Fishing in the Wrong Waters - Rediscovering Evangelism in the Age of the Scroll

Pastors today are working harder than ever to reach people. Sermons are online. Devotionals are online. Worship is online. Churches are faithfully casting their nets into every digital space they know how to use.

But something has shifted beneath our boat.

We are fishing faithfully - but not where the fish are.

We need to cast our net on the other side of the boat—once we figure out where that is.

The Mission Field Has Quietly Shifted

Barna’s research over the last decade has revealed a surprising pattern: spiritual openness is rising, especially among younger adults. At the same time, trust in institutions — including churches continues to fall, a trend reflected across multiple national studies.

“74% of U.S. adults want to grow spiritually, and 44% say they are more open to God today than before the pandemic.”

— Barna Group, Spiritual Openness in America (2023)

“Confidence in major U.S. institutions remains at or near record lows.”

—Gallup, Faith in U.S. Institutions (2023)

Together, these findings reveal a paradox pastors feel every week: spiritual hunger is growing, while trust in church institutions is shrinking. People are not rejecting God. They are exploring faith in new ways: privately, digitally, and anonymously.

For centuries, the church cast its evangelistic nets — sermons, teaching, and proclamation — into predictable waters: congregations, relationships, and trusted ministry circles. Those waters and those nets still matter. They always will. But the largest body of spiritually open people today are not swimming in those waters, and as a result, they are not encountering those nets.

And even though churches have embraced digital tools with remarkable faithfulness — posting sermons, livestreams, worship sets, and devotionals — those efforts overwhelmingly reach people who already know us, already trust us, or are already searching for Christian content.

The spiritually open—who are not yet seeking—live somewhere else entirely.

They are scrolling.

Three Kinds of Christians — And Why Behavior Matters More Than Composition

When pastors think of “Christians,” they usually imagine the people in their pews. But in the digital world, three very different groups appear—not judgments, but descriptive lenses:

• North American Christians — churched, sermon‑familiar, institutionally shaped, defined by cultural identity.

• Global Christians — younger, rapidly growing, non‑Western, shaped by global and linguistic identity.

• Digital Christians — defined not by identity but by shared online behavior: following pastors, engaging Christian content, and clustering in faith‑based spaces.

These distinctions matter, but only to a point. Composition can tell us who someone is connected to, but it cannot tell us what captures their attention. Identity explains affiliation and background, but it cannot explain why someone stops for Scripture in the digital feed. Behavior reveals openness; identity does not.

And when we look at who is pausing for Scripture in the scroll, we find something surprising: they do not behave like any of these groups—not even Digital Christians. They are something else entirely.

The Pre‑Seeker: A New Kind of Spiritually Open Person

Pastors know the seeker — the person who is actively searching for God, reading Scripture, visiting churches, reading Christian books, and asking questions.

But the people pausing for Scripture in the scroll do not fit this traditional seeker or Digital Christian framework. The digital age has given rise to someone different: the Pre‑Seeker.

A Pre‑Seeker is spiritually open but not searching. They are curious but cautious. They are drawn to Scripture but wary of institutions. They want truth, but they want it without pressure, commentary, or personality attached. They want to explore without being seen.

They do not Google spiritual questions.

They do not click on sermon thumbnails.

They do not follow pastors or churches.

They do not complete contact cards.

They live entirely inside the scroll.

And this is where a deeper shift becomes clear: the Pre‑Seeker is not drawn to ministry. They are not the typical Digital Christian. Digital Christians follow pastors. Digital Christians follow churches. Digital Christians follow personalities.

Pre‑seekers do not.

They want dignity, privacy, and space to explore without pressure. They want the Word, before they want the presenter.

And because of this, they are invisible to most of our digital ministry efforts.

Scripture gives us a pattern for this kind of audience.

Mars Hill and the Synagogue: Why We Have Not Seen the Pre‑Seeker

Paul preached in two very different environments.

In the synagogue, he spoke to people who already believed in God, already knew the Scriptures, and were already inside the religious community. This is the world of Digital Christians —people who follow pastors, engage with Christian content, and live inside Christian networks.

On Mars Hill in Athens, he spoke to strangers. They did not know him. They were not looking for him. They were spiritually curious but uncommitted. They simply paused long enough to listen. Mars Hill was not hostile to faith – it was simply unfamiliar with it.

The digital world has both synagogues and Mars Hill.

Facebook, Instagram, and most of our church‑centered platforms function like the synagogue. They show our content to people who follow us, already follow other Christians, or are already inside Christian social circles. These are wonderful environments for discipleship, encouragement, and community. But they rarely reveal the Pre‑Seeker, because the Pre‑Seeker is not “in the synagogue” at all.

The scroll—especially in true discovery environments like YouTube Shorts and similar short-form video feeds—is Mars Hill. It is the public square where strangers pass by, not looking for Christian personalities, not searching for sermons, but willing to pause when something in the content catches their attention. It is the only place where the Pre‑Seeker reliably appears.

For twenty years, most digital ministry has lived in synagogues but the Pre‑Seeker has been gathering on Mars Hill.

And the reason Mars Hill behaves differently than the synagogue is simple: they operate on two different kinds of digital architecture.

