The New Wave of Young Christian Influencers

LOS ANGELES—At the age of 21, Gabe Poirot fell off his electric skateboard, cracked his skull, and spent 18 days in a medically induced coma.

The Texas native was already a born-again Christian. But a near-death experience he recounts having while hovering on the brink forever changed him.

“It’s a personal experience with Christ that truly set a fire in my heart. And I’m forever dedicated to him because of my experience that I had outside of my body,” Poirot told The Epoch Times.

While his body was “pretty much dead,” Poirot maintains, he didn’t experience death but rather an “extravagant” odyssey in which he left his body, like he’d “slipped out of a glove,” ultimately encountering Jesus in a city of light.

“It was so real. It made me feel like my life on earth was a dream [in comparison],” he said. “After coming back, it’s so important that I win as many as possible to heaven, and bring the gospel to as many as possible, because I realize how short my time is.”

Poirot’s testimony, which he shares regularly with an audience of more than 2 million subscribers on YouTube and 1 million followers on TikTok, has made him a compelling, and sometimes controversial, figure.

It also drives his near-constant itinerancy. The new father spends much of the year on the road, preaching at college campuses, youth groups, and churches and holding “sidewalk councils” at abortion clinics across the country.

He is part of a broader ecosystem of new-wave Christian influencers shaping the discourse. Others include the apologists Wesley Huff and Cliffe and Stuart Knechtle; evangelical entertainers George Janko and Ruslan KD; and Angela Halili and Arielle Reitsma, the actresses-turned-podcasters behind Girls Gone Bible.

Younger cohorts include Bryce Crawford, a 22-year-old neomissionary with more than 8 million followers, and Elijah Lamb, a 23-year-old who began livestreaming revivals from his bedroom as a teenager.

Poirot’s traveling ministry, itself a revival of an older evangelical tradition, is gaining popularity among young influencers, who also use social media, artificial intelligence, and long-form podcasts to reach people.

They are embracing an aesthetically stripped-down approach that departs, at least in tone and technology, from the pomp and production of megachurches and televangelism.

“I love going into the streets and winning the lost, and I love reaching the people that maybe never even would ordinarily hear the gospel,” said Poirot, who is in his mid-20s. “That’s why I love social media—because we’re able to reach a lot of atheists, agnostics, Muslims.”

Young people are looking to explore scripture, he said, and see “genuine, authentic testimonies and the power of God, that [aren’t] being manipulated or worked up or exaggerated or come with some agenda.”

Poirot said he’s hearing a lot from young men especially these days, and believes Gen Z is at the forefront of a revival.

This may or may not be reflected in national statistics, but the wave of interest, and a dramatic shift in how people are connecting with Christian theology, seem undeniable to observers. 

Nathan Apffel, creator of the investigative docuseries “The Religion Business,” which delves into financial abuse and corruption in America’s large-scale religious institutions, also sees a resurgence—but highlights the precarity of the current moment.

“There is definitely a search for faith or for Christianity. Christ is a great role model, so anybody professing Christ, this younger generation is going to look and explore,” said the filmmaker, who is himself a Christian. 

Youth today, he observes, tend to ask more questions. “They can sniff out hypocrisy in a system much quicker.” This includes questioning the “prosperity gospel” of the corporate megachurch model and an apparent disconnect with the teachings of Christ.

“When you read the teachings of Christ, he was telling you to give it all away, to help the poor and the needy and the marginalized and the stranger and the prisoner,” said Apffel, a prominent critic of the extravagant lifestyles of some megachurch leaders.

“We’re at this pinch point in culture where the message from the pulpit is running antithetical to the business model of the institution, and everybody is feeling the pressure—the congregant, the pastors, people looking for faith,” he said. 

But the same incentive structure that has led to endemic financial corruption in religious institutions, he warns, also underpins newer, social-media driven models, in which charismatic influencers are monetizing views and selling products—everything from Bible manuscript facsimiles and Augustinian swords, to faith forward energy drinks and apparel.

One influential podcaster, Apffel said, offered him a spot on his program—for a fee of $100,000. (The show’s producers did not respond to inquiries from The Epoch Times).

“The conclusion is, OK, Jesus is coming back when everybody’s in head-to-toe Jesus garb and holding Jesus energy drinks? No, that’s not my God or the God of the Bible,” Apffel said.

“Are we selling the gospel, or are we sharing it?”

‘Just Talk About Your Testimony”

When Johnny Chang was a couple years into his ministry—and away from a life of criminality, violence and suffering that had swallowed his entire adolescence—his pastor suggested he branch out—into prison ministry.

“I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I spent all my time trying to get away from prison, and you’re sending me back,” recalled Chang, a former gang member who entered juvenile detention at age 12 and later spent more than eight years in federal prison.

