Digital evangelism: Can Christianity spread faster in virtual reality?
Cybersecarmor.com – The hub of the spaceship was too crowded and chaotic for communication, so Frank Kuligowski motioned his pal to the peace of a nearby corridor. In the distance, the two ― both staffers of nondenominational Christian organization Cru ― spied a female avatar standing alone in the virtual hallway and decided to strike up a chat.
In real life, the three were wearing headsets in separate geographic locations around the world. But here in this 3-D spacecraft created on the virtual-reality platform VRChat , they were soon engaged in conversation.
When Kuligowski, of Orlando , Florida, found a chance to mention his Christian faith, the woman, who lived in East Asia, said churches were hard to find there. “There’s churches here in VRChat,” Kuligowski told her. “I can take you to one.”
Welcome to virtual-reality ministry, where street evangelism and fellowship building merge in digital form. While VR worlds created to mimic Christian churches have occupied such landscapes for some time , organizations like Cru, missionary groups and a handful of faith leaders nationwide believe the virtual territory beyond those walls can provide fertile ground for spreading Christian gospel worldwide.
“Few churches are doing this kind of activity,” Kuligowski said. “This space is new frontier.”
Kuligowski, Cru’s digital strategist, has been with the group for 26 years, many of them spent conducting face-to-face outreach. The Florida-based organization launched in 1951 as Campus Crusade for Christ and is active in 190 countries.
Virtual reality, Kuligowski said, gives him and his fellow evangelists the ability to connect with people they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. While Cru ambassadors have historically approached students on campuses or asked them to join local clubs, many people are less accessible now, he said.
“There’s a lot of brokenness and pain that people experience and it’s harder for them to connect face to face,” Kuligowski said. “But behind the anonymity of an avatar ― it could be a dragon, or a knight, or a cucumber ― we’ve found that as we engage people, they start opening up and asking hard questions.”
It was around summer 2022 that Kuligowski was watching a webinar when a featured pastor spoke about the connections he’d made in virtual reality. At the time, Kuligowski had barely explored the technology.
“I’d maybe put a headset on at the mall for a minute,” he said. “But I was really inspired and curious.”
He splurged on a headset at Best Buy; his teenage son helped set it up. Along with other Cru staff who were into online gaming, he started entering VR worlds to strike up conversations. The group has visited the platform weekly ever since, sometimes during lunch hours or evenings after work.
There are thousands of VR worlds in the metaverse, on platforms such as VRChat and Roblox . While they can be accessed via computer or mobile devices, they’re most fully experienced with special headsets.
“When you go into VR, you enter a world somebody has created,” said Geoffery Powell, a 28-year-old computer science worker in Eureka, Illinois, a non-Cru employee who joined Kuligowski's group soon after it formed. “They had an idea and built it out in 3-D.”
Such worlds can be reality-based or something fantastical, or somewhere in the middle. Participants entering VR worlds do so as avatars, characters rooted in cartoons, popular media, anime or identities that express their interests or how they want to be perceived.
“You could be talking to Donald Duck or some anime character, but behind it is a real person who probably got on VR to talk,” Powell said.
Powell had the technical skills to craft his own avatar, a red-haired androgynous character sporting religious-themed T-shirts. He believes many participants enter VRChat seeking escape from life stresses or complications, or because they have social anxiety.
The anonymity of avatars allows people to make connections and express themselves freely and without anxiety, he said.
“It’s a good environment for finding people who want to be real with you in a way they wouldn’t be if you were really there,” Powell said. “They feel safe saying what’s on their mind, because they might never meet you again.”
It’s those people that VR missionaries try to reach, and Powell has connected with people from all over the world – from Asia, the Middle East and northern Europe.
What virtual reality offers beyond simple messaging services is a sense of presence, Powell said.
“Even though you’re behind this anonymous, cartoony avatar, you can see people’s body language; they move and talk and express like a person. That builds a closer connection.”
The outreach conducted by Kuligowski’s group is an informal and part-time enterprise, in contrast to a newer, more official effort spearheaded by Cru’s Jesus Film Project sub-ministry, which offers an online toolkit for churches looking to pursue such activities.
Before they begin, Kuligowski, whose avatar is Junpei Iori ― a ballcap-wearing teenage warrior character from the role-playing videogame Persona 3 ― meets virtually with his team in a preselected VR world. The members ― Powell in Illinois, with others in Florida, Mississippi and North Carolina ― pray together before splitting into small groups and embarking on their missions in whatever worlds they choose.
