An evangelical church minister has headed for the spiritual harvest fields of TikTok, one of the latest and most popular social media platforms, to evangelise a new, younger audience – and he’s starting to reap success.
David Sims, vicar of St Thomas’ Church in Aldridge, Walsall since 2021, has amassed more than 10,500 followers on his @ tiktok_vicar profile where he runs virtual church services, reads the Bible and raises controversial subjects.
By January 2023, TikTok – which was launched in 2016 – had around 17.5 million UK users a month. In 2026 this number is expected to have grown by 20 percent, according to digimind.com.
Sims’ TikTok Church – as he calls it – began during lockdown as ‘something to do’. ‘After a few months’, he said, ‘it became clear that the most popular posts which got most engagement were those offering prayer or talking about slightly controversial topics [and] the most popular videos are the same thing.’
Sims goes ‘live’ on Sunday night with 100–150 people joining in. Some are regular attenders, others are interested to know more; and there are those ‘who clearly don’t want to join in productively but want to argue and debate’. He said the idea of ‘truth’ attracts particular interest: ‘Very often, people think that truth is subjective, and you have your truth and I have my truth – but actually, we say (controversially) that truth is absolute, and we see this in its fullness in Jesus, the incarnate God.’
Sims’ ministry to his TikTok audience does not cease at the end of a video: he sends a few Bibles out each week to people who ask; he links people to local churches and he tries to follow up with them. He has also seen at least one family be baptised and join a church in Northampton.
But with all evangelistic strategies, TikTok has its challenges, for instance, ‘it’s really tricky to know exactly what is going on in people’s hearts behind a screen’. Nonetheless, Sims described social media as ‘a great tool’ to preach the gospel – ‘and it’s quite easy’.
He explained: ‘If we can use a camera phone, we can make TikToks. And the big thing about TikTok is the importance of being authentic, so lots of complicated filters and posh effects aren’t always helpful.’
Why do I feel vulnerable when I evangelise?
What do you think the greatest fear in the Western World is? Death? Poverty? Climate Change? For decades, the number …