Virtual Church and Digital Discipleship

Virtual Reality Church: Pitfalls and Possibilities, by Darrell Bock and Jonathan Armstrong, to be released March 2, 2021

Culture Making, by Andy Crouch.

Passion of the Christ, 2004 movie directed by Mel Gibson.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture, brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary.

Bill Hendricks:

Hi. I'm Bill Hendricks, executive director for Christian leadership at the Hendricks Center, and it's my privilege to welcome you to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. For about the last decade or so, a variety of experiments and innovations have been taking place around what might be called the online church, church service, and church-related activities taking place virtually. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, what had been a phenomenon on the fringes of the church suddenly became mainstream virtually overnight. What have Christians learned now that they have sort of been forced to be online?

Bill Hendricks:

To help us answer some of those questions, we've brought four thought leaders together who have quite a bit of experience in this area, Dr. John Dyer, dean of enrollment services and distance education at Dallas Theological Seminary, Dr. Jonathan Armstrong, professor of Bible and theology at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Leo Strong, who is director of VR [virtual reality] Mission, which specializes in virtual reality that's geared toward expanding Christ and his kingdom, and then Dr. Darrell Bock, no stranger to The Table Podcast as one of the founding hosts. He's my colleague at the Hendricks Center as executive director for cultural engagement, and gentlemen, I want to thank all of you for being with us today.

Darrell Bock:

Glad to be with you.

Leo Strong:

Thank you, Bill. It's good to be here.

Bill Hendricks:

Before we get into the guts of trying to disciple Christ followers online, let me ask you to speak into the question that I just raised. What have churches learned, if anything, about working with people virtually, particularly once the pandemic hit? What have you seen? What's working? What's not working?

Darrell Bock:

So who goes first?

Jonathan Armstrong:

I think we're learning a couple things. One of the first things that we're learning is that we can no longer avoid the issue of how churches convene. Can we convene online? What parts of churches can operate online? The question is now pretty unavoidable, and we're also learning that in-person communication is definitively different than online communication. Probably that's not going to change, even as online communication gets richer. There's something unique about in-person communication, and I think we're also learning as a community that prayer is rock and roll online. Prayer converts really well to online media.

Bill Hendricks:

Excellent. Jon, you're certainly a long-time student of this whole technology experience. What have you noticed? What trends are you seeing?

John Dyer:

Yeah. I think we're seeing that there's a greater fluidity between moving online and offline and that we've always kind of been doing this to some extent. So we maybe come to a physical gathering on Sunday, but all throughout the week we're now emailing, we're calling, we might be doing chats, those kinds of things, and just those two 90-minute things right on the end. Those are those in-person ones, and when those went away, I think we also saw more opportunities throughout the week to connect. So I think, when we come out, churches will think of themselves as a little bit more hybrid, that in person is a vital, absolutely important part of what we do, but there may be a variety of different kinds of in-person things.

John Dyer:

So the thousand-person thing may not happen as often or in as big of numbers. I think some of the churches that maybe had … Maybe they were 85 percent in person and 15 percent online. They're flipped right now, and I don't think they're going to flip right back. It's going to take a long time, and there may be some equilibrium happening. But I think that taking advantage of that will be the big thing, figuring out how do we do a mix of these. So you see terms like hybrid church term thrown out there to kind of describe this new world. So it's not online versus offline. It's this sort of mixture of different technologies and communication methods.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah. I'd say the same thing. Our numbers at the church that I'm at are, for every person who's in the room right now, there are two online, and so you've got that. I think the other challenge is that churches are discovering that it isn't effective to be online simply to record what's happening in the room, that the media is sufficiently different, that in order to have an effective experience with the person who's online, you've. You've got to have a different kind of experience that feeds into the medium that you're using, and. And so that, I think, is a challenge for churches, not simply to just reproduce what they've been doing and just send that online livestream, but to think through how do we customize what we do so that the goal that we have in taking people's time is utilized well. So I think that's another challenge that churches face on the other end when we get back to what will be the new normal, as opposed to the way things were.

Leo Strong:

[crosstalk 00:05:14]-

Bill Hendricks:

You reminded me that, a year or so ago at the seminary, we had one of our most distinguished graduates, Sandy Stanley, spend an evening with the faculty, and after dinner we were able to ask him questions, and people asked him about what they had already at that point been trying to do online. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he said that they had, through various analytics and tracking that they had done, that they discovered that, on any given weekend, upwards to 20,000 people were dialing in tointo the worship service virtually in addition to whoever was there in the auditorium, the big room.

