and communities form around those like-minded desires. With no moderation, no repercussions for illegal things that are happening every day in this space. Taking a peek at the chat, not sure if those messages for me or not. At this moment, there are about 100,000 people in VRChat. If you are a number person and if you know digital a little bit, look up Steam charts, times it by about four to count for the Quest users, and you'll come out to how many people aren't at this moment. There was a recent survey of 1,000 VRChat users. 88% of those people said that they are addicted to the VRChat. 76% said that VRChat makes them feel lonely. 54% said that VRChat makes them feel depressed. People go into VRChat to find community, and they're finding community, yet they feel lonely and depressed. Let me know if I need to do anything on that end, Cheddars. Yet they feel lonely and they feel depressed. So the follow-up question is, why don't they just get the heck out? 66% of people said that they would feel more lonely if they left VRChat. So these people feel stuck where they're at. 79% said that they have been diagnosed with a mental illness. And keep in mind, there's about 100,000 people on it this second. One out of three people said that VRChat has been the cause of suicidal thoughts. What brings someone to spend a majority of their life in virtual reality? In my experience, it's usually because of deep trauma that happened to them when they were younger that's left them broken and in desperation to find hope. VRChat offers so many avenues to try and find that hope, so many rabbit holes that go deep and only end in a spiral of sin. I know this personally because I was one of them. Before I knew the Lord, I was living in VRChat 12 hours every day. And I was chasing after every high in the space that I could find to try and see if there was a reason to continue living. The depths of the darkness that's happening daily in VRChat would break your heart for these people and how the enemy is blinding their eyes. Again, I was asked to speak on the difficulties of being a missionary in VRChat, and that leads us into the first difficulty, the weight of a trauma-intense ministry.

What does it look like to weep with those who weep in a place where most people are weeping?

In the past, it's... common occurrence for people to reach out in the middle of the night because their friend is legitimately in the process of attempting to take their own life at the same time though as you've heard from other talks vr provides an unusual opportunity in ministry outside of vr it takes time to build a relationship with someone before they begin to open up about deep things In VR, it's common within the first five minutes of meeting someone for them to say, I've never told anyone this, but... And they'll go straight to the trauma they've experienced that's been gripping them their whole life. They say it so quickly because of the anonymity VR provides. The safety wall. If you don't like how someone responds, you can easily get out. And they say it not expecting you to have an answer. that there is real lasting hope. It's so exciting to watch the Holy Spirit enlighten their hearts to the gospel and that safety wall completely crashing down. But from the missionary's perspective, experiencing that extreme plunge so quickly all the time is heavy. Anyone that feels like the Lord is calling them to be a missionary in VRChat needs a strong support team. They need someone discipling them at all times, a strong local church, and established accountability from mature believers. Even though initial spiritual conversations can begin quickly, lasting fruit is a different story. Let me set the scene. Imagine. You're in a VR chat world. It's nighttime. There's a nice cottage and a boardwalk going out to a lake. There's someone sitting down at the end of the boardwalk, staring at the moon and the stars. They've been there for hours, not saying a word. They've been secretly hoping someone sees them and cares for them, tells them that there's hope.

How would you approach them?

would you say if you walk up to him at the end of that boardwalk and his body body language clearly indicates he doesn't want to say anything or what we call in vr a mute would your immediate reaction be to try and talk to him even though he doesn't want to feel like you're only talking to him because you feel bad for him or because he looks depressed And the second he feels like you're trying to peddle him something, you're just like the rest. Or is your reaction to sit down next to him and stare at the stars together, praying for a small opportunity where he begins to trust you, to open up to you? How long are you willing to sit there in silence to form that relationship, to tend to that hurting heart by just being there?

An hour?

