I feel like I’ve talked about this too much on this blog but LifeChurch.tv just got a little press coverage on their Second Life campus via MSNBC (and NBC news). The video on the site is a little better than printed story but they’re essentially the same thing.
A few weeks ago I was completing my article for OutreachMagazine.com about the ministry opportunities within Second Life. It had been a while since I checked the growth and what I found were some unbelievable stats. Last July I wrote about Second Life and at that time they had about 200,000 “residents” so when I was doing the research for this article I thought the number was probably up around a million or so residents. Instead here’s what I found:
October, 2006 - Second Life reached 1 million registered accounts
December, 2006 - 2 million registered accounts
January, 2007 - 3 million registered accounts
February, 2007 - 4 million registered accounts
March, 2007 - 5 million registered accounts
April 25 , 2007 - 5,858,000 registered accounts
Let me begin by apologizing. I really felt bad when I saw these numbers because I should have been paying closer attention over the last six months. I’d written about Second Life several times in the last few months but hadn’t been tracking the amazing growth. So, I’m sorry to all seven of the MicroExplosion readers. Please forgive me.
Ok, now that that’s behind us, let’s look at this growth. It’s truly astounding. They’ve been growing by one million registered accounts per month since October. At this rate they’ll have 14 million registered accounts by January 2008.
And let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that Second Life is the only virtual world out there either. There are two active virtual worlds/games for children ages 5 to 12. The first, Club Penguin has an average of 1.6 million children playing each month. Another virtual world for children, Webkinz, has an average of 870,000 children playing each month. In both cases, the numbers are growing: Webkinz had almost 2 million children playing in December, 2006 and Club Penguin had almost 3 million players in January, 2007.
So what does all of this mean? Well, at the very least virtual worlds are becoming quite the reality for an increasing number of the population. For businesses, this means there are literally new worlds to tap for growth (remember, Second Life has it’s own form or currency). For churches and ministries, there are new places to connect with people for the message of the Gospel. This may very well be the beginning of new missions strategies, new outreach tools, and new methods of discipleship. I’ve heard it said many times that the message of the Gospel will never change but the methods for communicating it always will. Somehow I don’t think the author of that statement had virtual worlds in mind…but I’m sure he would agree it applies here as much as anywhere.
I wrote recently about LifeChurch’s venture into Second Life with the development and launch of a virtual campus. A few days ago Bobby wrote on the Swerve blog that they’ve seen a conversion for Christ in Second Life. How great is this? What a way to be used by God with the new technology available!
Undoubtedly there will be people saying, “Ok, now that the guy’s converted how are they going to follow up and disciple him?” My response is this: I don’t know, but if there’s one thing I’m learning from my observations of LifeChurch it’s that they’re probably already working on it if they don’t have an answer already. Just rejoice in the new brother in Christ and trust LifeChurch to take care of him. They’ve seen a bunch of people come to know Christ over the years so I think it’s safe to say they know a few things about follow up.
America’s most innovative church is showing why they were given that title. They’ve had a Second Life church campus in development for a few months now and have officially launched it. No word yet on the strategy specifics within Second Life. A few things they may be considering (and these are speculation on my part) are ministry teams, Second Life missions conferences and live broadcasts of the weekend services. We’ll learn more about their plans as they get up and going.
Without a doubt this move shows their willingness to go new places to reach new people. Right now it doesn’t matter if they have all the reasons and strategy for the Second Life campus figured out or not. The fact of the matter is they’re placing themselves on the front lines of new ministry opportunities. This is a move for both the present and the future. While LifeChurch will be reaching those currently on the fringe of culture and technology, this fringe is moving steadily closer to the mainstream. When Second Life (or some derivative of it) comes into the mainstream, only then will this move begin to be fully realized for its significance, impact, foresight and obedience. Sure, it’s cool to get labeled an innovative church, but maybe the real innovation here is obedience in action.
I prefer to post an embedded video for these “video of the week” posts but this week is just a link…but it’s certainly worth viewing. It’s a brief overview on Second Life from CBS News Sunday Morning. If you’ve wanted to get a quick review of what Second Life is you’ll want to see this video. If you want more information about the interviews, you can check out David Pogue’s (the reporter on this story) blog post with more from the interview with Second Life’s creator.
One of the blogs I read daily is Micro Persuasion by Steve Rubel. He had an interesting post today about a little data mining he did with some web 2.0 terms like widgets, Second Life, podcasts, blogs, and RSS feeds. It was interesting to see that blogs are the clear front runner in popularity among these areas but the surge in Second Life interest was exciting as well.
What was noticeably absent from the list was any reference to online video. I did the same search as Steve did but dropped the RSS feeds and added YouTube. What I found was staggering. YouTube makes the other technologies look like nothing. I expected YouTube to be a contender with blogs but not trounce it the way it did. I was just telling someone today that there’s been a rise in online video interest over the last year. This data suggests that it’s not a mere rise, but rather a massive surge. So what’s the moral of the story? If you’re not thinking about online video right now you’re getting behind very quickly.
A little over a week ago I mentioned that missions to Second Life is a great idea that hasn’t taken off yet. Well, leave it up to the folks at LifeChurch.tv to jump into it. According to Bobby Gruenewald’s response to a comment I left at their Swerve blog, Life Church has an island in Second Life they’re developing right now and scheduled for completion in several weeks. Good job guys. I guess this is why you’re the most innovative church in America.
In a trend we saw at the end of 2006, more retailers have seen the numbers of people jumping into Second Life. Sears has joined the fray by opening a showroom in Second Life. Sears joins Circuit City, Dell, and numerous other retailers looking to use Second Life as a new sales channel. I can’t help but wonder if they see this as a true revenue stream for their businesses or if it’s more because they know they’ll get press coverage right now. Either way the trend continues.
It’s been a great year getting MicroExplosion going and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. With 122 posts since June 13, here a few of the MicroExplosion highlights for 2006:
