Should churches be in Second Life?

I have visited the topic of the virtual world Second Life before, and I am still planning on incorporating into my research on the use of Internet by the Church. One use of Second Life that I have been following particularly is that of the Anglican Church. According to the Church Advertising Network:

“The Anglican Cathedral on Epiphany Island was built to support the Anglican Group in Second Life, which was founded in November 2006 by Bill Sowers, who is a member of St David’s Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Kansas.“

The services are led by Mark Brown, who is licensed as Deacons Assistant by the Bishop of Wellington in New Zealand. You can see a video of their first service here. Mark also has written a good article on ministry using web 2.0 tools that complements much of what has been written in this blog.

The title “Should churches be in Second Life?” was prompted by the latest entry in Mark Brown’s blog. It seems that the web site Anglicans Online has taken issue with doing church in Second Life, comparing it to the phenomenon of televangelists in the US. They raise issues with how “real” Second Life experiences can be (also raised by me in response to LifeChurch’s SL presence). The overall tone of the article is that Second Life is at the very least not important and at the very most to be avoided altogether.

I disagree. As a church, we need to go where the people are – and there are people in Second Life. I demonstrated SL to my MIS class last week and someone asked me what I thought it would look like in several years. I said that I didn’t know whether SL would even be around in a few years, comparing it to the experience of old BBS services that were the precursor to today’s social networks. But something will be around in a few years, and the more we understand about how to be effective in Second Life now, the better we can minister in that new environment. Mark Brown, as you might expect, also disagrees; read his well thought response here.

Other Christian ministries have also begun using Second Life. Besides previously blogged about LifeChurch, the Church Advertising Network has created an online town modeled after “Bible Times”, where you can explore and find answers to questions about the Christian faith. Now that’s creative.

Tags: anglican online church, second life