In this episode of the My First Million podcast, the hosts discuss the surprising growth trajectory of Christianity—approximately 66 million new adherents per year and a projected 3.3 billion believers by 2050. They explore how this expanding market creates entrepreneurial opportunities across several domains. First, they examine digital tithing platforms like Pushpay and Tithely, likening them to a "Venmo for churches" and noting the $4 billion annual processing volume and potential for streamlined church accounting. Next, they consider youth‑focused engagement strategies: fashion and merchandise (e.g., Preacher Sneakers, Christian‑backed streetwear), influencer‑preacher branding (Carl Lentz, Hillsong), and faith‑based music. They also brainstorm media products tailored to Gen Z, such as beautifully designed Bibles, distilled or illustrated story adaptations, kid‑friendly versions, and video content that dramatizes biblical narratives. The conversation touches on cross‑faith applicability of digital giving, the rise of digital donation percentages, and the personal constraints (time, non‑religious background) that prevent the hosts from pursuing these ideas themselves. Throughout, the tone remains conversational and exploratory, with an overall optimistic view of the untapped $‑billion‑plus market within modern Christianity.
Chapters
Okay, so what are some of the ideas that are interesting to you?
Well, last week when I was sitting in, you guys mentioned that religion overall is declining, and I didn't think that was right. And so I looked at the numbers, and actually there's 66 million people coming— and I'm just gonna speak towards Christianity— 66 million new Christians every single year, right? People being born into it, people converting, and so on, with only 26 million people leaving the church, which means 40 million, right?
Net, net, net How about net positive?
3.3 billion by 2050. Right. Which is pretty incredible. And I don't know on Instagram if anyone that's listening to the podcast follows, but there's a lot of actual Christian entrepreneurs and Christian influencers. So you have people like Carl Lance, Rich Wilkerson Jr., Voo Church, even—
let me ask, are you a religious guy or are you interested in this from a just a curiosity and business point of view?
Both.
Both. Okay.
So I'm part of a men's group, like a men's Christian group. And it's interesting and like kind of diving into the idea itself. A lot of my friends have kids that are growing up. Every single way that the church traditionally engages with this younger demographic is outdated.
Right.
Read the Bible. Read the Bible. Listen to me talk.
But sit down and listen.
Exactly. There's no way right now. There's no media company coming out. There's really nothing out there for new age consumers, Gen Zs, millennials to actually engage with the church.
Right.
So we're thinking this is not like— this is an area where there's 40 million people every single year joining. That's a pretty fantastic growth rate. Billions of built-in customers. And by 2050, obviously they're getting born right now for the most part, or they're people like us. It's like, how are they going to engage with the church itself? There's, there's only a handful of companies that are somewhat looking into this. But if we look at even the way that culture is trending, look at Kanye West's last album. Yeah, legitimately a gospel album. Look at some of the brands that are really taking off right now. Fear of God, Jerry Lorenzo, right? A Christian-backed fashion company.
Right.
But there's only a handful of them. The opportunity is massive to create either a media company or, you know, you could be selling books, you could— whatever it might be to engage with those younger consumers.
So I got a couple ideas. So someone in— someone from the community, like you said, somebody who's taken action, he messaged me. He said, give me 3 months. Mm-hmm. He said, give me 3 months. What? Okay. Give me 3 months. And he sent me a link and he, he, uh, and, and not, you know, I hope he's okay with me sharing this. I'll ask him afterwards. We could bleep this whole thing out otherwise. But he said, give me 3 months and I'm gonna show you, um, that I can get this business off the ground. I'm gonna get on your show. Wow. And he goes, what is, I was like, what's the business? And he goes, tithing.
Wow.
So he goes, uh, digital tithing. So basically, uh, —let's give it an analogy— Venmo for churches. So he goes, there's this company called Pushpay that is currently processing $4 billion a year of digital donations inside a church. So instead of passing the hat around, they pass, I don't know, the QR code around or whatever it is. It's like you can donate to the church through, through an app. And Tithely is another one. So Pushpay, $4.2 billion, that's their processed amount. They took $98 million. Wow. So this is a very simple fintech company to build distribution. You can tell how you would distribute it to customers through the churches themselves who have a high incentive because, you know, if you're a church, you need to ask for money and then you grow or you don't ask for money and then you shrink and potentially close.
Even if we think about this from a church's perspective as well, it'll help them with all their accounting, right? Every week, every Sunday, Saturday, whenever you're going to church, they're accepting cash, right? Someone has to sit down and like sit down, you know, is this tithing money? Is this for something else? So just the accounting of it. Imagine how much more simple that'll be.
They said 15%, I was looking into a little bit, 15% of all donations now in the churches is digital. But I bet that that's, so I bet that that's already, you know, you know, fivefold increase from where it was a few years ago. And I bet it's gonna go further. I think it gets to 30, 40% over time. And, and so this is just churches and this, you know, just one faith. So there's, A, you can copy an existing model, take it to another faith. You could just compete against these. So let's say tithing is one, let's say, you know, surface area where you might go for. What's another?
Well, just going on that one point right there, what is really interesting is, did you see Bird come out with payments this week? Yes. Do you think Bird is gonna get into, they're gonna have Bird payments at the front of all of our churches?
