Abraham Piper, the son of theologian and longtime Bethlehem Baptist pastor John Piper, has built a TikTok following of nearly two million people by poking fun at the evangelical world he grew up in. So when he posted a video in August 2023 announcing that he was "coming out as pro-Christian," plenty of viewers did a double take.

According to Church Leaders, whose October 1 report by Janna Firestone was highlighted by Protestia this week, Piper's point turned out to be narrower than the headline. "I think everyone should be a Christian," he said in the video, "if they want to be."

The video ran a little over a minute. Piper filmed it on a walk outside and opened by responding to a label he keeps seeing online. "I often hear around the internet that I am anti-Christian," he said. "I'm not anti-Christian. I'll show you." His criticism, he explained, has a specific target: evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and conservative Christianity -- "three terms I use interchangeably because, for my purposes, they're the same anyway."

Make no mistake: the younger Piper still calls himself exvangelical and has not returned to the Christian faith. His path has had more than a few turns. He left the faith as a teenager, came back for a season, and later walked away again. Today he is an entrepreneur, painter, and content creator -- the founder of the viral site 22 Words and a co-founder of the Blue Kazoo puzzle company -- whose short videos speak directly to people working through their own deconstruction.

Firestone observes that Piper's complaints usually land on church culture and its tone more than on Jesus Himself, a pattern she says shows up across the exvangelical world. She also reports the wider numbers behind the story: Barna research found that 42 percent of U.S. adults say they have deconstructed the faith of their youth, including 37 percent who still call themselves Christians. The pressure runs especially high in ministry homes -- Barna found that roughly a third of pastors say at least one of their children is no longer active in church.

For church leaders, Firestone says, the people who matter most in this conversation are closer to home than the internet suggests. They sit in our pews, often asking Piper's questions quietly -- wondering whether the faith they inherited is their own.

That is worth pausing over. A generation is not asking whether Christians are nice people -- Piper himself says he likes most of the evangelicals he meets. They are asking whether Christ is real to them personally. No pulpit can inherit faith for anyone; every soul must be born again for itself. And when the prodigal finally turns toward home, the Father in the parable did not send a position paper. He ran.