Two hours? Six hours? What will you make time for when it comes to something that lasts an eternity? An hour isn't enough. What's left him to be a mute in the first place is likely the feeling of everyone just abandons me. Nobody actually cares. They'll just leave me. They always do. If you were told that if you spend the next six straight hours growing in relationship with, trust with one single person, and at the end of that six hours, that person puts their faith in Christ, is radically changed, and desires to tell others about Christ, wouldn't you clear out the next six hours in your schedule? Wouldn't you sit in silence for hours if that's what the person needs? That's the second difficulty of being a missionary in VRChat. Time. Without clear boundaries and rest, it's easy to become absorbed in tending to the next guy. In this space, there will always be a next. So we have the difficulties of being in a trauma-heavy ministry and time. The last one that I want to mention today is a bit of a different turn. The last difficulty I'm going to mention is repairing the damage caused from others who have not been clearly called by the Lord to minister in this space. People who may just see it as a cool technology. People who claim to be Christian or claim to be a church, but in reality they don't preach the gospel. And also the many teachers, the many false teachers who are in this space. When one of the questions many struggle with there is, why would God allow the trauma that I went through to happen? And then they experience people coming into their world to talk about Jesus in a way that is completely against scripture. It only reinforces the image they've created of how God must be. The enemy is trying his hardest to slow down what God has begun in VRChat, using every angle he can. To give a glimpse, here's just a few that I've experienced in VRChat, and these are not just one-time occurrences. From Muslim-controlled speakers' corners, to westboro baptist god hates you signs and screaming at people to kill themselves while in the same sentence mentioning the name of christ calling it street preaching and winning souls to satanic and luciferian temples that meet daily to read through the satanic bible and to legitimately practice witchcraft at their home to the exact same teachings That Paul warned the church of Galatia about when the Judaizers began to teach that believing in Jesus alone is not enough for salvation. That you also need to follow the law in order to be saved. All this to say, when you are knocking against the enemy's domain for the name of Christ, expect pushback and extreme spiritual attacks.

So, Let's shift. I want to tell you about what the Lord's doing. I want to start it by just giving you a brief visual of what brought me to this stage right now.

I was at the lowest point in my life, and I was chasing after all of those dark avenues that VRChat had to offer. Someone came to me in VRChat in my home world to tell me the gospel. And I gave my life to Christ in that space. And then I was discipled in VRChat as well. And it's been so exciting to see how God has been using that ever since. God has clearly called me to go back to my people, to tell them that I found the answer they're so desperately looking for.

That the answer is Jesus and it's only Jesus. First story I want to mention is of a young guy.

He's 18 and his name is John. John, just like me, was at the lowest point in his life. John was actively cutting himself. And he was beginning to struggle with homosexual thoughts. But there's something interesting about John. John lives in a country called Slovenia. And there are no evangelical churches in John's city or in any city near him. In fact, the closest church is four hours away from John, one way. One day, God brought John to me in virtual reality, in DR chat, where he heard the gospel. John gave his life to Christ. John has been so... absolutely growing in his faith ever since then. He's been consuming scripture since he came to Christ over two and a half years ago. He's been going to that church that takes him eight hours to get to every single Sunday. He has such a passion to tell people in his city about Christ and people in VR about Christ. And he's currently being discipled to start a small group in his city to be that community of believers around him. It is so encouraging to see his trajectory. I truly believe that he may be on the path to being the first pastor in his city one day. Another story. Also a young guy, 18. For his safety, we'll call him Jeremy. Jeremy was a part of some of the false teaching that goes around in this space. He was wrapped up into that.

God provided me an opportunity to speak into his life, to point him to Christ. You see, Jeremy, his only family is his mom.

And she's very abusive in all senses of the word. She has allowed a VR chap to be his parent. You know how some people sort of throw technology at a kid and throw him in the room?

This is the extreme of that.

