Stop Critiquing the Church Online and Help Reach People

Key takeaways

• Online critique costs very little. The pastors describe critics who sound bold in the comments and change their tone when invited to talk face to face.
• Complaining and helping are different jobs. Allen, a young adult pastor, says his frustration with influencers became a decision to join the work himself.
• Being known opens doors. Messaging every new follower by name led to real conversations, and in one case a baptism within hours.
• Hold the platform loosely. Both men warn that likes, followers and income can pull a pastor's heart away from the people in front of him.
• Beauty can draw people toward God. The church can meet people in the language they already speak, as long as it points them to Jesus.

Bold in the comments

On this episode of Beyond the Letter, host Adam Mesa sits down with Allen, a young adult pastor at Patriot Church. The conversation opens with a baseball hat. One of the pastors says he gets messages after he preaches that praise the sermon and then insult the hat. He jokes that he wishes he were that loyal to anything besides his marriage, and the two laugh about people who fight over universities they could never get into.

The joke leads to a more serious observation about how people behave online. One pastor tells of a woman who commented against him on nearly every post. When he invited her to a Zoom call, she opened by thanking him for his time and calling it an honor. He says that experience is part of why he now holds some things back.

They also talk about accounts that clip and react to other people's sermons. One pastor separates two kinds. If a church posts a clip publicly, he says, responding to it is fair game, and some accounts do it to teach biblical literacy. The harder case is the account that hunts for something to attack, with no care for whether anyone grows in faith, and gains attention and income in the process. He says he has seen some of those same critics delete comments and block people once the criticism turns toward them.

What the algorithm rewards

The pastors spend time on why the internet feels so angry. They describe Instagram as built around interaction, and people interact most when something offends them. TikTok, as they describe it, feeds a fast, happy kind of attraction, and Facebook has become a place of criticism and negativity.

One of them says he can tell a post is about to take off when the comments grow long and someone is hating on it. Another point they make is practical: the feed you see has been built brick by brick from what you engage with, and you do not have to keep scrolling. A person who keeps feeding the algorithm outrage will keep getting it back.

From hating on influencers to standing in the gap

Allen tells the story that gives the episode its heart. He says he saw influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers start getting speaking invitations, and in 2024 he watched one preach on a well-known stage. He and his pastor friends wondered how that could happen, since some of them had spent five to fifteen years serving in churches without anything close to that opportunity. He admits he was hating on it for a while.

Then a church member asked for more greeters and a bigger parking team but would not volunteer. Allen says he told the person to grab a sign or put on the yellow jacket, and then saw himself in that complaint. He was criticizing others for reaching a generation while not helping to reach it himself. As he put it, "I think our greatest vision comes out of our greatest frustration."

His conclusion was plain. In his words, "I have to be willing to stand in the gap if I really want to be able to complain about it". Teenagers in his youth ministry had also told him they heard the gospel differently from him, and that he should be on TikTok. He started posting. People have told him they bought their first Bible or gave their lives to Christ because of it, and some have driven two or three hours to meet him.

Reaching people by name

Allen also describes what his young adult ministry did with Instagram. Every person who followed the church account got a direct message, sent by a real person, with their name, details about the next event, and an offer to pray. He says about eight out of ten people liked the message and about four out of ten began a conversation, some of them twenty messages long. The ministry grew quickly, and other young adult pastors copied the practice.

He compares it to a sporting goods store where his first job taught him that a customer who holds the product is far more likely to buy it. He admits he cannot vouch for the exact numbers, but the idea stuck. His point about ministry is that "there's something about like feeling known".

One afternoon the team sent a message at four o'clock, with a service starting at seven. They did not read her reply until night. It said she was excited to come alone for the first time, and the next message was a video of her baptism. He says one story like that outweighs a hundred bad ones, and he quotes Craig Groeschel: "I'm willing to do anything short of sin to reach those who are lost."

Holding the platform loosely

Neither pastor is naive about the cost. Allen says he is a pastor first, that he keeps accountability around his wife and his ministry, and that he would cut social media at any moment if it distracted him. He has gone weeks without posting. He also names a danger he sees in younger creators: not sorting what God shows you privately from what is meant for everyone. He says he has had thoughts from his own study that felt like they were for him alone.

Adam speaks from years of professional social media work. He says he knows how addictive it is, how a few negative comments can change your mood, and how quickly a platform can start to feel like a job. He describes an email from Facebook offering payment for a set number of reels each month, and says that kind of offer can turn you into a slave to the process. He now keeps a team between himself and the numbers.

He also tells of a business contract, about six or seven years ago, that would have made his family close to a million dollars in a year. Signing it meant delaying a transition he had promised his father. He talked it over with his wife, Ashley, and turned it down. Of how he measures ministry, he says, "I don't base the reward based off income. I base the reward based off impact."

Beauty as an open door

The second half turns to why churches should care how they look. Adam argues that missionaries learn to contextualize the gospel for the people they serve, and that the same is needed at home. In his words, "the language we speak is marketing and branding", and a twenty-four-year-old who shops on TikTok all day will judge a church page before walking in.

Allen brings in Moses at the burning bush, where he sees attraction leading to an encounter with God:

The LORD’s angel appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the middle of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. Moses said, “I will go now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”

(Exodus 3:2-3, WEB)

Moses turned aside because the sight drew him. Allen suggests a church's page can work the same way, since people may come because something looks appealing, and as he says, "you leave differently because you encountered God". Adam adds that beauty is part of God's own nature, visible in creation, and that it takes real cost and skill to produce. He also points out that critics of modern church production often skip the churches that have none of it.

What this means for you

The conversation invites you to look at where your own words go. Before you criticize a pastor, a church or a creator online, ask whether you would say it to their face, and whether you are doing anything to help with what you say needs fixing.

It also asks what you are building when you post. If you lead a ministry, a team, a business or a household, you might ask who you could reach by name this week, and whether the attention you are chasing is slowly pulling your heart away from the people God has given you.