Some VRChat users welcome missionaries, others raise concerns
Ten figures stand in a circle inside a virtual Japanese-style penthouse. The lights are low. A white stormtrooper huddles beside a large orange cat, who bows his head and says, “Father God, just thank you for this opportunity to go and reach out to people who need you.”
The cat is Curt Curtis, a Christian missionary in his 60s from Texas. The room is inside VRChat, the social virtual-reality platform. For three years, missionaries with the evangelical organization Cru have gathered every Friday in VRChat to pray and then split up across the platform’s thousands of user-created worlds, starting conversations that gradually turn to faith.
Cru, founded in 1951 as Campus Crusade for Christ, has traditionally focused on evangelism among college students. In recent years it has ventured into video games and virtual reality. Frank Kuligowski, Cru’s digital strategist, said he spearheaded the idea of missionaries purchasing VR headsets after asking, “What is it like here? Who comes here? Why are they here? How can we bless them and, you know, love them and listen to them?”
Inside a world, missionaries seek out small groups chatting in quieter corners. Kuligowski said he might begin with, “Cool avatar. Did you make it?” After some conversation, he turns to religion, asking, “Is faith part of your life at all?” or mentioning he was reading in his Bible.
Nic, a 30-year-old social worker from The Netherlands who declined to give his last name, met the missionaries in a Japanese garden world. He appears in VRChat as a small floating cat. “You guys are really calm,” he told them. “Just listening.” Nic said he considered himself Christian largely because he was raised that way, and after the encounter he joined the missionaries for several Friday outings. When he mentioned using oracle cards to make decisions, one missionary sent him a Bible passage warning against divination. Nic eventually stopped joining but said he appreciated having a place to discuss religion. “It’s nice having people to talk to about spiritual in-depth things online,” he said.
Kuligowski recalled one encounter in a busy spaceship world when he and a colleague talked to a woman from China who said she wished she could go to church. They invited her to a virtual church, and a fourth user who had been listening slipped in behind them — an encounter that eventually led the stowaway to a real-life campus ministry. “That’s been one of my great memories,” Kuligowski said.
The missionaries who join Cru’s weekly meetings range from Geoffery Powell, a 28-year-old multimedia artist and computer scientist who has logged thousands of hours in VRChat, to Curtis, who said he rarely uses the platform outside of evangelization. Powell said he was originally drawn to VRChat for its imaginative potential, but after seven years he came to see a community often plagued by loneliness, alcoholism, suicidal ideation and explicit sexual activity. “As I got to know the community more, I really started to feel the hurt,” Powell said. “I knew that the people in VRChat were real people that God wanted me to reach.”
For Stewart Freeman, connecting with a pastor in VRChat changed everything. After a six-year relationship ended, Freeman spent his nights in VRChat, logging more than 10,000 hours. He said he threw himself into the world’s darker side, juggling relationships with different women and “chasing every way that the space would try and claim that it would have a reason for hope.” Then he met Jason Poling, a California pastor from Cornerstone Church who began visiting him in his VRChat “home world” to read the Bible and walk through scripture every week. Freeman, who grew up Christian but said he only called himself that because his parents did, described the experience as the first time he believed the gospel. He later sold his business and moved to Orlando to join Cru’s Jesus Film Project to help other people in VR find God.
Heidi Campbell, a Texas A&M University professor who studies digital religion, said efforts like Cru’s date to the 1990s, when the Billy Graham Foundation began training Christians to start conversations in online chat rooms. She described digital spaces as “the new religious frontier for evangelism in many respects.”
Their presence in VRChat, however, is not universally accepted. A thread in the VRChat subreddit questioning the “influx” of Christians drew nearly 200 comments. One user listed “sunset bar” and “midnight rooftop” among the worlds where missionaries are most active. Several commenters raised concerns that the missionaries may bring anti-LGBTQ+ views into VRChat, a platform known for embracing diverse gender identities.
Campbell said concerns that missionaries could upend the culture of an online space are common. “I think that’s one of the big criticisms, that people come in and try to kind of take over and turn it into something it’s not,” Campbell said. “Whether missionaries are from Cru or other online mission groups, there is this idea that (they) should really be part of the culture, the same kind of rules that apply about adapting to foreign countries.”