A Renewed Vision | The Robloxian Christians
In 2011, I created a group for my friends where we could talk about God, pray for one another, and feel safe to be ourselves. At that time, no other sort of Roblox group existed for people who took their faith seriously enough to do something about it. Sure, there were Christian ‘fan clubs’ where you joined so that you could show that you are Christian on your profile, but there was nothing for those looking to live into their faith in community with others.
For the past eleven years, The Robloxian Christians has been an example on Roblox, and for the world, to what effective online/virtual ministry can look like. We built a church that had a Roblox group page and discord that focused on building community around weekly in-game church services that were a lot like real-life church, just on Roblox. In this, with God’s blessing, we were quite successful. In the course of a decade, we held more than 1,400 services, with more than 203k visits.
None of this would have been possible without the Holy Spirit’s presence and direction, and I am so grateful for all of you that have been a part of our story together.
But in the last three years, our church has seen participation decrease dramatically. This is due to many factors including TRC becoming an intentionally inclusive church, Roblox’s filtering of the word “Christian” making our group un-searchable on the Roblox site, Roblox removing the visibility of the group shout, TRC closing and then not, and many other factors. Looking at the numbers alone, it would seem that TRC is on a downward trend. That is the sad reality.
TRC is not closing, but we are changing.
In August, we completed a demographic survey and received really helpful information about what people are wanting out of TRC. These were our findings:
- The majority of TRC members want to be more involved in our church.
- Most TRC members attend a brick-and-mortar church in real life.
- The two most important aspects that people are looking for in TRC are genuine worship where they can come to know Christ better through music, prayer, and lament, and community where people can be themselves, have vulnerable conversations, and make new friends.
- The biggest reason that people are not involved in TRC is that people forget or are too busy to attend our live in-game church services.
With this valuable feedback, I, in conversation with our staff, have decided on a new course for our group.
As of November 1st, we will stop holding weekly in-game church services at TRC.
Instead, we want to build a quality Roblox game specifically for Christians to hangout.
It will be open 24/7 and available to the public, as well as to all those in TRC. This will be a vibe/hangout style game with music, voice and text chat, minigames, information about what it means to follow Christ, and social spaces. For our entire history, the group wall has remained an active place where people share prayer requests and talk about faith. We want this new Roblox game to really be a place where those that are active in our Discord and group wall can go at any time of day to make new friends, pray with volunteers, talk about faith, and really build relationships with one another.
We will shift our staffing model as well. Our Staff members and volunteers will be re-trained first as moderators to ensure that the Roblox game is a safe environment that follows our in-game rules. Each volunteer and staff member will also be trained in what to do when people ask for prayer, and how to make people feel welcome in our space.
We still value the worshipping community aspect of our church, so we will move from a 4-service per week structure to a once-a-month community worship service, taking place inside the new Roblox game. Not only will this boost the game and welcome the broader Roblox community, it will be one day where we get to come together and take a pause, and worship, pray, gather around the table, and get to know God better together.
Finally, as a part of this shift, we will be discontinuing our community Discord server on October 31. For our staff and volunteers, we will be building a Guilded server for the new game’s moderation and staff chats. Guilded better integrates with Roblox’s features that are being released this year.
Friends –
I know that this is a lot of information and probably a bit shocking. But I believe that this change is for the best as we enter a new chapter in being a diverse, welcoming, and affirming community of believers on Roblox. I do ask that you will be praying for TRC’s leadership and for this community as we prepare for this new season, and I hope that you will stick with us because the best is yet to come.
You will hear more from us soon,
DanielH253