“He goes, ‘You should go there because you understand them. You speak their language, you look like them. You should just talk about your testimony. You don’t have to talk about Jesus and God. You go in there and talk about what God did for you,” Chang told The Epoch Times.

The first time, he couldn’t bring himself to go. “I had a full-on panic attack. It felt like I was in the court tank, like I was getting sentenced and the walls were caving in on me,” he said.

Eventually he followed through, albeit nervous and shaking, his head filled with intrusive thoughts questioning his self-worth, feeling somehow like a hypocrite.

“I ended up giving my testimony exactly how I gave it to you,” he said, detailing an abusive early home life that led him to the streets and the arms of a local gang at the age of 12, the constant violence of incarceration, an early conversion to Islam, and the emptiness and desperation that plagued him before finally finding Christ.

“And at the end of it they clapped. I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s kind of weird.’ And they came up to me, they lined up and they shook my hand and every one of these inmates started to share their story,” Chang said.

It was a turning point for Chang.

“I remember sitting in the parking lot and just breaking down and crying, because my pastor knew something I didn’t know,” he said. “Even now I get emotional thinking about it.”

His pastor also suggested he get on social media to share his testimony.

“I end up creating my little page and all of my gangster friends follow me first, of course,” he said.

But little by little, his message started to resonate. “People start to kind of discover me. They jump in and they’re like, ‘Hey bro, what you’re saying, it makes sense—you’re not pushing Christianity on us. You’re just talking about what it did for you and we can respect that.’” 

Chang’s big break came two years ago when he appeared on Soft White Underbelly, a YouTube channel that often features edgy interviews with gang members, prostitutes, drug addicts and other underworld denizens. His episode got more than 1 million views on the first day.

He now has around 4 million followers across his social media accounts and is using technology—including a proprietary app with daily devotionals and a gospel chatbot trained on his preaching and scripture notes—to grow his audience. He produces international events, but still does prison ministry every Thursday, he said. 

Chang began taking things seriously around two years ago, acknowledging, “I guess I’m an influencer now.”

His audience ranges from inmates to NFL players—“famous people are following me now, it’s across the board”—but reckons his main demographic is 25- to 45-year-olds, including in a weekly Bible class he holds via Zoom, as well as younger followers.

A Loneliness Epidemic 

Both Chang and Poirot point to widespread loneliness and anxiety among young people as a driving force behind their ministries, and behind a broader Christian revival.

“There’s a lot of emptiness nowadays and a lot of void, and not just physical loneliness,” Chang said. “There’s no intermingling with people on an intimate, profound level. It’s all very surface.”

Such malaise is pervasive among his spiritual mentees, whether they have millions of followers or none, he said.

Young people who came of age in the digital era, said Chang, now in his mid-30s, face constant, destabilizing pressure, as they are assaulted on all sides by advertising and social comparison.

Both Chang and Poirot say they use a mix of social media and in-person events to foster more intimate connections with people, for now eliding the question of a home church in favor of this new model.

Poirot is especially concerned about mental health struggles among Gen Z.

“A lot of kids are dying of suicide—they need help,” he said. “People aren’t hanging out anymore, they don’t have community or friends.”

The downside of social media, he acknowledges, is that “your faith can turn into a dopamine fix hunt.”

“A lot of social media videos now, instead of speaking the truth and calling people away from darkness, they comfort people to live however they want. There is very much a cheapening of the gospel,” he said. “In a lot of ways, it’s too easy.”

Poirot refers to this as “drive through” or “fast food Christianity”: “Let me go to church to get this message, and I’ll feel good for a week, or let me take a couple of photos for Easter, dress up, and tell everyone I’m a Christian, post it on my Instagram.”

There is, he said, a very fine line. “As much as I love digital media and use it as a tool, I see the danger. … We have to be watchful that we don’t become like the world on the internet.”

End of an Era

For many conservative Christians, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk remains an inspirational figure, and a blueprint for how young evangelicals can reach people in need.

“My generation, I think we are really looking for authenticity … and we value pastors who are willing to answer the questions and don’t shy away from the conversation,” Poirot said, noting Kirk’s “boldness and courage” in traveling to college campuses and holding open forums where anyone could grab the mic.

“I love the church. I believe in the local church. However, I think the local church needs to recognize that the landscape has shifted a lot. And I think it’s important that we’re on social media and doing everything we can to reach people where they’re at,” Poirot said.

The “smoke screens and shows” of the megachurch era, he suggested, have lost their appeal. 

“I don’t know anyone in Gen Z that comes to me and is like, ‘Man, I love the megachurch model. I love the fact that we watch a pastor on the screen that we could never talk to, and there are more than 10,000 people,’” he said. 

Rather, the demand is for small groups and home churches. “It’s not that the megachurch is inherently evil, but for us, I think we’ve just seen it done so wrong for so long, it doesn’t come across as something we can trust,” he said.

