By Movieguide® Staff
Australian evangelist Christine Cain unpacked what it means to be a Christian influencer, today and in the future.
“The amount of people that want to be Christian influencers is stunning to me,” she said while appearing on the “Mature Me” podcast. “As a career, because we’ve monetized it and marketed it…it’s so fascinating to me.”
Cain continued, “Of all these gifts, I’m not hearing anyone ask for the gift of helps or the gift of hospitality…maybe we need to get back to teaching some of these things that are actual gifts given by the spirit of God to build the church of God, so that the church of God could be who [they’re] called to be on the earth.”
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“That, to me, is a little bit of a danger,” she concluded. “We are compartmentalizing, as a separate career choice, a Christian influencer, when we are all Christian influencers. If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a Christian influencer. That’s a very big thing that I think we’re going to have to wrestle with moving into the future.”
The Hollywood Reporter recently published a piece on Christian influencing, focusing on the popular Schnacky family, who founded the JWLKRS Worship Collective.
“We started to realize there was such a big need for people to be encouraged,” Allie Schnacky said. “For people to feel like they belong to a family.”
Her brother, Noah, added, “We don’t put our faith in any man. What we’re trying to do is get away from the left versus right. It’s up [with God]. It’s always been up.”
While Christian influencers are more popular than ever, earning millions of social media followers and podcast streams, some, like Caine, have warned people to be aware of “false teachers.”
During an episode of the “Ask Pastor John” podcast, theologian and Desiring God founder John Piper told listeners, “Set your standards high. Listen to people who are truly God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated, Spirit-dependent, who bear the marks in their lives of authenticity.”
“Don’t set the bar so low that you only stop listening to people if they can be properly called false teachers,” he continued. “Lots of people are teachers who are simply misguided and unhelpful in many ways, but might not come under the ban of being called a false teacher.”
While there are certainly pitfalls to look out for when consuming content from any influencer online, Cain’s words are a wonderful reminder that we are all Christian influencers, with or without a social media platform.
Read Next: As Church Attendance Declines, Leaders, Influencers Look To The Web To Aid Ministry
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