Bill Hendricks:

He made the point that, for many of the parishioners there, they've discovered that unless you need to drop your child off for the one of the children's or youth ministries or you have a meeting that requires being at the church for some reason, that for literally thousands of people there was no sort of physical need for them necessarily to be in person on campus, and that was long before COVID ever hit, and I'm sure many large churches, mega churches, had experienced that same dynamic.

Darrell Bock:

That's correct. Yeah. I think that's an interesting observation, and of course I think what COVID has done is to prove and deliver that back in spades. I want to make an observation, people who are watching on the screen and see a non-animated figure at the bottom, that this is a real person who's behind this.

Leo Strong:

Yes indeed.

Darrell Bock:

Leo Strong, and Leo, why don't you tell them a little bit about what you do so they can understand why you are presenting yourself in such a wonderful fashion?

Leo Strong:

I'd love to. I'd love to. Thank you, Dr. Bock. Yeah. Well, I wanted to hop in really quickly and just add in to what you were saying, Dr. Bock, about … There'sthere's a phrase that's kind of stuck with me, being in leadership in tech with kingdom work, and it's that "the medium has a message.." I think that we've discussed how different forms of digital medium, media essentially, have different messages to them, different capabilities that are lent toward different outcomes.

Leo Strong:

So I think what's exciting for me working in VR is that it's a different type of medium and it lends itself to different types of things, and as churches are sort of being pushed into the online and digital worlds, they're finding that there are these differences and these tools that could be used for different things like worship and prayer and discipleship and meeting, delivering of content, things like that. So that's one thing that I've seen be a change is that people are sort of becoming aware of more now, that that's technology that's already existed.

Leo Strong:

Then also, I guess, to speak to the nature of my presence on this call being a little bit more two dimensional, that the whole idea of in-person, public gathering for church is sort of an idea that's privileged to the West and not to different geographies that I'm currently working in, and so the church at large, the big-C church, doesn't have the availability in certain geographies to be meeting in person and to be having public worship.

Darrell Bock:

And survive.

Leo Strong:

And to be able to do that and survive, essentially, and so partly why my work in those places leads to sort of, I guess, my covert appearance here on The Table and just the candor that I need to have with keeping identity in the work that I do somewhat private, but. But also that that's true of a lot of users in VR who want to have conversations, gospel-centric conversations, in these platforms, that even publicly on Zoom and in virtual reality, your public identity somewhat is at stake, and. And so the ability to be able to sort of remotely log in … and I know I have communities of friends and of missionaries and of locals in sort of international locations who log in tointo my hometown's church livestream, and they're a part of Western American church group, broadcast all of their sermons online.

Leo Strong:

So for a lot of people around the world, it is the only way, and this isn't news to them. Having to move online, they've just found the churches that have sort of done it ahead of time, and I think that speaks to what you and Bill were saying about the growth that we've seen in that digital community, because a lot of that growth with the leaders that I've spoken to is sort of outside of the region that they're a part of. So it's not their congregants transitioning back into their homes on Sunday morning and just livestreaming with a cup of coffee with the kids around the table. They're still in attendance. The 20,000 we're talking about are in South America, are in Eastern Asia, are in the Middle East, and they're logging in because of the availability of that media. So I think that's what I have to speak to, and I'll sort of leave it at that.

Bill Hendricks:

It's fascinating. So the internet and the virtual technology truly … Talktalk about globalization. It has opened up the space to anybody who can dial–in anywhere.

Leo Strong:

Yeah. Definitely, and I mean, part of the opportunity that me as a digital native … I don't know if you can tell by the facial hair and avatar structure there, but definitely millennial generation, young entrepreneur…, [crosstalk 00:11:10].

Bill Hendricks:

Yeah. You look digital through and through to me.