Part of this may be aesthetics and vibes. But there is also a growing skepticism over the financial opacity associated with large religious institutions.

Thanks to a 1913 legal carve out, churches are exempted from federal taxes. But unlike other nonprofits, they can’t be audited. They don’t have to file annual 990s showing how their donations are spent or how board members are appointed, regardless of how much money they take in. 

This legal architecture, argues Apffel, has resulted in endemic corruption and lack of transparency—particularly in large, nondenominational evangelical megachurches, which are beholden to no one but themselves.

Such, he suggests, is hastening their demise.

“From what I’ve seen in the culture, it’s dying,” Apffel said of the megachurch model. “They can’t sustain themselves.

“The only way it keeps up is by bettering itself. So if you have a megachurch and I have a megachurch five miles away, if you get a nicer sound stage, I have to get a better stage. If you get a better coffeeshop, I have to get a better coffeeshop. And so we’re just outspending for the same consumers in our town.”

The failing is systemic, he said, recalling the white binder in his childhood church foyer with all the financials on display. Over time, those binders have started to disappear, he said, and the result is a “natural casualty to this capitalistic, entrepreneurial church,” which a new generation of pastors has inherited.

Churches that give “hour-long offering messages” but don’t show their financials, Poirot added, may not realize how manipulative that appears to young people.

“I have a 990 that is public. People can go look at my salary today,” he said, adding that he doesn’t rely on ministry to support his family, but is bi-vocational, doing landscaping gigs and property maintenance to pay the bills.

“I view ministry as a service. I also don’t think it’s wrong for pastors to have a salary and be supported. … But if we’re not public about it, it does [make people wonder], ‘What are you doing with the money we give you?’”

While Apffel argued that religious institutions have essentially become too big to fail—“it’s power and authority and money all combined; nobody can stop it”—he said nondenominational churches are usually “built off the back of one pretty charismatic person.”

Such churches, however powerful at the time, don’t tend to outlive their founders, he said.

The Evangelical Celebrity

The same charisma that has seeded countless megachurches and televangelist networks is alive and well in the digital era.

“I think evangelicalism in particular lends itself to the kind of individualism that adapts well to social media,” said Kelsey Hanson Woodruff, a scholar of religion, media, and gender who has taught at both Wesleyan University and Harvard Divinity School.

“Whether you’re watching them on TikTok or Instagram Reels or you’re listening to a podcast, you have a kind of parasocial relationship with [influencers] that feels like they are talking individually to you,” she told The Epoch Times in a recent conversation. 

People who have come of age in the digital era, with all its attendant isolation, may be seeking meaning and structure and finding it with online influencers.

But unlike attending a church, where parishioners are more likely to interact with an intergenerational and politically mixed group, Hanson Woodruff points out that online communities and religious affiliation are now more likely to reflect political polarization and be impacted by external factors—such as the algorithm, which has its own incentives.

Some young Christian influencers are opting for a more fluid, cross-denominational appeal.

Evan Raugust, a 21-year-old YouTuber who says he grew up going to a nondenominational church but is now a Catholic, aims to bring a “Mr.-Beast-level obsession to evangelism.”

Raugust makes videos about his travels to “every place from Jesus’ life,” or to find the Ark of the Covenant, or “America’s most beautiful church”—essentially road trips, often with friends of varying religious persuasions, spliced with bedroom confessionals made on an iPhone.

Rather than deep dives into scriptural minutiae, his popular content tends to be short clips that lightly explore Christian “mysteries,” compare religions, or bring nonbelievers to church, narrated with enthusiasm and curiosity.

The new itinerant, social media model adopted by today’s influencers is itself a continuation of a well-established evangelical tradition, Hanson Woodruff said.

“That’s true with conservative evangelicals, and it’s true of the progressive ‘post-evangelicals’ that I have studied,” she said, citing itinerant evangelical preachers in the 18th and 19th centuries who traveled from city to city, drawing large crowds and leading revivals. 

“So in some ways, it’s a new trend because the media itself is new, but some of the practices have been used among evangelical celebrities for a very long time.”

The evangelical focus on biblicism and scripture, Hanson Woodruff said, is also well-suited to the moment, but is perhaps less neutral than it appears.

“There has repeatedly been this call to strip away aesthetics and go back to scripture. And the pastors or influencers saying that are often doing a lot of interpretation of the scripture for their followers,” she said. 

“So although they project this unmediated look at scripture, it is mediated—by whichever English translation is being used, by theology held by that person, and then by the media itself.”

Filled with charismatic personas and bitter theological divisions, the competitive world of evangelical influencers, in which everyone is trying to sell a book or a product or a podcast, is not always a friendly place.

Detractors have accused both Poirot and Chang of “unbiblical” testimony, calling them cultists, fabulists, or outright liars.

