For decades, the Mormon Church has been sending its members on missions to the far corners of the world in search of new converts. But recently, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has zeroed in on a recruiting milieu that’s more easily accessible, if often riddled with hazards - namely, the wilds of social media.
Now, the Mormon influencers are moving in.
“I probably talked to thousands of people throughout my whole mission,” said Lauren Yarro, aka Blonde Apologist, a popular Mormon podcaster, who years ago spent 18 months proselytizing in British Columbia. “I reach thousands of people every day on social media.”
As more recruitment messaging shifts online, charismatic Mormons are growing increasingly inescapable on social media. Their ranks include Mindy McKnight, a popular YouTuber known for her hairstyle tutorials, and Ballerina Farm’s Hannah Neeleman, a Utah rancher and mother of nine kids who has amassed more than 10 million followers on Instagram. Meanwhile, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, a raunchy reality show that debuted on Hulu in 2024, keeps fueling the trend. The show, which follows a predominantly Mormon group of TikTok influencers, known as “MomTok,” has minted its own chatty class of ubiquitous online stars.
While some hotspots of Mormon influence online have grown up organically, others have been receiving boosts from church-backed ventures. Through its for-profit subsidiary, Deseret Management Corp., the church owns several advertising companies with influencer-marketing arms, including Boncom, a Salt Lake City-based agency.
Andrew Bagley, the president of Boncom, says that when the church reaches out to him with an opportunity - like a social-media campaign around Easter or Christmas - he flips through a list of contacts, packed with hundreds of influencers. Before anyone shows up at a press event, he said, everyone is rigorously vetted to validate their membership with an ecclesiastical leader and to make sure they’d be an appropriate spokesperson. The agency, Bagley said, also works with each creator to determine “a message that would be appropriate and authentic.” For any given press gathering, up to 50 content creators might eventually show up.
Since 2018, the church has had a policy against compensating influencers to post content on their own social-media channels. Doug Andersen, its global director of media relations, said in a statement that as church leaders “considered the rapidly evolving social media landscape,” they eventually concluded that “expressions of personal faith shared on an individual’s own channels should be authentic and voluntary, rather than encouraged through financial compensation.” Instead, agencies like Boncom pay content creators to make videos that are distributed via the church’s own official channels.
Yarro, the popular Mormon podcaster, was tapped to film a video for the church in early 2025. The pitch deck called for showcasing the “vibrant community of the church.” In the resulting video, Yarro grabs lunch with a fellow young blond woman and enjoys a picnic while cheerful families run through a field. “There is belonging and peace here,” she says to the camera. “Click below to meet with missionaries.” According to Yarro, at the time she was charging a couple hundred dollars for such assignments.
The roots of the current “Mormon moment” can be traced back to an earlier online movement. In the 2010s, a wave of Mormon “mommy bloggers” rose to prominence publishing stories about their young families. Over time, they began earning side money via sponsorships and brand deals. Along the way, the Mormon Church - which has an estimated $300 billion in holdings and 18 million members - got involved as an avid backer.
In 2016, Chelsea Johnson, author of a blog called LifeWithMyLittles, received an email from the Boncom agency, asking her to share a blog post about her volunteer work using the hashtag #LightTheWorld, which was being used to promote the church’s Christmas community service campaign. “We can offer you $250,” read the email, reviewed by Bloomberg. “Please do not share this document publicly.”
Johnson said that her blog also ran a couple of ads for the church and she was paid somewhere between $400 to $600. “It was generally less than what I usually got paid,” Johnson said. “But I was like, ‘Oooh, I’m doing missionary work and sharing the truth.’”
Shannon Bird, another early mommy blogger, once handed out rotisserie chickens to the homeless as part of a paid #LightTheWorld campaign. She, too, didn’t charge her full rate. “I always felt I needed to be a light in this world,” she said.
In recent years, the church’s influencer strategy has increasingly shifted to short-form videos. What’s being promoted, said Fortesa Latifi, author of Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online, which covers Mormon influencers, isn’t necessarily the church - it’s the broader vibe. The Mormon stars often have voluminous, wavy “Utah curls” and show off polished, preppy wardrobes. “They are advertising being Mormon,” Latifi said. “‘Look at me. I am a beautiful young mother, doing charitable works, who is also Mormon.’”
At the same time, various nonprofit groups funded by church members are using social media to spread positive messages about Mormonism. The Faith Creators Alliance says it supports 100 independent content creators, in part, by offering editing and studio space. On its web site, the More Good Foundation, which trains Mormons how to “share their beliefs on the internet,” says it has helped garner 350 million views on TikTok videos and contributed to more than 1,100 confirmed baptisms.
Several Mormon influencers interviewed by Bloomberg News said the main reason they started talking about their faith online was to correct disinformation about the church and to combat criticism - including from vocal ex-Mormons, who are also growing more prominent on social media.
Derek Westra, the director of reputation management for the Mormon Church, says that LDS members in the creator community are a great way to “get the word out.” In Salt Lake City - which has grown into a major hub for Mormon influencers - Westra oversees a 10-person team that monitors buzz about the church on social media and in search-engine results while aiming to boost the LDS brand. They do so, in part, by working with influencers to promote and amplify various church-sponsored events, ranging from holiday celebrations to public social gatherings to speeches from church leaders.
Last spring, Westra invited influencers to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for a creator event where they enjoyed a musical number and ate finger food while learning about the church’s Greater Love Easter initiative. Asked whether any of the MomTok women from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives were invited, Westra responded, “It’s not that they wouldn’t be invited to come, but it’s kind of not their scene.”
In 2023, the church invited Neeleman, the popular Mormon mommy farmer, to attend the opening of a temple near her ranch in Utah. Afterward, she talked about it on her channel in her own words, according to Westra. The church itself, he said, takes a light touch with influencers. “We are never directors,” he said. “We never tell them to post this.”
For specifically crafted messages, the church relies on the ad agencies. Not long ago, a pitch deck for a 30-second, social-media video landed in the inbox of Alitzah Stinson, an ex-Mormon who owns a small paper company in Ohio and has a sizeable following on social media. “Mention the Church of Jesus Christ within 10 seconds,” read the proposal, adding instructions to “share brief testimony of how Jesus Christ transformed your life” and encourage viewers to “turn to the Book of Mormon for guidance.”
Stinson posted the request to her 35,000 followers on Instagram. Eventually it landed in a forum on Reddit devoted to all things Mormon, and resulted in a debate among reade