Leo Strong:

Yeah. Right? What I realize is that there's a really unique opportunity with the adoption of these new technologies and the way that the world is going and a lot of the younger generations being native to those platforms. So there's sort of that opportunity, but then there's also the opportunity where, because of the remote connectability, because of then the availability of being able to share digital content and even have, in my case, social interaction at a very presence-based, more personal level in virtual reality, all accompanied by sort of this pseudo-anonymity, this semi-anonymity that's allowed and afforded to me being able to put a digital placard in front of my face and keep my identity private, put an avatar around my identity, put sort of a … wWe have a lot of people who log in who do work in this industry for the kingdom, have a completely separate avatar, almost gamer-tag type name. So they're identified with, but their public identity in places like the Middle East wouldn't be compromised for that reason. So it now sort of affords a little bit more attendance and participation to those people.

Bill Hendricks:

This is a great point in our conversation to kind of go ahead and talk about a theological, 2,000-lb elephant that has been pushed to the fore by this whole thing, and it's in large measure … At, at least as I observe, it's a generational thing. It's really an issue of ecclesiology, and of course everybody jumps to Hebrews 10, and the writer sayssays, "Let's consider how to encourage one another and love and good deed, and then not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another," and so that kind of presses this question. Clearly the writer could not have envisioned the online virtual technologies that we have today, even things like the telephone or whatever, but they raise the question "How much of what we call church'church' in a sense requires physical presence?" and if none is required, then the question is "What's the rationale to continue meeting in person?" Surely a group of theologians will have [crosstalk 00:13:42].fun with that.

Leo Strong:

I'll defer.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah. Let me start off by giving the flip side, which is "Where two or three are gathered in my presence, there I am in the midst,";" or, Paul writing to a church far distant to where he is physically, speaking about the presencebeing present spiritually with them even though he's physically absent with them. To what extent is that a "gathering?"? To what extent is that a "meeting?"? Then you layer on top of it the technology, which allows us, at least four out of five of us, to see our faces, with the fifth one being a human being behind an animation, if you will. Are we "gathered" or not? I mean, that's the sub-question that's underneath, and what are the benefits and limitations of that particular way of meeting together and being side–by–side? That ultimately is the theological question.

Darrell Bock:

I think what technology has done is it pushes the borders of what we thought previously had been possible, and. And we've gone through this iteration every time a new level of technology has been introduced, whether we think about radio or television or a digital recording and now livestream and then virtual, and then who knows what's coming next with AI, [artificial intelligence], et cetera? We go through this every step of the way, and the church has to think through and wrestle with what these new media mean for us. So that's my response – is that God is in every space, and God is with us no matter where we are. We're connected to him, whatever's happening. My joke about this COVID era has been "God's been Zooming for a long time," and so in that sense, we're always engaged with him and he's always engaged with us.

Jonathan Armstrong:

I so appreciate working with Dr. Bock in this book project that we just completed together, Virtual Reality Church: Pitfalls and Possibilities, and admire deeply Dr. Bock's willingness to go deep into this rabbit hole and explore this whole topic, something I could find very few collaborators who were willing to do it. So I really appreciate that, and I think that basic posture has to be right. We have to try. We have to experiment. We have to enter into that conversation and just see what is actually effective and what really works. One of the very interesting things taking place is our culture is becoming generally aware of virtual reality, but still many of us have not tested it.

Jonathan Armstrong:

So theoretically when we think about virtual reality …– "Oh, it sounds like a perfect way to meet online." The reality of virtual reality is quite different than what it theoretically could be. The reality of virtual reality is usually frustrating. Most of our interactions with technology can be frustrating from time to time, and VR, like any other human technology, is deeply flawed, very imperfect, and will service only for some purposes well. But I think entering into that and testing it is right, and I think that churches will discover certain types of meetings that may work equivalently as well or better in VR butVR but will still have parts of our community function that really ought to be conducted in–person, and I think we'll feel those differences out.

John Dyer:

Yeah. Having read y'all's book, I really appreciate it and I can't wait for it to come out. I mean, it really does some great technology work in general, some theological work, and some real specific work on the VR space. But Bill, to go back to your general question of "Can you do church online? How much of it needs to be physical?" I don't know if I can answer that in a really quick way, but I think some of the ways that I've enjoyed the ways the questions have changed over time is that it used to sort of be asked of "Is this real?" or "Is online community real community?" and I think maybe the pandemic's helped us do away with that question, because I think we know that what we're doing right now is in some sense real.

John Dyer:

I think another one that I like to get rid of is we sometimes say that online is just disembodied, and the reality is that all of us are embodied right now where we're sitting. We're in chairs. Those of you who are listening, you're in a car or you're running or you're doing something. You're embodied, but all of us are embodied in slightly different ways, and these technologies are mediating them, in the language that Leo used, and. And I think we want to be attentive to that and not just use easy terms like "real" or "unreal, ," "embodied" or "disembodied,," but to be thinking through "What is this doing to us?"

