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.
Continue reading “Virtual Churches And The Challenges Of Online Worship”