Blog: Bryce Crawford Needs the Real Jesus. Part 3: The Grift.

If you guys have read parts 1 and 2 of this series, you know that I’ve talked about how Bryce Crawford has been discipled by Todd White, a heretical, false teacher who has taught him how to use Christianity and other people’s pain for monetary gain and popularity and that Crawford has followed this teaching to a T. He is preaching a version of the Gospel that is not Biblically correct. Now, this being the last post in this series, I thought that I should wrap things up by talking about his grifting practices and how much money he has made from it. Let’s get into it.

If you look at his YouTube channel, Bryce gives you a bunch of links to his accounts on other social media platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, etc. At first glance, this doesn’t seem like anything out of the usual. There’s nothing about how to donate money to his ministry and it just seems like he’s doing the normal influencer thing of letting people know where else they can find you. That is until you actually go to one of his videos and open the description. Then, you get links to how to donate directly to his ministry, as well as his handles on Cashapp, Venmo, and PayPal. Obviously, lots of influencers do this as well, but things start to get suspicious when you start looking up where else you can donate to Bryce.

The first place I found where you can donate to him on a website called equipnet.org, which is a place where you can donate money to missionaries, Christian business owners, etc. Their About page says that they “[…]are a team of seasoned leaders who use their God given resources to empower innovators, who specialize in developing and unleashing Christian transformation through Business, Government, Education, Science and Technology, Arts & Communication, the Family the Local Church and Missions.

Convinced that the world is changed by dreamers and visionaries, EquipNet serves humanity through its commitment to leverage its financial, relational, intellectual and spiritual capital in ways that unlock the creative potential in key individuals and organizations.”

Looking at the rest of their website and their statement of faith (which can be found in the FAQ section), they seem to be doctrinally sound on the main issues of the Trinity, the hypostatic union, Jesus’ death on the cross, etc. (though it’s a shame that they’re partnering with people who may not be as sound). I’ll talk a bit more about them later, but for now, I’ll focus on where else Bryce is getting his donations.

The next place you can go to donate to Bryce is his Patreon account called “Bryce’s Kingdom Training School”, where, for $25 a month, you can be included in monthly giveaways, weekly discipleship calls over Zoom, receive discipleship and evangelism training, etc.

Next up is his Instagram, which includes two links, one of which is supposed to take you to a website where you can donate, but instead gave me this popup from Malwarebytes warning me that continuing could make me susceptible to a phishing scam.

Obviously not wanting to infect my computer with a virus, I continued over to the other link that he included that takes you to his website jesusinthestreet.com, or, at least, to a version of it that can be found on app.aplos.com. This is where things start to get interesting because of the Bible verse in the upper right corner. Let’s see if you can spot it.

Did you see it? He quotes 1 Cor. 9:11, which says “If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?”

Are your red Christian grifter flags going up, too? If so, you’re not alone. Bryce Crawford is taking this verse completely out of context, using it as justification for people to give him money. He repeats this again in a video he posted on Facebook that was originally posted on Instagram talking about how he needed more money to keep the ministry going (the full video can be watched here: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1162256874988436. BTW, if you click on the links provided in the description of the video, they take you to a suspicious-looking Instagram account).

If we go back to his page on equipnet.org, Bryce says he is a full time missionary and, if you watch his YouTube videos, he lives in Los Angles, California, one of the most expensive places to live, even if you’re renting a crappy apartment. As of this month, the average apartment cost is $2,156, which puts it at 38% higher than the national average. Unless you have a well-paying job, you’re not going to have an easy time paying the bills and living there, which made me curious. How, as a 20-21-year-old influencer with seemingly no job, can he afford to live in L.A.?

Well, after some digging, I came across a website that has estimated his net worth to be anywhere from 2-5 million dollars. While I admit that this could be speculation given that many of these celebrity websites are off on some things, if this is true, then I have to wonder how much of this came from donations. How much of those donations does Bryce use to line his own pockets? How much of it actually goes to his ministry? We simply don’t know.

The problem with this (other than it sounding scammy on the level of what the Instagram account PreachersNSneakers uncovered about churches like Hillsong) is that Bryce is completely misusing Scripture to get people to give him money. Though ministries need to make money just like anyone else, it’s completely out of line to be using that as your main source of income, especially when the Bible is full of examples of missionaries and preachers working another job to support himself. Some examples of this are:

Acts 18: 1-4:

1 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3 and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them4 Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.

Acts 20: 33-35

33 I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’

1 Corinthians 9:6-7

6 Or is it only I and Barnabas who lack the right to not work for a living? 7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk?

Isn’t it interesting how in the same chapter that Bryce is using to justify people giving him money for his ministry that it also talks about working hard for yourself? I guess that just wasn’t important in Bryce’s mind.

Furthermore, in the interview that he did with Todd White, he said that discipleship is just being a friend to someone and loving on them and using that to share the Gospel with them. After seeing his Patreon, I guess that being a friend means that someone gives you money first. This is especially sad because there are people in his comments section who have asked him for help dealing with their own anxiety and depression (which I covered his claims of having had anxiety and depression in Part 2) and he never got back to them. Guess you need to give him money first for that as well.

In conclusion, though I think that Bryce Crawford could still be used by God to save someone, the way he’s going about it is all wrong. From watching his videos, it feels as though he isn’t doing his evangelism gig for God’s glory, but rather for his own as he claims to heal people, disciple them, and then asks for money in the description box. He is grifting off of people’s desperation for healing and for a faith that brings actual purpose and sense to a world that seems to make less and less sense every day. I hope he gets truly saved by the true Jesus of the Bible and repents of the false teaching that he’s been spreading for so long on social media. If you’re a Christian and want to be discipled, a resource I would recommend is midwestoutreach.org. My family and I have been discipled by the president of that organization, Don Veinot, since 2021 when we left our first church, and they have a YouTube channel called the Unknown Webcast. I can assure that they are much better than what Bryce is pushing.

Until next time,

M.J.