John Dyer:

Then on the theological side, I like that Darrell kind of went back and used these passages about Paul and Jesus, and I think one of the other categories that's been around for a long time is that when Paul uses that term "church,," sometimes he uses it for a local gathering. He'll, he'll say the church in a house or the church in a region, and other times it seems like it's everybody, all Christians, and. And so one of those clever ways of saying it might be that a local church is when people choose to gather in some physical space, and the universal church is everybody whom God has gathered in some way, and so that's all of us, and what I like to think of is that the local church is that embodied thing in a close place, but the universal church is often brought together by technology.

John Dyer:

So Paul often talks about how his letters worked with the Corinthians, and sometimes it made them mad, and sometimes it made them happy, and at the end of John's letters he'll saysay, "There's things I want to do with you face–to–face and other things that I felt like were important to write down." So they're beginning to think through these different media and thinking, "How can each of these local churches use technology to sort of bring the body of Christ or the universal church together?" So I think we want to be thinking about those and thinking through where are those pros and cons, and then I think also we probably want to avoid thinking purely in terms of exceptions. I think we want to be aware of those things but, then not maybe make those be universal for everything. So we can think through, "What do I have available to me, and what has God called me to do in the place where I am?"

Bill Hendricks:

I certainly want to keep [crosstalk 00:19:45]-….

Darrell Bock:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:19:45], John. I'm just curious. What are those exceptions? What do you have in mind when you say that?

John Dyer:

Well, I think this would be a great time to turn it over to Leo just because I think he's working in places of security and health where someone may not actually be able to do some of the other choices that we have. So when someone has kind of the full range of options, that's sort of different than if somebody may not be able to go somewhere for a particular reason, and. And I think we're all experiencing one gigantic exception this year right now, and I think that's driving a lot of our thought in a good way.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah.

Leo Strong:

Yeah. Bill, did you have anything that you wanted to tag in on just there?

Bill Hendricks:

Well, I wanted to make sure that we stayed with the topic of online church, but I would make an observation that I think is germane to this part of the conversation. It seems to me there's two huge tools that the church has that the pandemic has somewhat neutered. One is hospitality, and the other is the power of presence, and. And when you talked aboutabout, we're embodied creatures, I think what I'm hearing here is what we've learned is that virtual church … It's, it's okay., Jesus is there. We, we can worship together., God can work through that. Okay. That's permissible and in some cases maybe even preferable and necessary, but that doesn't mean that the pendulum swings the other way and says, "Oh, well, in that case, we don't ever really need to go back to a physical gathering with other believers," as is the habit of some. No. There's something about the power of presence.

Bill Hendricks:

Darrell, Jonathan, John, the four of us … Leo, I'm not aware of your situation, but we're all part of academic institutions, and we've seen the difference between and online experience of teaching and that residential program, and they're different. They're definitely different, and that residential, in-person touch with another person, a teacher, a student … There's, there's something about that that is truly irreplaceable, not withstanding the realities that many Christians … Theythey simply can't for their own safety, gather. That, we understand, and we have ways to work around that, but then that doesn't swing that pendulum the other direction.

Leo Strong:

Yeah. Right. No. I completely and wholeheartedly agree. I love that we can explore. I mean, to Jonathan's point, I think, by nature I'm an explorer and a little bit of a challenger, and what I've realized is the opportunity in the technology that's been sort of presented to me and the way that it's been presented and sort of the cross culturalcross-cultural understanding that I have of the big-C church and my travels and sort of missionary background in certain parts of the world, but yeah. I completely agree that it is not necessary. There are certain use cases that deem it somewhat more necessary for really certain expressions, and I think one of the …

Leo Strong:

I'll note this quickly. When I'm in the conversation with that believer abroad and I'm asking how theological or how sound is the expression of discipleship as it pertains to really being allowed in the church or involved in the church, and this believer says, "Well, what do you mean, allowed in the church? In what? Where? At what time? What church are you talking about? Oh, the Sunday morning church. The big building church. Oh, okay. Well, that helps me understand," and there's almost this immediate distinction that has to be made for them, because so many places in the world … That's, that's just not a reality in the way that they even conceptualize church.

