Priest Uses Social Media to Share ‘Good News’: ‘I Can Help People’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Father Mike Schmitz, a Minnesota-based priest who has become popular on social media, recently shared how social media can be a great tool for encouraging others and sharing about God.
In a discussion with Fox News Digital, he said, “How incredible is it that we live in an age where we have this this tool… in that sense of just being able to say, ‘Oh my gosh, I can help people that never would meet me [in person]…That’s a big piece of the impetus behind this. There’s something to be said, and there’s good news to be shared.”
Schmitz also shared a story of a young woman who came to faith in the most unlikely of places: TikTok.
“What came across her TikTok’s For You Page was scripture, and people praying, and she just… started praying and started reading the Bible, because it came up on her TikTok. And [her faith] just got strengthened and deepened,” he explained. “She was raised Catholic and kind of sort of prayed, kind of sort of did the thing, sure…But it was when TikTok started saying, ‘Okay, you can pray like this, you can read the Bible like this, here’s a message for you from the Lord in this TikTok…it gave her this strength, and it gave her this faith that she never had in the midst of COVID.”
The priest said that this woman credited TikTok for drawing her closer to God.
Movieguide® previously reported on the pros and cons of social media use.
“The technology can connect people and keep them afloat in difficult situations,” it said. “This healthy use of social media was found more commonly in older users, suggesting that the technology does more harm than good under a certain age. However, this depends on various factors, meaning no specific guidance can be given on when social media should be introduced.”
The widespread ability to share the Gospel is one good thing that has come from social media, and it may help reach people in a nation that is falling away from God.
Schmitz commented last year on the decline of faith in the US.
“People are more and more saying that they’re spiritual, but not religious, and that’s kind of a common phrase,” he said. ”That’s why the polls come in like: ‘How important is religion to you?’ ‘Well, not very.’ Why? But if you ask them how important is spirituality to them, that comes in incredibly high, and that reveals a couple of things to me. One is it reveals that [in] the human spirit… we still recognize that we’re made for more, we still recognize that there is something more out there.”
Schmitz reaches people through social media and his “The Bible in a Year” podcast.
Last year, “Schmitz’s show was ranked second among all U.S. podcasts on Apple. Schmitz has a new show, “The Catechism in a Year,” which at one point ranked third overall on Spotify, behind only “The Joe Rogan Experience” and “Huberman Lab,” a show hosted by the Stanford University neuroscientist Andrew Huberman,” the Washington Post reported.
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