Yeah, exactly, no, I don't think, I think Bird is in the sort of last-minute Hail Mary type thing.
Yeah, okay, okay, well, interesting. What is another one? The biggest one to me just comes down to engagement, right? You already have, a passionate community of young people that want to be engaged with the church. What we've seen a lot of is merchandise, right? So how can you physically show that you were engaged with the Christian or Catholic or whatever your church actually is, right? So influencer marketing obviously being big. Preacher Sneakers is a really interesting Instagram. Is that happening?
It's big. Preacher Sneakers. Preacher Sneakers.
Well, Preacher Sneakers shows what all the preachers globally are actually wearing right now. So it's like, how can you create a brand directly for them themselves?
And that's the perfect bridge of like the faith and, you know, Gen Z, you know, crossover there.
So that really gets me excited. Yeah.
So I like the media business idea. I think that's a pretty straightforward one, although probably not the most lucrative. We had talked a little bit about Beautiful Bibles or Beautiful Bibles to talk about this. I like this idea a lot. Well, I'm just—
you think to yourself, it's you. If you have— if you were a Christian or whatever your religion might be, let's just say for Christianity's sake, you go to someone's house, I guarantee you their Bible is hidden away because it got passed down to them. They got it for free. It's in a drawer. It's, it's hideous. But if you think of what is on— I shouldn't say hideous, but it's not the best looking book. Yeah, I'm a Christian. It's okay. But if I think what is on people's coffee tables right now, it's Kinfolk, right? It's things that they're going, that they're buying, that are beautifully bound, that they're visual. And so I think there's this really great opportunity to to reinvent what the Bible actually looks like and create like the Kinfolk of Bibles.
Yes. So number one most selling book of all time. Yes, the Bible. That's a good place to start. The IP again, you can print your own Bible, so it's not like you're going to go reprint Fifty Shades of Grey and get sued. Yeah, you can go reprint this and it could work. You can remix it so you can simplify, you can distill, you can pull out certain anecdotes. I love this idea. So the only reason I'm not doing this idea is because I'm not religious. Uh-huh. Uh, but even me, I'm just like, well, maybe I, maybe I would do this.
Even know what's like, uh, I love, uh, how you just said pull out specific books. Yeah. So Netflix did an, uh, really, uh, a pretty interesting movie on the Book of Mark. Right. And so like, how can you take some of the stories that were within there and actually have them come to life?
Double-click into those. Yeah. Yeah, I like that a lot. So, so I think this, generally speaking, taking the sort of number one most bestselling book of all time, or if you look at the Gita or the Quran or whatever, these are all in the top sellers of all time. And if you can, you know, put a remix on it, so aesthetically pleasing is where I would go with it first. Uh, the other side of it is, you know, distilling it down for kids, making it more kid-friendly, or, uh, like you said, going into sort of some of the lesser told or, or pulling out some of the anecdotes and stories and really bringing them to life in a different way.
40 million new customers a year.
Right. Do it as a YouTube channel. Do it as a book. I think these are— I think this is really interesting. If someone's doing this, reach out to me. I want to help you make this successful. I put a lot of thought into how you would go about doing this, and I genuinely think this is a really, really, really fascinating idea. And this influencer preacher thing, what's up with that?
It's so— it's funny, I thought a lot about it, and guys in my men's group, and I think it's a really great way to bring kind of the youth back into like Christianity, for instance. But they have millions of followers, you know, they're with Bieber all the time.
Karl Lentz is the first one I saw that was doing this. Karl Lentz, the biggest. You got to think he was leading Hillsong, right?
And if you dressed a little differently, you could pass as like a Carl Lentz. That might be, that might be my next move after this. We'll see if they reach out.
I saw him and I was like, this guy's good looking, this is a handsome fella, stylish, funny, fantastic speaker, speaks in like common, you know, common tongue, not like, you know, he'll use slang. Yeah. Um, and I was like, no wonder this guy's friends with all the basketball players and, you know, musicians that everybody knows about. He reformed Bieber.
100%. No, it's really interesting. And he's speaking to them on their level. That is really the biggest thing. And so people understand that this is like being— I want to be a strong Christian, let's say, and I want it to be aspirational yet attainable. I can be him, right? Instead of like the typical preacher you'll see at a lot of the churches, it's like you could look up to someone like Carl Lentz being like, that is someone I want to aspire to be, right?
And there's also sort of a musical component. So he's with the Hillsong Church, I think, and they put out like tons of great you know, faith-based music. I think that faith-based music is a pretty big space. So here's a question I had about this, right? Because I've brainstormed these, I broke some of them down, I've done a bit of research. And so then I asked myself, I believe in these ideas, okay, but I'm not doing, I'm not doing these ideas. Yep. The big part of it for me is just time. I got a lot of, I do the podcast, I have a job, I have, you know, other stuff going on. So for someone like you, entrepreneurial Christian, Why don't you do this idea? I'm one of these.
Well, I'm in the same place as you. I'm also very limited. It's all time limited. I will do anything to help these get off the ground. Any of the ideas we'll talk about, right? It's like you want to see people take these really nascent, interesting ideas that are big and help them come to life. And so if I had more time on my hands, I would love to help it.