Leo Strong:

So when they think of gathering in VR, and it's funny that you used the word presence and the sense of presence. It's actually somewhat of an industry term that we use, that we want to maintain in virtual reality a sense of embodied, almost augmented, embodied presence that you have with another character, with another person in that space, that. That really, it's an intermediate step between the fully 2D., like I don't have much sense of presence here with you, especially with my photo in front of me, where I'd love you to be able to see my body language and things like that. In VR it actually takes it a step beyond a two-dimensional video feed, and you have a body. You have hands. You have gestures. You can have an even haptic, physical interaction with other characters but definitely have the immersive sense of presence which lends itself to the significance. Whether, whether it's theological, whether it's sensory, or whether it's psychological, that presence is significant to that moment in whatever ways.

Leo Strong:

So I've seen that sort of retained throughout the VR conversation and that, yeah, I think one of the things that I recognize as …, I guess I don't know that I could really consider myself a pioneer in the truest sense, but we do see that … The, the commission that I've felt called to is take the gospel to the ends of the Earth, and. And that is done by way of forbearing and developing of relationship with presence, but also finding where the lost are and going to them, and. And I just see that as the rest of the globe, yes, albeit a slow adoption, but an adoption nonetheless, adopt sort of VR and the social VR gathering, and now with some of the biggest organizations involved being Facebook and Oculus bringing the current global network of Facebook into that space so seamlessly with their Oculus Connect and with the new hardware, it really opens a big door for accessibility like never before to where those communities are growing rapidly actually in virtual reality metaverses.

Leo Strong:

So going to those places and not having it be a substitute for me walking down the road to my in-person gathering on Sunday morning and saying, "Yeah. That's outdated. We're not going to do that anymore. I'll stay in my living room and wave," but actually saying, "No. We do realize there are certain use cases where it doesn't quite apply and the true heart of in-person gathering remains," but for those use cases where that's impossible and for the use case where it can actually be just a tool for outreach and to be able to find those people wandering, and. And I've had countless interactions with French people, Danish people, Muslim people, Australians, all that I walk up to and meet as I would on the street, in a virtual metaverse, and develop a conversation. So it's a street evangelism in a meta sense, as it were. So, it's where people are gathering.

Darrell Bock:

Meta evangelism.

Leo Strong:

That's right. That's right. So I think, yeah, again, it lends itself to particular things well and to other things not so well, and I'm excited to be able to explore what those things are and have that inform the work that I do.

Darrell Bock:

You know, one of the things that I've experienced during this COVID period is that I've probably taught on multiple continents through Zoom in ways in which my initial remark when I greet people is, "Well, it's so nice to be with you, and I haven't had to go through many red lights or fly over any oceans to get here," and." And my wife … Her, her reaction is, "Think about some of these schools that are in third-world countries for whom funds are limited." They don't have to pay for my coming and teaching in those classrooms. The amount of expense that they've had to go through since they're already technologically set up to take the class is minimal.

Darrell Bock:

So again, what you're getting is the strengths and weaknesses of various media which allow you to do certain things in ways that can enhance the experience at one level, and even though it's not the same as my being in the room with those students …. In January and February, I'm going to be teaching students in Sri Lanka, three hours a day from Dallas, helping them wrestle with the use of the Old Testament and the New and thinking through those issues, and in the midst of doing that, I'll be doing something that would have been hard to conceive of my being able to do 10 years ago without a whole lot of logistical detail having to be expended in order to make it happen.

Jonathan Armstrong:

That's one of the things that I most appreciate working with you, Dr. Bock, as a collaborator on this book project is your persistence in looking at, "Okay. This is a knife that cuts both directions," and early on in our project you mentioned during our conversations the Andy Crouch book "Culture Making" and Crouch's central question there in his 2007 book, "What does this new cultural form make possible? What does it make impossible?" We experience the losses in some of the things we miss in the way we used to do church. We also see some of the new doors opening up, and our first instinct is to say, "Okay. Is this good? Or is this bad?" No. It's just different. We're going to have to continue to be learners in this new environment and put new pieces together.

