From Sacred to Viral: The Digital Economics of Celebrities in Nigerian Pentecostalism
Some of us have seen this before: finely-produced videos with cinematic production professional lighting, balanced audio, and dynamic editing from official media teams of major Nigerian Pentecostal churches, expertly deploying the visual vernacular of social media to reposition faith as a culturally relevant spectacle.
Like all other institutions, while churches ought to be free to appropriate new media platforms, I have always feared that somehow; in the pursuit of relevance, a PR misstep is never far away. This fear recently materialised around the New Year celebrations in the social media uproar surrounding posts from Harvesters International Christian Centre. Some of them featured Afrobeat star Tiwa Savage, TikTok personality Peller, and skitmaker Broda Shaggy sharing the stage with Pastor Bolaji Idowu. Within the same period, other posts captured the moment comedian Brain Jotter, during a visit to LOGIC Church, taught Pastor Flourish Peters one of his signature dance steps – a clip enthusiastically circulated by the church’s own media team to promote its services.
These were not accidental glimpses, but curated content. In them, the line between spiritual congregation and digital branding grows conspicuously thin. They are calculated entries in a new and urgent marketplace: the digital attention economy. Nigerian Pentecostalism, an institution historically built on fervent live spectacle and mass persuasion, has become a sophisticated player in this arena. Here, the sacred is repackaged for shareability, and the most potent currency is the clout of a celebrity attendee. This shift represents more than just adopting new tools; it signifies the mediatisation of faith – a profound process where the church’s core operations and values are gradually reshaped by the very logic of the platforms it uses. It appears the Church’s authority is compromising values to please platform algorithm.
At this stage, the critical questions have to be asked: When a church’s overall strategy for growth is tied to an influencer marketing campaign, can it retain its theological anchor? Is a church healthy when it privileges celebrities, ignoring the Biblical teaching of not showing partiality? For sure there is a dilemma involving Christian ethics and the economics of virality.
In order to make sense of this tension, one must interrogate its currency. In our digital marketplace, human attention is the finite, invaluable resource. Every scroll presents a battlefield where churches compete with an infinite stream of entertainment, news, and personal drama. To capture this scarce resource, content must trigger an immediate cognitive spark. A celebrity’s presence is the ultimate spark. It is a pre-validated signal of cultural relevance, cutting through the noise with efficient potency. By strategically hyping celebrity attendance, the church executes a deliberate transaction. It leverages the borrowed social capital of the celebrity – their fame, their follower count, their aura of success – and converts it into its own spiritual and institutional capital. The goal is simple – convert the online buzz into higher attendance numbers, become more attractive to young folks, and, ultimately, increase weekly collections in tithes and offerings that finance expansion.
The transaction is multi-layered. The celebrity offers the church a measurable spike in visibility – a boost in followers, a surge in engagement, a moment trending in the digital conversation. In return, the church provides the celebrity some form of social legitimisation. In the chaotic world of fame, testimonies of redemption, stability, or lifestyle changes become a valuable asset. It enhances a public image, softens perceptions that connects with a critical and morally-conservative audience. The ordinary church member, the target audience for this exchange, gets the plastic experience of proximity to glamour. Their church is validated as a place where cultural elites find solace, transforming their own attendance into a form of associative social capital. My worry: worship for the people in such churches might become mere experiences mediated by the joy of running into their favourite celebrities.
Nigerian churches are merely copying a model made popular elsewhere. Its global prototype is found in churches like Hillsong. The Australian export perfected a formula: a cool, concert-like aesthetic, emotionally resonant music, and a celebrity-friendly culture that made faith feel fashionable. The Nigerian adaptation, however, operates with distinct local intensity. The Nigerian celebrity culture is more immersive, with ordinary Nigerians following stars for mostly aspirational reasons. The combination of Pentecostal zeal and celebrity-worship is a dangerous one, with the potential risk that Nigerian churches mimicking that model will also import the perils. The recent unravelling of Hillsong – prompted by leadership failings, integrity issues and dilution of theology to appeal to youths – offers a dire warning. There is a high risk of an embarrassing crash when the central Christian mission of discipleship, pastoral care, and theological depth are sacrificed for the more popular cultural relevance.
The theological contradiction at the heart of this digital strategy is stark and uncomfortable. It directly challenges the scriptural imperative of radical equality within the body of believers. In what looks like an indictment, the book of James warns: “My brothers and sisters … must not show favouritism … If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves …” (James 2:1-4 NIV). Truth be told, the church’s Instagram feed, highlighting the celebrity in the “VIP section” or on the altar, becomes a 21st-century visual enactment of this very bias. The platform’s algorithm, designed to reward what is already popular, inadvertently codifies this spiritual partiality into a digital architecture. The medium, as Marshall McLuhan warned, shapes the message. Here, the message is that visibility equals value and that ordinary church members are just who they are – ordinary.
Philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s critique of the “transparency society,” in which he argues that this age demands everything be made visible, quantifiable, and displayed is instructive here. In this regime, what is most visible is mistakenly conflated with what is most authentic and valuable. By algorithmically privileging the celebrity moment, the church’s digital practice silently catechises its followers. It teaches that worth is correlated with external social validation. The profound but unphotogenic faithfulness of the long-time member, the quiet service of the volunteer, the private struggles and triumphs of the everyday believer recede into digital obscurity. They are poor fuel for the viral engine, and thus, within this new economy, they are assigned a lower value. There is a likelihood that two communities will develop: a more visible, respected celebrity class and the ordinary, unseen congregation.
The way out is not a blackout on social media. Such a move would be both futile and a dereliction of the call to engage the world. The solution lies in practising ethical digital stewardship. This requires a conscious, deliberate uncoupling of evangelism and church growth from the hype cycle. It demands a social media policy defined by intentionality rather than algorithmic chasing.
What might this look like? It means leveraging platforms to amplify substantive teaching, not just event highlights. It involves curating content that spotlights narratives of ordinary transformation – the rehabilitated addict, the sustained marriage, the quiet act of community service. It requires a digital aesthetic that values authenticity over glossy production, which finds beauty in the uncurated moments of communal prayer and service. The most radical, counter-cultural act for a Nigerian Pentecostal church today may be to deliberately decline to post the celebrity photo, and instead, feature the portrait of a faithful, unknown member, with a caption that delves into the depth of their journey. It is to build a digital presence that reflects the topography of the actual kingdom it proclaims – one where the last are first and the greatest is the servant of all.
Nigerian Pentecostalism has certainly learned the vernacular of the digital marketplace. The pressing question now is whether it can retain the vocabulary of the scripture – a vocabulary of grace that is stubbornly indifferent to trending status, of value assigned by divine love rather than follower count, and of a community where the only VIP is the collective body itself.
