In recent decades, evangelical pastors have embraced an approach to cultural engagement centered on avoiding offense at all costs.
The so-called seeker-sensitive movement has created churches impotent to address the issues of the day. They are far more likely to fall into the Black Lives Matter uproar or COVID hysteria than to address issues like abortion or homosexuality.
But the ministry leaders who embraced woke and weak tactics as a method of gospel witness were disproven by Charlie Kirk, whose life of unapologetic Christian conservatism — sealed in his own blood one fateful September afternoon at a college campus in Utah — created what may become one of the greatest single moments of revival in American history.
Michael Clary, the lead pastor of Christ the King Church near Cincinnati, Ohio, wrote an article at the Center for Baptist Leadership juxtaposing Charlie Kirk with the “Cognitive Dissonance of Christian Elites.”
Clary detailed his own experience of embracing the inoffensive approach to the pastorate and finding the method “wholly inadequate for the challenges of real ministry.”
My latest piece for @BaptistLeaders is now up.
“Going forward, the status quo is not going to cut it. Everyone senses it. The way forward for the church is more voices in the mold of Charlie Kirk, not less.”https://t.co/vHGuyPgnle
— Michael Clary (@dmichaelclary) October 14, 2025
“I felt that my preaching lacked real power. My messages had no teeth,” he said. “Sure, I was preaching gospel grace and the forgiveness of sins, but I felt constrained from explicitly naming and denouncing those very same sins.”
Though he could “thunder about God’s love and the lavish grace of Christ,” he felt that he was not “preaching the gospel” if he tried to address cultural issues.
Clary then detailed how Charlie Kirk “broke the mold” of modern gospel ministry.
“He didn’t go to college or seminary. He didn’t build a platform by adopting the tactics of the credentialed experts,” Clary said.
“He built his platform with guts and grit. Kirk spoke with a powerful combination of grace towards those who were receptive, but did not shrink from prophetically denouncing with crystal clarity the fashionable moral evils of our day.”
Clary went so far as to note that “if Kirk had gone to a typical evangelical seminary, he likely would have lost his edge.”
“He would have learned to be more careful. He would have learned to be more measured. There’s a good chance he would have had his prophetic voice ‘educated’ right out of him,” he said.
Clary observed that “the man who arguably had the most significant gospel impact in a generation” did not need the evangelical “credentialing process,” and in many cases, chose to do “the opposite of what they would have trained him to do.”
Nick Freitas, a conservative commentator and member of the Virginia House of Delegates, took notice of Clary’s article and read the piece on his channel.
You can complain about Gig Eva all you want, but Nick Freitas just read an entire article published by @BaptistLeaders on his own self-built platform with over 1.4 million YouTube subs pic.twitter.com/Vzp42GJwRz
— Michael Clary (@dmichaelclary) October 24, 2025
“If young men are walking in to your ‘doctrinally sound’ inoffensive churches, what they’re going to see is cowardice,” he warned.
“Jesus was a strong man, and the people who God lifted up, men after God’s own heart — whether it be David, whether it be Elisha, whether it be Elijah, whether it be Joshua, whether it be Caleb — were strong men,” Freitas added.
“How did we lose this?” he asked aloud.
Charlie Kirk was so appealing to young men, and truly effective at reaching them, because he embraced masculine, Christian courage and strength in an age of softness.
American conservatives, and especially young men, are increasingly aware of the evil that threatens their souls, their bodies, and their nation as a whole.
Rather than coddling such evil, Christian leaders must pave the way in confronting the works of darkness with the gospel of light, without compromise or cowardice.
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