I’ll be honest, Christian Today isn’t on my regular reading list. However an article by Martyn Casserly entitled “What happened to online churches?” caught my eye as it relates to Second Life and communities. The article makes for an interesting read.

Martyn hadn’t logged into Second Life for several years and the first issue he ran into as he stood outside The Anglican Cathedral on Epiphany Island was cloud syndrome, that is, his avatar appeared as a cloud. Although Martyn eventually resolved his avatar issue, Helene Milena (Aisla Wright outside the virtual world) , Lay Pastor at the Cathedral explains to him that his situation isn’t unusual, Helene also explains that avatars of many different shapes and sizes visit the cathedral :

“There’s one person who attends the Cathedral who I’ve only seen as a non-cloud once. We used to have a hippo that worshipped with us quite a lot, the church warden’s a mermaid…and another regular’s favourite avatar is a parrot. There’s a perch over there, that’s for him.”

Virtual world worship appeals to avatars of many variations it seems.

There is an interesting issue regarding virtual worlds that Martyn says, would make real life church services 100 times better, that is the ability to turn down all the other extraneous noises. There are many scenarios where this would be advantageous to us all and it goes beyond church services. However there are some aspects of the virtual world experience that aren’t as engaging as the real world.

One aspect is with people who no longer come to a church service. Martyn points out that if a friend doesn’t attend a physical service, then someone may call round to see if they are ok. Online this can be far more difficult, we often don’t know where people live, emails are asynchronous communication and are often not replied to quickly. However that’s not to say that online communities don’t miss people or wonder if they are ok, it’s just that online communities can be more detached in some areas.

There are areas of online communities that have advantages though. When a person moves location, they can still engage with the online community. This is something that real world communities can’t deliver. Then there’s the issue of how easy it is for someone to return to an online community, they simply login. Then there’s the fact that people in places such as Second Life can be pretty anonymous and therefore feel more comfortable sharing their experieces.  Helene explains some of the advantages of online communities :

“People do come back. We had someone on Sunday who hadn’t been here for a year, so there is that sense of attachment to the place. But life gets in the way. They get busy, things happen. I couldn’t be here as often as I am unless I build my life around this, which is a crazy thing to have to do, but it’s the way I have to do it to ensure that I’m here. There’s still a huge amount of need, and I think it’s a need that online church can address better than many other situations. People can find help when they’re not necessarily connected with an offline church, or don’t feel safe talking about something. There’s still that advantage of anonymity here, where you can share your heart with someone and not bump into them in the street.”

Whereas Helene is talking about Online churches, a lot of those points apply to other online communities too.

However in terms of attendance, Online churches may not be growing in the way that many people felt they would. In terms of The Anglican Cathedral in Second Life Helene points out :

“It’s become less novel. Certainly our numbers here at the Cathedral, in terms of attendance, have gone down quite significantly. I’ve noticed that some well established churches have folded in Second Life, or they’ve downgraded their amount of land. I wouldn’t say that all is necessarily well.”

There will be many reasons for this in terms of Second Life. The platform will soon be celebrating its twelfth birthday, so it’s getting old in technology terms. The tier is too damn high for community groups to flourish and as numbers drop, so do donations. However despite these challenges, The Anglican Church at Epiphany Island is still there and still holding services, so all is not lost and they seem to have a strong, albeit smaller than it once was, community.

The Anglican Cathedral in Second Life has had a presence for well over five years. They hold Anglican worship services on a daily basis both in the cathedral and in the smaller meditation chapel. There are many people involved with The Cathedral, I’ll name a few of them :

• Helene Milena – Lay Pastor, Worship Leader, Prayer Team Member and Bible Study Leader.
• ZoeRose Eiren – Technical Team Member, Prayer Team Member.
• Charlie12string Lax – Worship Leader, Prayer Team Member, Pastoral Team Member.
• Joyous Schism – Worship Leader, Prayer Team Member, Bible Study Leader.
• Heatherly Addens – Worship Leader, Social Team Member.
• Wave Rodenberger  – Worship Leader, Social Team Member.
• Ana Stubbs – Churchwarden.
• Celberon Donardson – Vice Chair, Worship Leader, Pastoral Team Member, Prayer Team Member.

To find out more about The Anglican Cathedral in Second Life, including their history, what they are all about and a visitors guide, visit their website.

The Anglican Cathedral in Second Life Website : https://slangcath.wordpress.com/

SLURL To Epiphany Island : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Epiphany/100/147/50/

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