God clearly called me to begin discipling Jeremy. And I later found out that Jeremy... out of 7.8 million visitors for vr chat lives less than 10 minutes from my house only god would set that up i was able to speak into jeremy's mom and i was able to bring jeremy my local church with me sunday unfortunately things escalated in his home This last Christmas, two or three months ago, I guess it's almost four months now. And his mother, there was a gun involved. And Jeremy legitimately needed to be saved, needed to be rescued from the state he was in. Jeremy is currently living with me. And it has been so exciting to see what God is doing in his life. From a kid that I met in VR, Jeremy now tells me regularly that it feels weird for him to feel safe. He's in an unusual environment where he's always had to worry about what he says, worry about how he responds, and now he's no longer in that environment. Jeremy led his first person to Christ about three months ago, as well as many other amazing things. Jeremy got his first job about a month ago. And within this month, he's already had five gospel opportunities at his workplace. Some people straight up walk up to Jeremy because you can see that something's different about him and ask him if he's a Christian. have deep questions to ask him after that jeremy has already decided to go to seminary after he finishes his bachelor's degree and do ministry and to know that god used virtual reality when it comes to jean in slovenia to make his name known to an unreached people group and when it comes to jeremy to saving kids life To bringing him to someone, to making him someone who proclaims Christ daily. That's a deep love for the Lord. I know that God used virtual reality to make that happen. It's pretty crazy.

But that's the kind of God we serve. I have a ton more stories.

But I think time-wise, I'm going to go ahead and just wrap it up there.

Good on time. We've got about 15 minutes before we need to join back with the main stage. So you've got time.

I think, I might be wrong, but I think Cheddar's mentioned that there's a 3.18 in two minutes from one of the sponsors, the Jesus Film Project.

Yeah, it's got bumped back. Okay.

Okay. I'll tell the story then. Okay. Keep me updated. I'm going to tell you another story then. So VRChat has thousands of communities. And not all of them are bad. Some of them are pretty chill. Some of them are a little geeky. One of those is the official Star Wars community of VRChat. There are sort of official members in this place. And one time I had a really, really amazing opportunity. I was in my home world in VRChat and I was telling someone the gospel. And in walked somebody that I've talked with before. It's the official Darth Vader of VRChat. Darth Vader has well over 10,000 hours in the space. And he's actually never spoken before in VR with his real voice. He uses the voice mod. Most people in this space, they spend thousands of dollars on their avatars so that they're movie realistic. And they just hang out. They act out scenes together of Star Wars. That's just what they like, what they form around. But in walked Darth Vader, and he sat down on the couch right next to us. And he listened. That conversation sort of ended and sort of ended up leaving and moved on with the day. Darth Vader didn't have a way to reach out to me. He didn't know my Discord. But he found someone who knew someone that knew someone a week later. And he reached out to me, and he said, we need to meet up.

I can't get out of my mind what I heard you talking about.

So we jumped on VRChat, went to my home world, shot him an invite.

And immediately when Darth Vader joined, it was his real voice for the first time. I told Darth Vader, The gospel. I learned Darth Vader is Matthew. He lives in Iowa. He really likes storm chasing. And there, Matthew heard about Jesus. And he committed his life to Christ. Soon after.

Within probably two or three weeks, Matthew began to bring friends. that needed to hear about this Jesus that changed him.

And his friends were saved too.

So, yeah, it's kind of a funny thing. Like, he turned from the dark side, I guess. But, yeah, it's just crazy what the Lord's doing. And now God has called me to join the Jesus Film Project. to lead them in what it looks like to effectively reach people in the bar. The person who led me to Christ, some of you may have heard his name. His name is Pastor Jason Poling. He is the first physical church that felt called to go into this virtual space called Cornerstone VR Church. And so for the last few years, I've actually been on staff with them. I've been their director of VR chat. figuring out what it looks like, what are all the angles, what are all the strategies to point people to Christ in this space. And I'm really excited now that God has called me to the Jesus Stone Project because in him calling me away from Cornerstone and all that was happening there and the many who came to know the Lord and the many strategies, the many, like bringing the first Bible into VR. So many different angles that the Lord used to know that he has now called me to this film project means that God has even a bigger plan for what he'll be doing in VR chat and in VR as a whole. So I want to mention one thing that the Lord is really pressing on my heart to mention.

If you feel called into VR, And someone comes to you.

And hears that you feel called into VR. And tries to sell you something. Whether it be world creation.

Whether it be coaching.

Know that you do not need that. All you need to do to begin ministering in this space. Is to go in. Listen. And pray. And God will provide those opportunities. as long as your heart is in the right spot. And I'm excited to hear about down the road, the stories that you'll have as well. So thank you guys.