Darrell Bock:

You're wrestling and discovering what you can and can't do, what is and isn't effective, et cetera. I mean, it's like the opening illustration I talked about where churches are learning. It's probably not the most effective way to just simply reproduce the nine-to-five service and try and do the same thing. We had the same lesson in the Center. We have a thing we call leaderboard. First time we did it, we tried to exactly replicate what would happen in a room at breakfast over a multi-hour period. It took one time to figure out, "Well, that's not going to work." That, and no one's hanging around for that amount of time, and we had to make the adjustment immediately into what's going on to think about what's the more effective way to achieve the same kind of goal but now in line with the medium that we're trying to use, and. And I think that's where the challenges, at least some of the challenges, in this area lie for us is thinking through what the balance is between what this medium can do and what it should do and what's possible for doing and putting all that together and figuring that out.

Jonathan Armstrong:

So if I can throw a question back to you, Dr. Bock, I'm super–interested. So we're not going to figure out a single, one-size-fits-all, "Here's how to do church in the virtual world," evenand even if we did, it would change by the time we got the book published. Okay. So how do we remain supple, learning communities that can keep making progress in these innovations?

Darrell Bock:

You have to remain supple. I mean, that's the simple answer. It's like what I say about the Great Commandment. The Great Commandment is great because it's great. Okay. You have to be supple. You have to keep an open mind. You have to be willing to learn throughout the experiences that you're having. You have to wrestle with and be self critical about what is working and what isn't and be discerning in the midst of that. You have to be aware of what the impact is of what you're doing, things that you may or may not have thought about. What people don't know is that the four of us, besides Bill, are on and off in a discussion group that discusses these things on a regular basis. In the last meeting that we had, we were talking about the impact on the brain of spending long times in virtual reality.

Darrell Bock:

Now, that's something a pastor's not going to be thinking about, but it certainly is something that people who use the medium and people who are thinking about the impact of the medium need to spend some time wrestling with, and. And so again, you're dealing with a strength that also produces a weakness simultaneously. That's not usual either, that sometimes you're dealing in a situation which is dealing you two cards at once, one of which you like and one of which …"eh," and so you have to make the adjustments accordingly. That's the challenge of the area, and we're so new into it, and it's so constantly changing all the time in what it's capable of, that to simply fossilize where you are is not going to be the way to cope with what's going on.

Bill Hendricks:

I love that word, supple. It describes people that are open to the new, and that, to me, raises a question to ask you guys. What are some of the more innovative and experimental things that you're seeing taking place among Christians? I mean, we're all familiar with people trying to reproduce their Sunday morning service, but I'm curious. Way beyond that, surely there's … I mean, I'm thinking about what Leo's doing in virtual reality there. You must be aware of Christians that are being very, very creative with these new technologies. What are you seeing?

Leo Strong:

Yeah. Certainly. Certainly am, and that's actually one of the most incredible parts of the work that I'm doing is being able to network and being able to speak into those real and effective and current businesses. We've been seeing language education being done in VR. We've been seeing discipleship, and sort of in a metaversed-type sense where there are these metaverses that are public to any user, where you can come in and you can generate your own private space. VR is actually pretty hyper–encrypted to be able to be monitored by something like a government or other things like that, so there's a level of safety and privacy that comes with that. So those spaces are being utilized in that way.

Leo Strong:

I think you had already mentioned sort of the traditional church sermon gathering. Ways that I've seen that somewhat modified and augmented for the virtual world is you have the ability in VR to digitally create and develop on the back–end and render any visualization and any world that you like. So with that in mind, there are companies that are already moving toward augmented storylines that follow along biblical text and give augmented or first-person virtual reality experiences of biblical text and stories.

Leo Strong:

So one of the biggest ways that I've seen it being used is for narrative strictly, to be able to bring narrative into VR and have a first-person, immersive experience of that. We've seen it done with 360 video experiences where you play somewhat of a passive participant in the actual life of Jesus in sort of a "Passion of the Christ–"-type production. We've seen it done where kids in hospital beds are being brought VR headsets, and they're able to explore mystical lands and have conversations with sort of mentors of theirs without having to leave their bed because of their inability to, and they can run around, quite literally, in VR from that place, and so that's a relationship that's being developed.

Leo Strong:

We've seen it being used for educating, training of missionaries who are going to go abroad into the field and somewhat forecast with 360 video and virtual rendering what that's going to look like for them, what types of challenges they're going to experience, the type of the place that they're going to, to not only sort of drive the buy-in of that individual, but also supplement the training that comes along stateside with that sort of thing before their deployment. So the list continues to go on and on, and that's just the list of sort of the missional applications.

