Video Games and Global Mission, Andrew Jones
What does digital missions look like?
As I write this the Olympic Games are on, people in Paris who receive a free bottle of water from missionaries are invited to scan a QR code and enter a virtual reality world inside VR Chat that focuses on the claims of Jesus. “Who Am I?” is an initiative of the Southern Baptist IMB’s MXLabs and the European affinity digital engagement team.
Meanwhile, at GenCon in Indianapolis, a team of 24 digital missionaries share Christ’s love with fans of tabletop games. Normally they are reaching out to the world’s 3 billion online video gamers and many of the team are connected to a ministry called Love Thy Nerd.
Soon digital missionaries from all over Africa will gather in Accra, Ghana for three days of training.
A few weeks ago, the Vatican announced that the Jubilee year of 2025 will feature an event in Rome immediately before the 2-3 million young pilgrims arrive in Rome. It will be called the Jubilee for Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers.
If these events challenge your view of full-time Christian missionaries, you are not alone. Almost 20 years ago I was asked by The Christian Century to contribute an article on the future of theological training. The series was called “Seminary 2050” and I submitted an article called “Video Games for Pilgrim Leaders”, suggesting the technology of video games would be a platform for training missionaries. These days it’s easy to see how the metaverse and the spatial web is built on video game technology, but back then it was hard for some to imagine. In fact, the editor deleted any occurrence of the word “games” in my article, which changed the meaning completely.
20 years ago, before I even wrote the article, I had already started a virtual space for training missionaries, called Suddenly Seminary, which featured a weekly event for global Christian leaders to enter as avatars and learn about digital ministry. These days we are on a new platform and it looks a bit more professional but the initial ideals are the same.
Recently, the Lausanne Movement asked me to create a “virtual lounge” for the 5000 online participants who will be joining the 5000 IRL (in real life) participants in Seoul at the Fourth Lausanne Congress. Lausanne is a movement started by Billy Graham in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974. They host a large gathering of mission leaders every 15 years or so. This 2024 event in Seoul in September is an important one, marking 50 years since their beginning, and has been prefaced by a recent publication called “The State of
the Great Commission”. This report outlines the current challenge of world mission before us and highlights the recent emphasis on digital missions and digital communities inside Web3.
But more than just talk about it, Lausanne will be showcasing how current technologies can enhance the global mission effort, by hosting a number of virtual lounges, a prayer space and an art gallery, all connected by portals. There are technologies we are using in this virtual space that were barely accessible a year ago. For example, while the Lausanne Congress in South Korea will be offering translation into 7 languages, we hope to offer real-time translation into 70 languages and dialects in the text chats. AI enables us to create 3D avatars of famous missionaries from an uploaded photo in seconds, in case the participants would like to experience the event as William Carey or India’s Ramabai Pandita. And the technology of “instancing” means that when any of our lounges fill up, another instance of that room is automatically generated. Which means that, in theory, we could actually host hundreds of thousands of people if we wanted to.
And yet technology is fickle and so we ask for your prayers for me and the team I am building, mostly full-time digital missionaries from a number of international mission agencies. In September, the Lausanne virtual world will be hosted from Otaki, New Zealand, and will run parallel to the event in Seoul.
We are living at a time when technology is challenging every sphere of society and yet also opening up new doors of opportunity. It should not surprise us that missionaries are again at the forefront of today's innovations. We were quick to adopt the magic lantern and gospel recordings on vinyl. Radio Church in Dunedin just celebrated 90 years and is now New Zealand's longest running radio program. And digital missionaries will help us move the mission of God forward into the age of Web3. But we need your prayers and mission agencies will need help in adapting to this new world.
|