In Chang’s case, online sleuths alleged he invented his prison story, digging up an old Facebook page as evidence (to suggest he was actively posting during the time he says he was incarcerated). Chang told The Epoch Times a former friend and fellow gang member maintained the page for him while he was inside—“not an uncommon practice,” he said—before the two had a falling out.

“I don’t really pay attention to that,” Chang said, brushing off what he likened to chatter from “people who make their living off of scrutinizing others online.”

Poirot suggested his critics act like a “cancel culture mafia,” engaging in a never-ending purity spiral. 

“Instead of making videos about me, why don’t we talk about the gospel? Why don’t we have Bible study?” Poirot asks. “Why don’t we explore scripture instead of monetizing reaction videos where you call me a heretic and sell your book?”

Is There a Gen Z Revival? Maybe

Despite pockets of enthusiasm and profound stylistic and technological shifts—and an attendant media clamor—available data paint a more complicated picture of how young people are engaging with religion.

A decades-long decline of Christianity in the United States has at least slowed in recent years, according to research from Pew Research Center, whose 2023–2024 Religious Landscape Study showed 62 percent of respondents identifying as Christian, down from 78 percent in 2007 and 71 percent in 2014. 

Protestants make up a smaller percentage of the country’s Christians than they did in 2007, down from about half to 40 percent, and evangelicals have shrunk as a percentage of the overall adult population during the same period.

But evangelicals now make up a greater share of all Protestants, increasing from 51 to 58 percent. And among Protestants, those who identify as “nondenominational” has doubled since 2007, according to Pew.

In a study published last year, Christian research organization Barna reported that young people are driving a “groundswell of commitment to Jesus,” with 66 percent of U.S. adults professing a personal commitment to Jesus—a 12-percent increase over 2021, when commitment levels hit a 30-year low.

“This shift is not only statistically significant—it may be the clearest indication of meaningful spiritual revival in the United States,” the organization wrote in an April 2025 article announcing the results, which were based on interviews within nationwide random samples of more than 130,000 adults.

Barna notes Gen Z and millennials especially are driving the trend, a switch from previous tracking, which showed elders and boomers as more committed Christians.

Crucially, Barna’s study differentiates two findings—Christian self-identity and “commitment to Jesus”—that don’t always overlap. Almost three in 10 people who don’t identify as Christian are professing a personal commitment to Jesus (an all-time high, according to the organization).

Such could be the result of people returning to their faith—or new believers who are less comfortable identifying with organized religion, the “spiritual but not religious,” according to Barna.

Younger men are now more likely to follow Jesus than young women, a trend Hanson Woodruff notes has political overtones.

Rather than a huge religious revival among young men, what we are seeing is that they are “increasingly identifying religion as important in their lives,” while young women are disaffiliating, she said. “I think that’s actually probably the bigger trend.”

In her own research on “post-evangelical” progressive feminists in the digital age, she said, she has observed women disaffiliating with religious identity after experiencing sexism, or being turned off by other elements of theology.

Such individuals might still hold many of the same theological beliefs, but no longer attend church or identify as evangelical, while people who identify with the Republican Party may now associate with evangelicalism as more of a political identity, she said—“there has been some swapping.”

As Christianity has declined over the long term, national surveys have also charted a concurrent rise in “unaffiliated”—either agnostic, atheist, or “nothing in particular”—a group that has nearly doubled since 2007, according to both Pew and Public Religion Research Institute.

This group is also led by Gen Z.

A Cultural Wave

Young Christian influencers embracing travel, testimony, and technology appear to be in a collective growth spurt, and no one really knows what’s next.

Chang, who has a staff of 33 employees, said he wants to eventually plant churches in every state.

Poirot, who is still mostly a one-man band, would like to grow his ministry and hire employees.

Apffel remains circumspect about the future of the influencer era.

“When I look at these social media guys and gals, they’re just little corporations that will live and die based on their skill set,” he said. “They’re on a cultural wave that will probably disappear in the next 10 or 15 years.”

But he’s comforted, he said, by what he sees as a renewed interest in small community churches, and by the growing backlash to a problematic business model underpinning organized religion in the United States.

“We’re in the beginnings of a religious reform,” he said. “And this reform, I believe, is going to democratize the business model.”

In her own interviews of progressive evangelicals, Hanson Woodruff said, she found digital religious communities formed on social media might have provided some of what people were looking for—including a sense that they were not alone in their beliefs.

But most people also wanted an in-person community. 

As both religious and non-religious community organizations have disappeared from American life in recent decades, a trend accelerated by social media, she said, that desire may become more acute.

“I don’t know where it’s headed,” she said. “But I think there’s something about human beings that [includes] that desire for in-person communities, and I think religious media can’t fulfill all of that need.”