Leo Strong:

There are so many social applications of VR that are being developed, whether it be gaming or entertainment or whatever else, that we see through all of it our presence, because it's a social application, is powerful, and in my mind it's my calling. It's necessary for our generation to be on the front side of the wave, to be able to ride with those in a part of the technological wave of virtual reality and be in that space with them, be familiar with that language, with the different pieces of content, but then also, again, have local-to-the-platform applications, virtual worlds, and business models that are gospel-centric in nature that we can resource them with, and so yeah. The list goes on, as I said, and I could-

Bill Hendricks:

So John, do you think the seminary's about ready to bring on a master of artsMaster of Arts in digital gaming?

John Dyer:

Yeah. We do have a few classes, but maybe not a full-on degree yet. We're still working on that one. I love all those examples that Leo gave. There's just so many wonderful opportunities to reach new people, to reach new people in new ways, and I think usually at this point this is that one where you also have the negative side of things. We can kind of go down a list of bad uses of VR, and so I think the kind of conclusion that a lot of audiences get to is that there's good uses and bad uses, and so then the technology itself is just neutral.

John Dyer:

So usually what I feel like is helpful for us to kind of get to is to kind of talk about technology as not being neutral at all, but of being something good theologically that God has made us to make things from what he's made. That's part of God's original command in the garden, and Adam creates language, and then he creates clothing, and God shows him how to make clothing better, all throughout the biblical story. We could go through Noah and the Tower of Babel and Jesus being a Tektōn and all that stuff. We get to the end of the story and see that there's a city full of roads and trumpets and banners, all that stuff.

John Dyer:

So that's good, but then it's never ever neutral in any way, so that there's always some shaping power in our relationships and our communication and our body. When we use a shovel, we get blisters on our hands, all these things, and so as we talk about it, we can talk about the good uses and the bad uses we want to avoid and the good uses we want to do, but you also want to think about "What does the system value, and how does that play out in particular ways?" and then also to recognize that some of this we could talk about here in a kind of conversation.

John Dyer:

But like I think Jonathan's pointed out, to some degree you have to learn it. You have to actually experiment with it to know some of these things. So it's kind of like if all of us were to say, "What does a tuba sound like?" We could talk about it, but you kind of have to experience it. It's a tacet knowledge that you have to be in there to do, and. And so as we talk about VR, we could maybe say some things, like it kind of values taking over all of your senses. It's not just one. It's not just flat here.

John Dyer:

So one of the cool things that does is in a church setting, it allows a certain kind of presence that you can't get on Zoom or you can't get on Facebook, because afterward you can go off and have a side one-on-one conversation because of the way that the spatial reality in VR works. At the same time, that full takeover means that the person who's most physically proximate to you can't experience it in the same way that when you're sharing a phone that that happens, and it kind of can privatize and it can anonymize, like Leo said earlier, that that's a really … Thatthat anonymousness is something very powerful for security, and some of it can also be negative.

John Dyer:

So I think that one of the ways I'd want to do is just immediately assume that technology itself is a good gift from God, but that it's never neutral. Then we start working through these different things that it values and kind of work out how those might go in positive and negative directions, and. And I think Leo and Jonathan and Darrell have kind of talked about some of these, but it's really exciting to see what some of these ministries are doing at the same time.

Darrell Bock:

I think the possibility for Bible study also is pretty interesting. You know, it's said that if you hear something, that's one thing. If you read it or experience it, that's another thing. What VR allows you to do … The, the image I like to use is I would love to recreate being on a ship in Acts 27 with Paul as he's moving from Israel making his journey on the way to Rome, and. And what VR can do is give you a feel of what that experience could have been like, what it sounded like, what it looked like, the fear that it generated to be on that boat, et cetera, in an immersive … Thethe awful word that you use with VR is it's an immersive experience. They're not talking about baptism. They're talking about something else.

Darrell Bock:

So it's the “surroundedness” of what that experience is and the “virtualness” of what that experience is. I often use the example … The, the place where I saw VR that impacted me and told me, "Whoa. This could be interesting," is I went into a program that recreated an opera that allowed me to be on the stage with the actors, and. And I thought to myself "I've never heard the music with this kind of proximity before. I've never been able to see the expressions of the actors in the way that I can see it in this kind of a context," and all of a sudden it opened up to me the way you could think about presenting the text of scripture as an experience, that the telling of a story or the reading of a story or even the showing of a movie wouldn't recreate.

