BigBob Raymaker

BigBob...that's me. Well, at least that's my Second Life character's (or avatar) name. Who's BigBob? What's Second Life? And what are you talking about?

I've been thinking through some ideas related to finding new ways to connect with younger generations in order to have a platform for sharing various bits of information...info about what God is doing in our lives personally, what He's doing in our part of the world, how young people can get involved in missions, and of course new ways we might be using to share the Gospel.

Second Life is an alternate world (a second life for people online). If you're just now catching the concept of a blog this might give you a headache! People sign up for free accounts and enter this virtual reality world. They can meet friends, go to parties, attend church services, buy clothes, buy and develop real estate...the list goes on and on. It's pretty amazing. Check out their home page and you'll see that they have over 6 million people signed up and in the last 24-hours they've moved more green backs then I will see in a lifetime (seriously).

So, I signed up under the strange name of BigBob Raymaker (still has me laughing for some odd reason) and began trying to figure out what it was all about. Think of it as life in the form of a video game. I explored houses and buildings, I got lost several times, I drove a segway (haven't done that in real life yet), and I met some people.

One thing I wanted to do was check out a "virtual church" (wow...there's a post). So, I found one and teleported over to it (that link shows the organization running both the online church and Christian coffeehouse that I visited). First thing I meet these two females in the hallway and immediately strike up a conversation. One is an atheist...the other seems quite open...both are turned off by evangelicals. Our conversation lasted probably 20 minutes or so and I had an amazing chance to share some Biblical truths with these women in about the most non-confrontational way possible (hard to be confrontational in a virtual world!!). In fact one of those two users...actually the atheist...mentioned how much she enjoyed the conversation and asked for me to be one of her online friends as to be able to talk more later.

I later walked around for awhile and took it all in. They've got weekly services, Bible study group meetings, prayer rooms, meeting rooms, etc. The Christian coffeehouse across from the church is like any you'd visit in reality...you can even get a free cup of coffee if you'd like. Here's a link to the organization that runs both the church and the coffeehouse.

Don't hear me wrong now...I'm not calling for us to all close our churches and setup shop online. But it's interesting to think about all of this in light of upcoming generations that are rapidly embracing forms of communication that previous gens have a hard time even understanding. And if we are going to do an effective job of communicating...or having, as I said earlier, a platform to communicate with these folks then we're going to have to learn to go where they are and speak their language.