Religion just got an update, as Pastor D.J. Soto — the lead pastor of VR Church — is now delivering his sermons straight from his home to believers via virtual reality headsets.

What Happened: Virginia-based Christian Garret Bernal said that he "couldn't have had such an immersive church experience" in his pew, adding that taking part in a virtual reality sermon allowed him "to see the scriptures in a new way," according to a recent NZ Herald report. While wearing his headset, he was guided by the pastor alongside other believers through pastures, rocky cliffs, rivers and computer-generated illustrations of Biblical passages.

The report illustrates that religion in the metaverse ranges from "spiritual meditations in fantasy worlds to traditional Christian worship services with virtual sacraments in hyperrealistic, church-like environments," and that those who participate claim that this experience is "just as genuine as what can be found at a brick-and-mortar temple."

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Soto founded VR Church in 2016 and the organization claims to be a spiritual community existing "entirely in the metaverse to celebrate God's love for the world." VR Church operates on virtual reality social media platform AltSpaceVR where the pastor found himself preaching to just a handful of people at first — mostly atheists and agnostics interested in debating faith — but later grew to his current congregation of about 200 people. He even baptized believers who found themselves unable to leave their homes because of illness.

One person baptized by Soto for such reasons is former flight attendant Alina Delp, who changed from a globetrotter that liked skydiving into a bedridden person due to a rare neurovascular condition called Erythromelalgia. After her baptism and volunteering with small groups, she became a pastor herself.

According to Soto, "the future of the church is in the metaverse" and while he does not "think the physical gatherings should go away," he believes that "in the church of 2030, the main focus is going to be your metaverse campus."

Colorado ordained Unitarian Universalist Jeremy Nickel also calls himself a VR evangelist and founded SacredVR in 2017 to "get away from the brick and mortar" and started practicing in the metaverse as well. After he renamed the organization to EvolVR to appear more open to religiously unaffiliated users and with the help of a global pandemic, he saw the number of participants soar from a few dozen to hundreds attending his dharma talks and meditation sessions.

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Bill Willenbrock, a hospital chaplain who leads a Christian fellowship on VRChat, similarly engages in "worship and counseling services for a flock of mostly teens and early 20-somethings" in the metaverse. He said that many of his followers admitted to considering suicide and found such virtual reality sessions helpful for their wellbeing.

The metaverse is clearly earning its place in facilitating human relations, especially when health or a global pandemic does not allow meeting in person. If religious experiences were already replicated in a virtual space, what should we expect to come next? Consult our guide "How to invest in the metaverse" to understand which companies and cryptocurrencies are the best way to bet on the development of those technologies.