There was a time when people owned what they believed. They purchased books, memorized catechisms, and built libraries that outlived them. Faith was a possession — something to be stewarded, guarded, confessed. Yet with the industrial age disconnecting people from physical place, the internet disconnecting information from its tangible medium, and postmodernity disconnecting the self from truth, Christian ministry has become disconnected from all three. No longer constrained by place, tangibility, or objectivity, the faith once and for all delivered to the saints has, in economic terms, completed its transformation from a product to a service. The Savior, his Gospel, and his Kingdom are no longer nouns—they are adjectives used to market life improvement products to the Christian market. We are offered “gospel living,” “gospel diversity,” or “gospel culture.” We are told we must support “kingdom living” or “kingdom diversity” in order to display “Christ-likeness.” And yet these goals – much like the latest technology – will never arrive packaged within this spirituality as a service is the presumption that the recipe for such broad and undefined goals can
Our appliances are designed with built-in obsolescence. Software is released in a never-ending beta status, sold with promised rather than included features. We are firmly in the subscription age, and predictably, our spiritual retailers have followed suit. In contemporary evangelicalism, we no longer own the truth; we access it. We don’t possess convictions; we subscribe to them. And like all subscription models, this new evangelical economy depends on keeping us perpetually unfulfilled, or perhaps “always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7).
From Brokers of Truth to Managers of Engagement
To be sure, this change has not been sudden. The shift from pastor as “thus saith the Lord” truth-teller to “friend of all” life coach finds its roots in the knowledge specialization that slowly overtook the academy at the turn of the twentieth century. The traditional, biblical view that the pursuit of knowledge is a narrowing process of subtractive exclusivity (a universal knowledge, if you will) was overtaken by an expansive knowledge industry, where not only did knowledge grow exponentially, but its fields were no longer expected to synthesize. Since 1900, university/college faculty have increased 34-fold. ceased encouraged to for the purpose of unified at the point of a divine knowledge giver gave way to In No Place for Truth (1993), theologian David Wells lamented that pastors had ceased to be brokers of truth and had instead become friends of everyone. They once stood in the pulpit as heralds of revelation; now they stand on platforms as curators of conversations.
That was 30 years ago. Today, the shift is all but complete.
The modern evangelical leader no longer mediates God’s Word to His people; he manages an audience. His task is not to proclaim truth, but to maintain engagement. He trades authority for relatability, doctrine for dialogue, conviction for content cadence.
This is the rise of the discipleship funnel — an endless sequence of podcasts, conferences, videos, and books, all promising new insight but delivering only the next installment. It is discipleship as perpetual preview.
From Possession to Subscription
Our culture has already trained us for this.
We no longer buy albums, movies, or books; we stream them. We no longer store what we love; we scroll until we’re bored. The system’s genius lies in monetizing incompletion. You pay not because you’ve arrived, but because you never do.
Evangelicalism has copied the model. Doctrinal conviction has been replaced by theological access. Instead of confessing a faith once delivered, believers now curate playlists of preachers, theologians, and thought leaders who match their mood and feed.
Truth, in this new system, is on demand — always updated, always reframed, always one nuance away from being truly understood. It’s Christianity as a content ecosystem. And the algorithm isn’t digital — it’s cultural.
The Evangelical Influencer Economy
The streaming model has its stars — the men who made it respectable to treat Christianity as a subscription service.
Tim Keller: The Founder of the Stream
Timothy Keller mastered the tone of the age: theology translated into cultural idiom, packaged as dialogue rather than declaration. He didn’t so much say things as frame them. Every doctrine was “complex,” every issue “nuanced,” every cultural controversy “an opportunity for conversation.”
His influence taught a generation of pastors not to confront the world but to contextualize it — indefinitely. Keller was the original platform theologian: articulate, urbane, endlessly discussable. He made deferral sound profound.
Carl Trueman: The Intellectual Curator
Carl Trueman once stood apart from “Big Eva,” diagnosing its commodified evangelicalism with characteristic precision. Yet his more recent posture — typified in essays like Goodbye Big Eva, Hello Gig Eva — remains curiously within the same ecosystem he critiques. The audience is the same, the circuits identical, the posture familiar: reflective but safe.
His is the “subscription critique” — thoughtful enough to retain the audience, mild enough to avoid cancellation. The funnel stays open.
J.D. Greear: The Missional Manager
If Wells’s “friend of everyone” needed a case study, J.D. Greear provides it. Every controversy — from gender pronouns to cultural engagement — yields not a clear statement but another series, another book, another “better conversation.” His role is to keep the audience talking. Clarity ends the dialogue; ambiguity grows it.
Neil Shenvi: The Disciple of the Funnel
Shenvi’s attempt to be “critical but not critical-theory” epitomizes subscription epistemology. It sounds intellectually responsible but functions rhetorically like a streaming recommendation: “If you liked clarity, you’ll love nuance.”
Each new paper, each podcast debate, promises the final synthesis but never arrives. It’s perpetual beta theology — always updating, never settled.
Renting Conviction
This is what it means to “rent” conviction. You adopt a stance temporarily, emotionally, contextually. You hold beliefs the way you hold a Netflix login: as long as it works for you.
In the ownership model, the Church passed down the faith once for all delivered (Jude 3). Truth was fixed, even if it was unfashionable. In the subscription model, truth is flexible, as long as it stays marketable.
We’ve gone from “Here I stand” to “Here’s my current take.”
Theology is no longer a deposit to guard, but a stream to curate.
And like all streaming services, the evangelical industry survives by producing more — more conversations, more conferences, more content drops — anything to keep us “engaged.” The result is that Christians consume endlessly and believe nothing firmly.
The Marketed Church
The discipleship funnel is the perfect religious corollary to the attention economy. It thrives on the illusion of depth, the promise of finality just out of reach.
- Every “crisis” becomes a new sermon series.
- Every social shift becomes “an opportunity for engagement.”
- Every doctrinal controversy becomes “a conversation we need to have.”
The result is a church that mimics Silicon Valley — a perpetual beta version of itself, always updating, never arriving. Theological finality would end the funnel; doctrinal clarity would cancel the subscription.
Cancel the Subscription
The prophets never invited Israel into a dialogue. Jesus never asked His hearers to “rethink” the kingdom in light of new cultural trends. The apostles didn’t launch discussion guides; they proclaimed truth.
The gospel isn’t a product drop. It’s a deposit to be guarded (2 Tim. 1:14). It’s not streamed content; it’s revelation — fixed, public, and final.
To recover the Church’s integrity, pastors must once again become brokers of truth, not managers of engagement.
There’s no “next episode” of the faith. Christ is the final Word.
