Virtual Reality Church Planting - Stuart McPherson & VR Chap

Cultivate - Calvary Chapel Church Planting

There is a lot of ministry opportunities online, and the world of virtual reality is a virtual treasure trove of potential for preaching the gospel and reaching people for Christ.

Hello and welcome to the Cultivate church planting podcast! I’m your host Brian Kelly and in this episode, I have with me two great guests, who will share their story and experience with virtual reality ministry.

This episode is an interesting one, and I have to be honest with you, when I first heard about VR ministry, I was skeptical. Is there really a need for pastors and missionaries to don their Oculus headsets and venture into these online realms? Are there really people spending time in virtual worlds? Is it worth it for churches to invest time and resources to evangelize, and even church plant, in virtual reality?… what about regular reality?!

Well, what I discovered is that not only are there people online in these VR spaces, but there are dozens of Christian ministries who are seeing people come to Christ and discipled through online interaction. I was blown away to discover that there are over 171 million virtual reality users worldwide, and that virtual reality is a huge mission field for those brave enough to cross this threshold. This kind of ministry may not be for everybody, but I came away from our conversation with a renewed appreciation for evangelical pioneers in this new mission field.

I have two guests here with me for today’s episode. The first is Stuart McPherson who is the VR campus pastor at Lakeland community church in Lake Geneva Wisconsin. Stewart is also the host of the metaverse church podcast - I’ll put a link to his insightful content and conversations in the show notes. My second guest is a great brother in Christ who is attending our church here in Florida. Because of the nature of his work in VR and software security, he asked to remain unnamed, so we just call him “our friend” or “VR Chap” in the episode. This is a good one, and I hope you enjoy!

The Metaverse Church Podcast - https://www.youtube.com/@metaversechurchpodcast

Lakeland Church - https://lakeland.church/