Open Waters and Closed Waters: How Platforms Shape Our Reach

Underneath this biblical picture is a digital reality: some platforms behave like synagogues, and some behave like Mars Hill.

Websites, Facebook, Instagram, Groups, and most church email or messaging lists show ministry content mainly to:

• people who already follow you
• people connected to those followers
• people who already engage with Christian content
• 
  

In other words, they show your content to Digital Christians. These are discipleship environments. They are essential. But they do not naturally expose your content to strangers who have no Christian connections because it is a closed loop.

YouTube Shorts, and to a lesser extent some Reels environments, work differently. They show your content to:

• people who do not know you
• people who do not follow you
• people who were not searching for you
• people with no visible Christian signals at all
• 
  

These are Mars Hill environments. They are the only places where Scripture can reliably reach someone who is spiritually open but not searching, not following, and not connected to any church.

This is not a criticism of any platform. It is simply recognizing that different digital spaces reach different kinds of people. Facebook and Instagram are excellent for believers. This is the side of the boat where we currently fish. But the YouTube scroll is the other side of the boat – the place where the algorithm finds fish for us. The content hasn’t changed. The water has.

The Algorithm: The New Sorting Mechanism of Spiritual Openness

In open‑water environments (our Mars Hill), the algorithm—not the follower list—decides who sees what.

An algorithm is simply a tool that watches behavior. It tests content on thousands—even millions—of people and pays attention to only one thing: Did they pause?

Not whether they searched.

Not whether they subscribed.

Not whether they clicked.

Not whether they commented.

Just whether they stopped.

If they stop, the algorithm shows them more. If they don’t, it moves on.

This is the shift to the other side of the boat. This is away from search and follower-based synagogue platforms to Mars Hill and the Areopagus.

If you want to know who is spiritually open, begin by placing Scripture—free of personality, sermons, invitations, and signup cards—into the Mars Hill scroll and see who pauses. Look at pauses, not searches, engagement, and signups. This does not replace the work of the Spirit – it simply reveals where attention exists.

But here is the part pastors don’t realize: The people pausing on Scripture do not behave like Digital Christians.

The Pause: What It Actually Reveals

When Scripture enters the Mars Hill scroll, the people who pause for it do not behave like the churchgoing crowd. They are not the people who already follow pastors, subscribe to Christian channels, like worship clips, or engage faith-based content consistently. In fact, they behave like people who have never been near a church.

They do not search for Scripture. They do not signal belief. They do not join communities or respond publicly. They simply pause. And that pause – unprompted, unbranded, and unseen – is what reveals spiritual openness outside the synagogue ecosystem.

The spiritually curious are the ones who pause. And the ones who pause have no visible connection to the church at all.

This counterintuitive inversion is a breakthrough.

The algorithm is not surfacing the Digital Christian – it is revealing the Pre-Seeker.

And this reframes digital evangelism.

When we cast our nets in the synagogue – into follower-based, relationship based, Christian networks – we should not be surprised when we mostly catch Christians. The system and platforms are designed to surface familiar voices for familiar people. But when we step onto Mars Hill and cast our nets into the open waters where relationships and networks are meaningless – where the algorithm only seeks pausers rather than Christian friends – we encounter someone else entirely: the Pre-Seeker. Not because they search for God, but because they stopped when God’s Word passed quietly through their scroll.

Why This Changes How We Think About Digital Evangelism

Once we see this distinction, the last twenty years of digital ministry makes painful sense.

We have faithfully preached in digital synagogues. We have discipled well online. We have encouraged believers, strengthened the weary, and fed the flock.

But we rarely stood on Mars Hill.

We rarely placed Scripture, without pressure or personality, into the open waters where strangers pass by. We rarely measure the pause. We rarely ask, “Who is stopping for this, even though they were not looking for it?”

The result is simple and sobering: the largest spiritually open population in the digital world has remained invisible to us. Not because they are resisting God, but because they live in a part of the sea where we have not been casting our nets.

A Small Shift That Changes Everything

Pastors do not need to overhaul their digital ministry. They do not need a new department, a new budget, or a new strategy.

They simply need to add a Pre‑Seeker layer to what they are already doing.

This layer lives in the scroll. It is Scripture‑first. It is pressure‑free. It is discoverable by algorithm. It is designed for the spiritually open who are not yet seeking.

It belongs in the open waters of Mars Hill, not the safe harbor of the synagogue.

This is not replacing discipleship. It is fishing where the fish are.

A Call to Pastors: Cast Your Nets Where the Fish Are

Pastors are doing faithful work. Their digital presence matters. Their teaching matters. Their discipleship matters.

But the fish have moved.

The spiritually open are not walking into our buildings.

They are not searching for our sermons.

They are not following our channels.

They are scrolling.

As fishers of men, we must cast our nets where the fish actually swim — on the other side of the boat. Not instead of what we are doing. Not in competition with what we are doing. But in addition to what we are doing.

A small shift.

A new layer.

A simple step.

Sometimes that shift is as simple as placing Scripture – unbranded, uncommented, and uninvited – into the Mars Hill scroll and letting the pause reveal the hunger. The scroll is simply the part of the sea where we have not been casting our nets.

Evangelism in the age of the scroll is not complicated. It is simply recognizing that the lost are still out there — just swimming in a different part of the sea.