The Influencer Who Rates His Visits to Catholic Churches

Twenty-two year old social media influencer Anthony Gross has been posting videos in which he grades his experiences visiting Catholic churches (congregations). One of his videos received more than 1.5 million views.

Read the entire Religion News Service article. Here's a quote:

His review from his Jan. 11 visit to Our Lady of Pompeii earned the parish a “D” rating, with Gross warning other young adults that it might not be the church for them, calling it the “quickest Mass in the city” with limited music and the absence of a social scene that evening.

Gross explained that his video series seeks to get more people out to church, and that he's mainly trying to find the best Catholic churches for youth adults to attend. Some Catholic churches have noticed an increase in attendance after appearing in one of his videos.

Others are critical of Gross's video series. What can he really learn in one short visit? Can he really give an accurate description that is useful to a wide audience, or is he ultimately just judging these churches based on superficial aspects of his visit?

One woman was critical of his video about her own church because he gave it a "B" grade. A priest at another church says that his church was given an unfairly low grade because Gross randomly attended on a day that did not have community activities, though the priest admitted that his church might not be doing the best job promoting its activities. Contrast these with the top church on Gross's list, which has seen a 15-20% increase in attendance at Mass since appearing in one of Gross's videos. A lot of the growth is from young adults in particular.

This story demonstrates the role of marketing and promotion in religion because some individuals are clearly making decisions about attending church based on watching Gross's videos.

But the story also says something about religious competition. The priest mentioned earlier did admit that Gross's video series is creating "healthy competition" among different Catholic churches. We often think of churches competing with other churches of different denominations, but individual congregations within the same denomination can also compete with each other. One form of this competition might involve, for example, multiple congregations competing for the same young adults. 

Another form of competition involves different congregations specializing to appeal to different segments of the membership. I observed this type of competition in a town on the east coast where I knew one of the leaders at an Episcopalian church. He told me of how, at that time, different Episcopalian churches in the city differentiated themselves by appealing to different members, e.g., one congregation was more for young families, one had more traditional services, and so on. This specialization meant that the different congregations were not competing for the same Episcopalians but were instead trying to find their own niche in the Episcopalian landscape.

Religious competition takes many forms and is influenced by many factors. I guess that means that Gross really is an "influencer."