Virtual reality allows users to experience a different world, usually associated with gaming and entertainment. But some Christians are finding something unexpected inside these digital environments — people searching for community, connection, and faith.
According to Security.org’s 2025 Virtual Reality Awareness and Adoption Report, an estimated 53 million American adults own a virtual reality device.
The technology uses a headset to place users inside a computer-generated world. The metaverse is one form of that digital space, where people can meet and interact through digital characters called avatars.
YouTuber Jacob Peterson was curious about whether real ministry was happening in virtual reality. So he bought a headset and documented what he discovered.
“I was curious. So I went to Target, bought a headset, and I decided to document my experience,” Peterson said. “Is there actual ministry happening? Is there a sermon? Is there worship? And so that’s what I set out to find.”
What he found looked familiar, even if the setting wasn’t.
“My expectations were blown away. I mean, it was wild,” Peterson said. “You walk in, and you see people of the congregation out in the lobby chatting about Jesus.”
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Peterson also described areas dedicated to small groups and fellowship.
“It’s just like a full-blown church ecosystem that exists in the metaverse,” he said.
One testimony specifically stood out to him.
“A girl had come to VR church, got saved, and then decided to go into ministry because of it,” Peterson recalled.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, more than four in 10 American adults say they experience loneliness at least once a week. That’s despite people being more digitally connected than at any point in history.
For some, virtual reality offers another way to worship, connect, and become part of a faith community.
Using digital spaces for evangelism is part of Frank Kuligowski’s work with Cru, the Christian ministry formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ.
“Virtual reality specifically is just becoming more of an environment where we can meet people and help make disciples of Jesus,” Kuligowski said.
That means the technology can go beyond providing a place for people to meet by creating opportunities for deeper conversations.
“You can be a cowboy or a knight or a cucumber or a dragon, anything you want,” Kuligowski explained. “So people tend to open up more typically than they would face-to-face.”
Virtual communities also allow people separated by thousands of miles to meet inside the same digital space, regardless of time zones.
“It’s open twenty-four seven,” Kuligowski said. “It could be daytime, middle of the night, weekends, evenings — it’s always open.”
He added that these virtual environments create opportunities to connect with people they might not otherwise encounter.
“And so there’s unique situations that we’re connecting with people that we don’t normally meet,” Kuligowski said.
Still, Dr. Corné Bekker, dean of Regent University’s School of Divinity, cautions that virtual ministry should lead people toward, rather than away from, Christian community.
“If the intended end is to leave people to their own devices and without proper guidance on the internet and in the metaverse, I think we have failed those people,” Bekker said.
He emphasized the importance of using these technologies as a bridge to meaningful Christian fellowship.
“But when it’s used as an instrument to lead them to the church and to lead them to community, they can experience the resurrected Lord,” he said.
For virtual missionaries, the metaverse represents another place to meet people with the Gospel.
While the building may be virtual, with avatars instead of faces, the people behind them are real — as are the relationships being formed.
It’s taking the biblical message of going where people are to a whole new level.
