You probably know her voice better than you know your pastor’s. She shows up in your feed every morning with a devotional thought, a verse graphic, a calm reassurance that God sees you. You’ve never met her. You never will. But somewhere along the way, her take on a passage may have surprised you theologically, your first instinct wasn’t to open your Bible. It was to trust her.
That’s not a confession. It’s just how a lot of us are discipled now. And it’s worth asking honestly: have Christian influencers quietly become our pastors, without ever being asked to carry that weight?
The short answer is that many of them have taken on a shepherding role they were never actually equipped, accountable, or called to hold, and the Bible gives us real, practical tools to sort out which voices deserve our trust and which ones just deserve our attention.
What a Pastor Is Actually For
Scripture is specific about the role of a pastor or elder, and it’s worth remembering what that role was designed to do before we compare it to anything else. Ephesians 4:11-12 says Christ gave the church “the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.” A pastor’s job isn’t just to inform you. It’s to equip you, know you, and walk with you toward maturity in Christ.
That role also comes with real accountability. Hebrews 13:17 tells believers to have confidence in their leaders because “they keep watch over you as those who must give an account.” A pastor answers for how they’ve shepherded the people in front of them. They’re known by a real congregation, correctable by real elders, and present for the actual mess of people’s lives, not just the highlight reel.
What Changed With Influencer Culture
A Christian influencer doesn’t have any of that built in. There’s no membership, no elders, no one asking how they’re actually living, no structure where you could raise a concern and expect a real answer. What you have instead is… you feel like you know them, but the relationship only runs one direction.
The platforms themselves also reward a different thing than a pulpit does. An algorithm doesn’t care whether a teaching is true. It cares whether it keeps you scrolling, and content that’s comforting, dramatic, or simple tends to perform better than content that’s careful. Paul warned about exactly this dynamic almost two thousand years before social media existed. In 2 Timothy 4:3-4 he wrote, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” That’s not a description of a scandal. It’s a description of a preference, one an algorithm is perfectly built to serve.
Give Credit Where It’s Due
Before this turns into a takedown of every Christian creator online, it’s worth being fair. A lot of Christian content online is genuinely good. Some creators are theologically careful, transparent about their limits, and quick to point people back to their own local church and their own Bible instead of positioning themselves as the final word. For someone who can’t get to a service, who’s in a season of church hurt, or who simply needed a reminder of God’s faithfulness at 11pm on a hard night, a well-made video or a thoughtful caption can be a real gift.
The goal here isn’t suspicion toward every Christian voice with an audience. It’s clarity about what that voice can and can’t be for you.
Where It Tends to Go Wrong
A few patterns show up again and again when an influencer starts functioning as a pastor rather than a helpful voice alongside one.
The first is teaching without accountability. Someone builds a following, starts offering confident takes on doctrine, prophecy, or how God works, and answers to no one but their own comment section. The second is popularity replacing discernment: a teaching spreads because it’s quotable and emotionally satisfying, not because it’s been tested against Scripture. The third, and maybe the quietest one, is substitution. Someone stops showing up to their actual church, stops building real relationships with believers who can see their life up close, and lets a screen stand in for a body of people who actually know them.
How to Test What You’re Hearing
Scripture doesn’t leave us without a method here. The Bereans in Acts 17:11 are held up as an example of “more noble character” specifically because “they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Notice that: even Paul, an apostle, was checked against Scripture. No Christian voice, however gifted or popular, is above that same test.
First John 4:1 adds another layer: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Testing isn’t cynicism. It’s obedience.
Jesus himself gave a simple, practical measure in Matthew 7:15-16: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them.” Fruit takes time to see. It shows up in whether a teacher’s life matches their message, whether they can be corrected, whether their teaching consistently points people to Christ or consistently points people to themselves.
And Galatians 1:10 offers a question worth asking of any teacher, including the ones you love following: “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” A voice that only ever tells you what feels good, and never what’s true even when it’s uncomfortable, is worth a second look.
A Gentle Word If You’ve Leaned on a Screen More Than a Church
If reading this made you a little uneasy about how much of your spiritual life has happened through a screen, that’s not a reason for shame. It’s just an invitation to recalibrate. God’s design was never a solo faith fed only by content, however good that content is. Hebrews 13:7 says, “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” That verse assumes you actually know them, close enough to watch how their life turns out, not just close enough to watch their highlight reel.
First Peter 5:2-3 gives a picture of what a real shepherd looks like: someone who cares for the people in front of them “not because you must, but because you are willing… not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.” That’s a relationship built on presence, not just content. If you don’t currently have a pastor or a church community who knows your actual life, that’s worth praying about and pursuing, not because online content is worthless, but because it was never meant to carry what only a real, embodied church family can.
Where This Leaves You
Following Christian creators isn’t wrong. Being encouraged by someone you’ve never met isn’t wrong. The danger isn’t the following, it’s the substitution, when a voice you can’t verify quietly starts carrying the weight only Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and a real church community were ever meant to carry.
So keep following the accounts that point you back to Jesus. Keep enjoying the encouragement. But hold every teaching, including this post, up against God’s Word, and let a real, present community of believers know your actual life. That’s not distrust. That’s discernment, and it’s one of the most loving things you can practice, both for yourself and for the people who might one day look to you the same way.
You are chosen and loved by our Heavenly Father, known by Him fully, not just followed by a feed.
If this spoke to you, you might also enjoy Can an AI Chatbot Really Be Jesus? A Biblical Guide to Testing the Spirits or Identity & Self-Worth in Christ.
