Welcome to the Breakpoint podcast and our Q&A segment Ask the Colson Center.

I'm Shane Morris, host of the Upstream podcast and one of the writers for Breakpoint.

And I'm joined by John Stone Street, president of the Colson Center and the host of Breakpoint.

And today we're answering your questions about church services in the metaverse,

divorce and protecting women from abuse, the spiritual

significance of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and much more. All of these questions were sparked by

breakpoint commentaries, short courses, and the Colson Fellows program. If you've got a question

you'd like to send us, all you've got to do is email us at ask the Colson Center at colson center.org.

John, let's dive into the first question today, which is about the fundamental problem with virtual church,

which is kind of this thing that has become conceivable due to the advent of various virtual reality technologies.

And the striving of various social media companies

toward this thing we're calling the metaverse, the idea that we can create digital

spaces to get together in a simulated fashion as an alternative in many ways to getting

together in real life space.

And of course, we've done this a little bit with things like Zoom.

We're doing this right now between Florida and Colorado in a sense.

But this takes things to the next level.

And this listener has a good question about how far we can take that.

And whether the sort of the initial gut reaction, the sort of gag reflex we have against the idea of a bunch of

people with, you know, goggles on sitting around doing church is really justifiable, or if it's

just kind of an emotional reflex. This person asks, I have a question after reading your

commentary on the church and the metaverse. What makes this medium more

...