The evangelists’ approaches vary. They read the room. Sometimes they’re direct, bringing up faith discussion right away. But mostly, Powell said, they play the long game, looking to make connections before they ever transition to their gospel message, if at all.
“We try to get to know them first,” Powell said. “We’re not just there to push a message on them and leave. We want to be their friend. Maybe things at work or at home are hard and they can’t find hope, so we share, like ‘This is the hope I have, and it’s how you can have hope, too.’”
Sometimes, Kuligowski said, it’s as simple as asking someone “How are you?” and listening to the tone of their reply. Curiosity and compassion can provide more hints, as can a person’s avatar or chosen name.
“I’ve found that just entering with empathy and paying attention is a huge ministry in and of itself,” Kuligowski said.
Occasionally, digital evangelists encounter resistance from others who find it off-putting and don’t react kindly.
“I have always believed it’s appropriate to be obnoxious to people who invade your space with the intent to harass you,” said a user on video game discussion forum ResetEra in a thread about the topic.
“I’ve had a few approach me and had a very long meaning conversation with one, in Furry Hideout of all places,” said a Facebook user in the United Kingdom, citing a popular VRChat hangout . “I’m an atheist, not the shut in wierd (sic) variety. So I had a lot of questions for him, especially him being an american Christian as the church has been dying a slow death for some time now here in Scotland.”
On Reddit , a similar discussion took place under the heading “Anyone else noticing an influx of Christians.”
The person who posted the thread wrote: “i’ve been on this game for 5 years and i haven’t seen this ever and now all of a sudden there’s christian’s (sic) who only go into lobbies to tell people to repent and to accept god and they’re not trolling either they are dead serious. like brother it’s vrchat.”
Powell said the Cru team rarely gets such blowback because of its gentler approach, though the occasional troll will act up.
“Some people are like, ‘Aw man, you’re just a preacher in VR. What’s your agenda?’" he said. "But we don’t often get that, because by the time we bring up our message, it feels natural. We don’t want to make people uncomfortable.”
While he’s passionate about VR outreach, Powell is also an active Christian in real life, part of his church’s leadership team.
“While VR is a way I can express that, it’s not what my faith is about,” he said. “It’s important to be active in your community. You’ve got to live it out.”
The predecessor to today’s VR worlds is Second Life , an ongoing virtual environment launched in 2003 in which people can create avatars and participate in a virtual economy.
“I knew Catholics who were building monasteries and doing adoration and virtual sacraments,” said Brett Robinson, a professor of theology, media and rhetoric at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. “I found it all very kitschy and didn’t think it would catch on. And it didn’t.”
He’s not surprised to see new efforts reemerging, however, given the technological advances that have since taken place. Such efforts, he said, eclipse old barriers of what religion can be, taking practices long associated with physical artifacts and majestic edifices into the digital realm.
“My broader view is that nothing is impossible with God,” Robinson said. “It’s not like you can create an environment that cordons him off. The spirit can touch anything and anyone, anywhere.”
That said, he added, the long-term consequences of such efforts should pose a separate concern for VR missionaries.
“Their standard line is that they’re going to where people are, and that begs the question: Why are people spending significant portions of their lives in those places?” Robinson said. “Is this the most productive way to reweave the bonds of community?”
While digital evangelists might view such work as a rescue mission, he said, they also need to recognize the potential dangers of limiting their work to such environments.
Kuligowski said that while virtual connections are valuable, the goal is to get people to connect with real-life faith communities wherever they live.
“People sometimes get very close in these spaces,” he said. “We know that human to human connection is real. But we hope to develop relationships and eventually connect people with actual churches.”
He recalled speaking with a young person who wasn’t feeling well. “I said, ‘When I’m ill, I like to pray. I believe in God and he believes in my wellbeing.’”
A nearby Barbie-like avatar named Bel who'd overheard the exchange approached, Kuligowski said. A friend had said some hurtful things, she said, and she was having a bad day. Kuligowski's words spoke to her.
Bel admitted being a fallen-away Christian. He encouraged her to begin attending church again and they traded contact information.
While Bel joined the Cru group a couple of times afterward, "she ended up leading her own discussion about Jesus with a group of people in VRChat," Kuligowski said. "She was really excited about it. She felt blessed that God had empowered her."
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