Darrell Bock:

There's an intensity about that, that is, as John has mentioned, both a strength and a weakness, because the strength of the experience is also related to the accuracy of the portrayal and all the choices that have to be made to reproduce that experience, et cetera, with the appropriate background and understanding of what that would take, and. And that's just one sample of the kind of thing that you're talking about, but that touches directly on our experience with the Bible and the potential that exists there.

Bill Hendricks:

Well, that…–

Jonathan Armstrong:

Bill, can I-

Bill Hendricks:

…does raise the question. A person can have an intense experience, and then the question is "Does that change them? Does that transform them in a spiritual way?" Are they going to live a more renewed life, a more Christ-like life as a result of that experience?” We certainly know people that have gone to worship concerts and other intense forms of experience and then pretty much live the same way that everybody else is living, and you wonder. , "Has the Holy Spirit really effected any change here? Or did they just feel an intensity??"

Darrell Bock:

Another person has the same experience at the same concert-

Bill Hendricks:

There you go. Exactly.

Darrell Bock:

… and ends up being totally changed.

Bill Hendricks:

Yes. I [crosstalk 00:42:45].

Darrell Bock:

So again, that's the challenge. That's the challenge of it. What you're doing is you're creating an opportunity, and the opportunity is an opportunity to step towards God or just have another experience, and. And so what you do with it … That's, that's a whole other layer of the conversation.

Jonathan Armstrong:

Bill, can I comment on here?

Bill Hendricks:

Yep.

Jonathan Armstrong:

So you're absolutely right. VR as a medium has higher resolution and allows surround experiences, and that by itself doesn't create spiritual transformation. It doesn't matter if we're looking at a 4K screen or any K screen. That doesn't create spiritual transformation. I think the unique opportunity with VR is the social context that it can facilitate, and then we start to get closer to what could be spiritually transformational.

Jonathan Armstrong:

Can I give a quick top-five list on if I were speaking to a pastor and we had already established this principle that the medium allows certain things, doesn't allow certain things? I'd say "Hey. Try five things at your church." One is try prayer networks. A sociologist of religion tipped me off that, in VR, participation is to be. So to exist in VR is to participate. It's king, and that fully translates to the experience of community prayer. Get people praying together and get them experiencing this communal dialogue with God together. The cool thing about VR prayer too is it doesn't matter if your internet cuts out. You can still speak with God.

Jonathan Armstrong:

Two, I would say one of the most interesting phenomenon that I'm interested in for teaching purposes is the idea of community theater. So you can gather in VR people to act out a Bible story together, and that starts to really get to become a very cool experience, because people are actually living the story in some way, and they literally live it together, and that creates a social dynamic and possibility for exchange that I think could be very fruitful in the future. Try preaching your sermon and act out a Bible story together.

Jonathan Armstrong:

Three, developmental relationships work really well in VR. So that's coaching. That's meeting with somebody, like for a mentorship appointment on a Friday afternoon routinely. Those are surprisingly … They, they translate surprisingly well to VR or online communication like we're doing.

Jonathan Armstrong:

Four, try leaning into volunteer networks with VR. VR allows very complex communication, and a lot of the type of work that our institutions do is too technical or too complicated to decentralize. That's why we've had office buildings and so on. VR starts to allow such complicated communication that you can decentralize many workflows and seed them out into volunteer networks. So I anticipate lots of stuff could happen in volunteer networks in the next decade or two.

Bill Hendricks:

Real quick on number five. Go for it.

Jonathan Armstrong:

Fifthly … Sorry. VR tours. Go on a tour of a real geographical space in VR.

Bill Hendricks:

Love it. Love it. Very practical, and a great way to finish up our time here. Prayer, theater, coaching, mentoring, volunteer networks, and tours. That's outstanding. Thank you.

Bill Hendricks:

I want to thank all of you gentlemen for being with us today, and I want to thank you for joining us on this issue of The Table Podcast. If you've enjoyed this session, be sure and subscribe to the podcast on your platform, and that way you'll know about the other episodes that are coming up. For The Table Podcast, I'm Bill Hendricks. Have a great day.

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Speaker 1:

Dallas Theological Seminary. Teach truth. Love well.