 With the rise of YouTube over the last 15 years, there have been numerous Christians that have jumped into the online space to utilize it for evangelism, discipleship, entertainment, education. Even in the last four years that I've been seriously making content, we've seen a drastic spike in the popularity of this Christian niche on YouTube. People seem to be clamoring for this type of content. But with this spike in popularity, it's presented its own problems and the formation of what I'm calling the cult of Christian YouTube. Today I'm gonna share with you what that looks like and how we can stop it. How we as creators and consumers can best use this platform for the glory of God. I wanna begin with my story. A lot of you know that I was raised in a Christian household. I was homeschooled with seven of my brothers and sisters and that provided a lot of opportunity to be flexible in my schedule and to pursue my own interests. At the time I had quite a few fluctuating interests, whether that was astronomy or geology or other things, but also one of the key interests of mine and passions was Christian theology and digging deeper in my faith. YouTube then became my gateway into growing in my faith and my knowledge of theology. Now at the time I knew it wasn't good for me to idolize any of these YouTubers or social media people that I was watching, but if I'm honest, I kinda did. As a dyslexic kid who had a hard time reading in general, I was much more committed to my subscription feed than I was to getting in the word every day. I would think to myself, well they reference a lot of scripture and so that's basically the equivalent of me sitting down and doing my devotions. I got it actually on tap here with these guys because they go more in depth and they help me learn and explore. I would repeat a lot of things that they would say, cling to their interpretations of specific scriptures. Now I should clarify that a lot of these channels did vocalize the importance of being connected with a local church and not just taking their word for it but searching the scriptures for yourself and for that I'm truly appreciative. But to be honest, as a young Christian I found it a lot easier just to hang on every word and trust that they knew what they were talking about. I'm really grateful that I got plugged into solid people from early on and that was largely credit to my older brother and him kind of sorting through the muck to find people that were worth listening to and pointing me to them and that was really helpful. So a lot of my spiritual growth has come as a result of getting plugged in with those really solid YouTubers and channels and podcasts and that's great but my mentality wasn't great. I'd be so attentive and excited about what my favorite YouTuber had posted that particular day but then at church the next day I'd have a hard time paying attention during his sermon. Now as time went on and I matured in the faith it became that much more easy to disconnect from the idea that I had to agree with everything these guys said and instead focus on okay, hey evaluating does this line up with the Bible and take the meat and spit out the bones. To acknowledge that I really respected somebody and a lot of what they said but at the same time we could still have some key disagreements on theological issues and that was okay. That was a freeing moment for me because all of a sudden I don't just have to focus on agreeing with my hero but now it's like let me go to the word of God, let me see what it says, let me see if these things line up. But then we enter into the next era me entering the YouTube space for myself. Now the reason I started YouTube was twofold. I wanted people to come to know Jesus and walk with him and I also wanted to express my own creativity. After dropping out of university which is a story in and of itself I can share that story if you guys would like to hear it let me know in the comments down below but I really got serious about making YouTube content and just seeing if God would do something with it. Now at the time I was very passionate but also very insecure which is kind of a weird combination where you're really motivated to get stuff out there into the world but also hyper aware of this push and this need to provide value for people to see me as worthy or an authority or smart. Because of that mentality the outflowing of that was in one of my first videos I actually wore a suit jacket as hilarious as that sounds me wearing like a suit to post a YouTube video just sounds hilarious and it was pretty funny but it was all out of the mentality and the mindset that I want people to perceive me as smart that I have something worthwhile to say that I know what I'm talking about but these days I have grown so far from there I hope you can see that that that is not my mentality at all. You see I had to come to the point where I surrendered my desire to be perceived as an expert or smart or some sort of authority in exchange for vulnerability and authenticity but then the channel began to get a little bit of steam in 2021. I began to experience a little bit of imposter syndrome. I asked myself like why are so many people following me? I'm not a Bible whiz like Mike Winger and I'm not an expert evangelist like Ray Comfort. I'm just some guy but then I came across a Bible verse that is now one of my favorite verses at Second Corinthians 12, nine. It says, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses that the power of Christ may rest on me. So Christ is seen as more when I am insignificant that he works out of these lowly insignificant humble places to show how magnificent he is so we can boast in him all the more and say God did this, it was not me. And so having that mentality, having that mindset I was like okay well now I'm just gonna show up now I'm just gonna try to bring what I have to the table to steward my audience as best as I can in order to bring God glory that was a mentality but at the same time you still experience that pressure that people put on Christian YouTubers to say everything right and be smart and come up with interesting things and like you experience this pressure then in some ways the pedestal that people put you on that you know you're not even close to. One of my favorite sayings is that pressure is a privilege and I think the fact that people do put pressure on Christian YouTubers or anybody in general that is a privilege because it means that you have power in some ways, you have things to steward and you should do it well and wisely but at the same time that pedestal that people put you on is not good. Now thankfully I know a lot of Christian YouTubers that are extremely humble and transparent people they don't claim total authority, they don't try to play into the cult of Christian YouTube they actually actively fight against it which is actually one of the wonderful things about this community is that we are actively pushing against a lot of us actively pushing against this idea that you need to listen to us in everything but rather turn to the scriptures see what the scripture says be connected with a local community don't just be a nomad in the wilderness doing your own thing, trying to figure it out for yourself but rather get plugged into something local yeah use us as supplemental we want to be an encouragement to you we want to be a resource for you that's why we do it but we are not the ultimate but also for the audience there's a responsibility there as well because we need to be saying hey, you need to be looking at the scriptures but for you guys watching this as well you need to make sure that you are connected with people in your life, not just people online that can speak into your life that can encourage you, that can lead you towards truth that can keep you accountable you can't just operate in this online sphere as if that is sufficient because it's not you need to be in person with people you need to be and I know there's circumstances where that's challenging right and there's seasons where oh it's not gonna work out and you're not connected with anywhere and like you're still trying to figure that out I understand that I'm just trying to emphasize that when you are disconnected you are easily captivated by any particular personality and I know how that is I was in the same boat and you don't know if that person maybe that person is great and you're safe and they're guiding you in a good direction and that's awesome but what if they're not and what if they're not leading you in a good direction and you put that person up on a pedestal to where all they say is gospel and I would never want you to put me in that position too because I don't deserve that I don't want that I want you guys to come here as a place to chat about things of life and culture and how we can navigate walking with Jesus and what it means to follow him but I don't want you coming here with the expectation that you are going to be completely spiritually nourished it's like treating an apple as a meal right you're like I eat this apple that's good I'm full no you're gonna get malnourished you really are that apple yeah it can be a nice side to that meal but it can't be the full thing and that's why I want you guys as an audience to be committed to being plugged into the scripture yourself to be plugged into spiritual disciplines to pray to be discerning and so these are the two things that we can do as creators and consumers is to individually be accountable to one another to say we don't have it all together we're still working through things we're still working through the scripture we have accountability we have people in our life that are speaking into it and you do the same and that way there's no weird pedestal where one person rises up and everybody all the other you know hundreds of thousands of followers are just like whatever this dude says that's exactly it I think of Proverbs 18 one where it says a man who isolates himself seeks his own desires he rages against all wise judgment so we need to be in community thanks so much for watching this video if you enjoyed it subscribe because I'm putting out new videos every single week a huge shout out to everyone on Patreon you guys know that are on Patreon we have so much fun over there we have a discord we do bi-weekly video chats there's exclusive videos merch discounts it's a lot of fun and you're also helping the ministry keep going and growing it's my passion it's my mission to equip people to follow Jesus daily and you enable me to do that by supporting on Patreon so check it out today thanks so much guys and I will see you later God bless