Saddleback Church Holds Virtual Reality Worship Service+ ‘Very immersive…it felt like church, actually’
Saddleback Church has joined other large megachurches in the VR space, recently hosting its first Virtual Reality church service through the Metaverse
.We’ve covered Saddleback Church on several occasions after Andy and Stacie Wood, the new ‘pastors’ of the 25,000-membe multisite, dressed up as Toy Story characters for a sermon series, after they ordained several pastrixes and were expelled from the SBC for it, after they hosted a “Blacks Only worship service” where no white members were allowed in, so the “black gold” could have a “safe space” to “heal,” and after they had radical Pro-LGBTQ activists running Saddleback Church’s family ministries Lead to Love.
The Metaverse is a digital realm that combines elements of augmented reality, persistent virtual worlds, videos, Virtual Reality headsets, 3D holographic avatars, and other communication tools. While still in its early stages, the Metaverse is poised to offer a hyper-realistic alternative for people to interact and coexist in, even when they’re not actively participating.
The services are led and hosted by Jay Kranda. Kranda is the Online Pastor at Saddleback Church and the one overseeing the venture, explaining in a video that their first church service was “very immersive.”
After creating a digital replica of their church building, Saddleback and Kranda invited all the avatars to attend, greeting them virtually prior to the service as they came in and “took a seat.”
Saddleback played the whole church service from start to finish, streamed through YouTube, and afterward Kranda “prayed for everybody personally, like in my avatar, in that space.”
He notes that “it felt like church, actually, after you know, about 10 minutes” and that it was “really cool to hear everybody singing- you can hear the mics and people were singing- and it was really communal.” He concludes by offering that “you can see where potentially this could be a great resource for the church in the coming years, maybe decades.”
He also defended the project from those who insist it’s not a real church.
