Big Eva vs. Gig Eva

I'm a senior pastor. But I became part of “Gig Eva” because “Big Eva” wouldn’t give me a shot.

My latest piece for the Center for Baptist Leadership, reproduced below in its entirety.

You have to hand it to Carl Trueman—he has a knack for memorable labels.

He coined the term “Big Eva” a few years ago, referring to celebrity-driven Christianity and its assortment of conferences and publishing houses that wielded outsized influence over local churches and their pastors. Big Eva pastors aren’t just well-known pastors. Instead, they intentionally seek and leverage celebrity status to exert a kind of informal authority within the evangelical world, thereby weakening the authority of local churches. As evangelicalism has fractured in recent years, the days of Big Eva giga-conferences led by a couple of dozen superstar pastors are drawing to a close.

Now, Trueman is back with another label. This time it’s “Gig Eva,” referring to an exclusively internet-driven phenomenon that has arisen from the ashes of Big Eva. Basically, Gig Eva is the Temu brand Big Eva. Not as big or impressive. Not as powerful or influential. Not as well funded or organized. Same song, second verse. Gig Eva is just a poor man’s Big Eva, but it’s arguably worse.

How so? Whereas Big Eva celebrities were only accountable to each other, Gig Eva voices are “accountable to nobody.” Gig Eva functions entirely in the digital realm of social media, podcasts, and blogs. Operating outside the Big Eva machine, they build their own platforms to promote their message. How dare they!

There’s no “final boss” in Gig Eva–the uber famous names we all know like John Piper, R. C. Sproul, or John MacArthur who could fill ten-thousand-seat convention halls, just an endless labyrinth of resentful voices who “validate their personal authenticity by their constant iconoclasm, their decrying of anything that stands in their way, and their priority of disembodied, cost-free online engagement over the more expensive demands of service-and accountability-to real people in real time, in church and in homes.”

Thus, Trueman concludes, “Big Eva had its problems. Gig Eva is only set to intensify them.”

I’m certainly not part of “Big Eva,” so I suppose that puts me in the “Gig Eva” camp. I don’t have an axe to grind with Trueman, but I won’t hide my annoyance at his characterizations of people who are like me. Let me tell you why.

First of all, I’m a nobody. I’m just an ordinary pastor who moved to Cincinnati’s inner city in 2008 to plant a church there. We launched in 2010, and I’ve been working in relative obscurity ever since. My online presence only increased in the last couple of years. There’s a reason for that.

After ministering for a decade and a half in a progressive, inner-city, collegiate neighborhood and dealing with the various challenges of sexual ethics in this context, I wanted to write a book on biblical sexuality to serve as a resource in my local church, benefiting others facing similar challenges. I wanted a book that articulated a conservative, explicitly biblical vision for sexuality that any pastor could recommend to a church member without qualification. I finished it in early 2023.

The only publishers I thought would consider publishing a book of this sort would fall in the “Big Eva” camp. So I sent pitches and manuscripts to a few of them. Names you would know and trust. True “Big Eva” publishing houses.

I didn’t get any response.

As a side note, I always wondered how some authors got published. A large number of published authors at big-name publishing houses aren’t pastors. Some are scholars and academics. That makes sense. In that world, it’s “publish or perish.” However, others were neither pastors nor scholars, but rather individuals who worked for niche parachurch ministries. Since I wasn’t familiar with the publishing world, I just assumed they were all Really Smart Guys™ who were well qualified for their prominence.

I wasn’t bothered by the non-response from publishers. It was a long shot they’d notice me. After all, I’m a nobody. I didn’t have much name recognition or social media presence, and I’ve been told that bigger publishers won’t consider you unless you’ve got a large social media following. Fair enough. So I started posting.

It’s easier to get published by independent publishers, but what I discovered is that, when you go that route, the author is on the hook for unsold copies of the book. Smaller publishers lack a substantial marketing engine to promote their books. The author is responsible for all their own promotions. If it doesn’t sell well, the author could find himself deep in debt to the publisher for unsold copies.

I found one indie publisher, Reformation Zion, who didn’t play that game and had a reputation for publishing conservative books that would have been deemed too “controversial” for big-name publishers. Reformation Zion published Zach Garris’ book, Masculine Christianity, a solid work on biblical sexuality, which served as a source in my own book. I reached out to them, hoping they’d give me a chance, and they did.

