In 2009, when most of the Catholic influencers and digital missionaries of the modern era were just toddlers, the world was captivated by a guy called Simon Sinek. His 2009 Ted Talk “Start with Why” took the world by storm. Sinek asked all of us: What is the purpose behind your brand, your mission, your company. Not the function of your product or the end game. What is your meaning? This concept was wild to Millennials and Gen Xers who mostly learned to work from the perspective of outcome.

But for Gen Z this “why” is all they have been taught to look for.

Gen Z assigns meaning to everything and wears that meaning on their sleeve. They work almost exclusively from “why”, but according to some studies Gen Z has abandoned the idea of attaching that meaning to something concrete. They’ve abandoned “what?”

When it comes to social media influencers, it’s easy to see why that happens. The thing being created by most creators these days is not a physical object, or even something that produces a tangible outcome. When it’s at its best, social media influence is used to foster positive beliefs, but at its worst it’s used to tear people down and create dependence. What most influencers are selling is meaning itself. Influencers create meaning from feelings, feelings from influence, influence from more feelings, and those feelings create more meaning. It’s all a circle of abstraction with the influencer at the center. The only concrete outcomes, “whats”, are likes, follows and brand deals.

For Catholic digital missionaries, the center is not the missionary themselves but Christ, and the human person’s relationship with him. The concrete outcome is participation in the sacraments. By their nature the sacraments require a tangible, physical presence. That’s a “what”, not a “why”. So, for Catholic digital missionaries their “why” is massively different from their influencer counterparts precisely because they have this “what” end goal in mind.

Like good parents, they are hoping to work themselves out of a job.

If the digital missionary has done their job correctly, they will have influenced their followers to stop following them and instead follow Jesus.

Let me give you an example, it’s an extreme example but it illustrates the difference.

Britney is a Catholic influencer. Her “why” is “to spread the gospel”, her “what” is content. This is where MOST people start when they want to share their faith online. She makes 5 reels a week, talking about what she loves about the Catholic church: beauty and tradition. She amasses a following who also love beauty and tradition. She posts her modest Mass ‘fits every Sunday. Her posts inspire Catholics who feel weary of a world that is overwhelmingly secular. She provides a resting place for them where they don’t feel like strangers. What she is doing is an important support to her audience. She finds that when her content leans into this “why we are different from others” worldview, her follower count grows. With that growth she feels more responsibility to her followers to make more content. This puts her in a weird position: let down her followers or let down her employer. And she still needs food on the table. So she gets creative: she gets asked to represent a Catholic dating app. She also sets up an Amazon shop to help her followers find modest Mass ‘fits. She gets copies of the newest study Bible to promote to her followers, with an affiliate link that gives her 15% of each sale. These streams of revenue allow her to quit her job and make more of her “what”: content.

Now Britney is caught in a cycle: she needs more followers to keep up the revenue she needs in order to create more content, which she needs to make in order to support the followers she’s grown to. She knows her followers are hungry for ways to defend their faith, because they feel so alone in the world. Soon her “why” is transitioning to “apologetics”. She’s defending the church against every criticism, real or imagined. She’s encouraging veiling, modesty, Bible reading. She’s encouraging GOOD things, she’s helping people feel seen and cared for. But she’s also digging into a niche. And she is dependent on the followers of that niche to keep the lights on. Soon, she’s tilting at windmills: finding reasons to criticize things in the church which are objectively not harmful. In the meantime, her followers are also becoming niche, skeptical of their very mainstream parish. Britney might take a while to realize that this entrenchment is bad for the church, but good for her. It keeps her followers coming back to her rather than finding comfort in a parish.

Alternatively…

Dave is a Catholic digital missionary. His “why” is the same, “to spread the gospel”, his “what” is relationship with Jesus. He makes 3 reels a week about skateboarding. He does tutorials on how to position your feet for a kick flip, how to replace your wheels, the best skate parks in his city. The bottom of his board features a sweet airbrush of Our Lady of Guadalupe. On Sundays he goes live in his stories to lead a skater rosary. He ends it with an invitation to join his discord for a weekly Bible study. Then he gets back to ollies and rail slides. He’s not going to get a brand deal. He’s not in the X Games and the religious stuff will turn off any skating brand, anyway. He works a day job in IT, so unless he fundraises a missionary salary, he will be limited in the amount of content he can make. The Church will also never find him because “Catholic” is nowhere in his profile. He also sticks to the Rule of 150. He has 50 people in his personal life that he loves and cares about so he knows he only has capacity to care about 100 more people. So, his Bible studies are limited to 100 participants. Dave knows from one-on-one interaction in his Discord that some of them leave because they found parish homes. He knows some are struggling hard with the faith and leave without a goodbye. But he knows them all by name and he’s praying for them. His “why” never has to change because his “what”, the concrete thing he is making, is bearing fruit that he never tastes. He tells himself he’s just making skateboard videos and hanging out with his friends for Bible study.

On the surface, Britney is promoting all the things the church wants to see: modesty, tradition, understanding of church teaching. She’s theologically savvy and well spoken. She’s giving solace to a part of the church that is hurting. There is also nothing morally wrong with her being paid for her content. She is providing a service to people and receiving an income for that. However, she’s become dependent on that continued hurt to make a living.

And she finds herself wondering “Am I bringing new people to Christ? Is this mission? Or am I stuck in maintenance?”

Dave looks like a guy who wants to share his love of skateboards who also happens to love Jesus. He reaches people who aren’t searching for churchy content. His followers say things like “I didn’t know Christians could be normal” and his parish priest probably doesn’t ask him to give talks at LifeTeen cause his tattoos freak out the parents. He’s got a foot in two worlds and to anyone who’s not paying attention, it can look like he’s not doing great in either.

But he is reaching the margins.

Now, for the record, Dave and Britney are both fictional. Though the things they create and experience can be seen over and over in many different creators/missionaries throughout the web, they are sort of a combination of all the good things or all the bad things that can happen. They are examples of what can happen if we do or do not use the internet with “competence and clear awareness of its strengths and weaknesses” as JPII said in 2002.

So, how can we protect Britney from becoming a slave to her niche? How do we support Dave in his mission?

In 2026, the Evangelization Lab spoke to converts, reverts and seekers who credited digital missionaries with all or some of their conversion. Almost universally, these digital converts told us that they first encountered the faith through small openings in online content. They rarely remembered the name of the first creator that got their attention, but they remembered the first ones who replied in the comments, and they were encouraged through OCIA by the ones who built close knit communities.

The “what” is the hard part when it comes to digital evangelization because very few people have ever seen stuff like what Dave has created. The idea of what to offer beyond “content’ is foreign to most online Catholics. Its projects like Dave’s that the Evangelization Lab wants to bring to life in every diocese in America. But not only that, we want to help creators like Britney get back to their original “why” without fear. In a church which has such an abundance of grace, we want Catholic influencers to be empowered, turn away from a scarcity mindset and be confident enough to become digital missionaries.

Are you ready to find your “what”? Have you already found it and you think you can help other creators? Are you a diocesan communication director looking to support your local digital missionaries? Are you a Bishop who sees value in what Dave is doing? Reach out to us at Evangelizationlab.com. We have free resources for creators looking to spread the gospel online, connections to creators in your diocese who want to lead people to a parish, and research to help you decide which “what” will set you apart.