I was surprised to discover that Garris, the author of Masculine Christianity, actually founded Reformation Zion. He never said this himself, but I always suspected he founded his own publishing company because no Big Eva publisher would publish his book. He also published two books by Jon Harris, neither of which would have seen the light of day in Big Eva publishing houses.

Books are marketed through endorsements, so that was the next step for me. I asked some big-name Christian leaders in the biblical sexuality space (names you’d recognize) for endorsements, but they all turned me down. Again, I had no name recognition, so I didn’t mind. I ended up working a few connections and landed endorsements from CR Wiley, Megan Basham, Michael Foster, and Owen Strachan.

Once the book was published, pastors, scholars, and ordinary readers gave it great reviews. I was hoping to get some well-known magazines or journals to review it, and mailed them copies. American Reformer gave it a very good review, as did Clear Truth Media. CBMW gave it a mostly positive review, but it was tempered by its nitpicky “sober caveats,” in the reviewer’s words.

Reformation Zion isn’t a big-name publisher, and they don’t have a slick marketing machine. It’s just one guy (Garris) who was willing to help me promote the book with street marketing, hustle, and grit. I went on every podcast that would have me. I wrote about sexuality on X, FB, and Substack to demonstrate a degree of subject matter expertise. Through this kind of organic, word-of-mouth exposure, the book has since reached a decent-sized audience, leading to a few speaking opportunities at various churches. I’m thankful for the exposure.

What’s my point?

I became part of “Gig Eva” because “Big Eva” wouldn’t give me a shot. The same could be said of so many other Gig Eva guys who were gatekept out of the Big Eva mainstream and had no recourse but to build their own platforms to reach their audience.

I’m not bitter about this; this is the way things work. What I do find frustrating, however, is when Big Eva guys sneer condescendingly at men who hustled their way into the public discussion, driven by courage, a love for the church, and biblical conviction, only to have Big Eva guys treat them like children.

When I wasn’t able to get a foot in Big Eva’s publishing door, “Gig Eva” gave me incredible opportunities to find an audience. I’ve written for outlets like the Center for Baptist Leadership, American Reformer, and Truth Script.

These publications (and related podcasts) are now leading the discourse on the most pressing issues of the day, and are doing so without the institutional support of Big Eva, and quite often despite their opposition.

Time and time again, Gig Eva writers and podcasters have been so far ahead of the curve on cultural issues that Big Eva guys think they’re crazy. But they are almost always vindicated in the long run. I’m thankful for them because they amplified my puny voice before anyone ever heard of me.

Yes, Gig Eva guys are often edgy and unrefined. They don’t have big budgets and editorial staff, but great movements are built on the strength of conviction. They aren’t usually top-down movements, driven by institutional elites, but are bottom-up, grassroots movements. The gatekeepers know this and don’t very much like being outgunned by the punk rockers of evangelicalism.

Thus, the “Gig Eva” moniker seems to be yet another gatekeeping attempt to prevent newer voices from finding an audience. Since Trueman didn’t name names, I don’t know who exactly he was criticizing, but I suspect many of them are my friends, or even me. Regardless, I find the characterization insulting.

Trueman says Gig Eva guys are “accountable to nobody,” suggesting that these people “marginalize the actual church by making their own platforms and declarations the source of all wisdom.” Come on. I know dozens of these guys, and none of them are the unaccountable rogues Trueman described.

These men aren’t losers with “time to spend living online,” trying to “become a celebrity without having proved himself beforehand in any real service to the church.” These men are pastors, entrepreneurs, and business leaders of all sorts. The Gig Eva guys I know didn’t have their platforms handed to them; they created their own platforms because Big Eva gatekept them out.

I’ve appreciated much of Trueman’s writing in the past, and I even quote him favorably several times in my book. But the condescension in his piece is too thick to ignore, especially when he indicts hard-working, faithful men who are too conservative ever to get the time of day from Big Eva gatekeepers.

This is nothing new. This year’s “Gig Eva” is last year’s “Moscow Mood.” I’m sure they’ll roll out another cute slogan in 2026 to keep the wrong people from gaining too much influence.

In the meantime, the “Gig Eva” guys I know will keep plodding ahead. They will continue to build new institutions because Big Eva gatekeepers deem them too “controversial” for their own. They will continue to pastor their churches, reform, write, speak, record, post, and grow because they are confident that they have a message worth hearing that will bless and strengthen the body of Christ.

And they’re savvy enough to leverage new technology to get the word out.