Emma Fowle/European Correspondent
When Jay Painter became a Christian, he took a novel approach to sharing his faith with his best friend. He convinced Lewis Rebaudo to join him on an Alpha course – and documented the journey on Instagram.
Two years ago, Jay Painter was an atheist.
The 26-year-old’s past experience of Christianity had been limited to a few school assemblies and RE lessons. But in the summer of 2024, while sitting with his dying grandfather, Jay experienced something he couldn’t explain. “I don’t know whether I saw or felt his soul, but something changed; what made my granddad, my granddad, was gone,” he remembers. “It was super weird.
“I moved from this hard atheist position, [believing that] there’s nothing when we die, to: I’ve seen something strange here.” It led Jay on a journey of spiritual exploration – and when he stumbled across Christian content online, he became convinced that Jesus was real. He bought a Bible, read the Gospels, found a local church and gave his life to Christ.
A year later, he began creating online content to reach others, like him, who were searching for hope and meaning. Instagram videos entitled: “Christian goes on a pub crawl?!”, “Is it possible to stop swearing?” and “I’m a 27-year-old Christian and I’m lonely” tackled the doubts, questions and struggles Jay was facing as a young man and a new Christian. These videos quickly proved popular, generating thousands of views.
Around the same time, Jay was challenged by his church to invite a friend to their upcoming Alpha course. Initially, his best friend, Lewis, rejected his invitation. Despite noticing how peaceful Jay had become since finding faith, Lewis says he was “on the fence” about Christianity, and quite comfortable on his perch.
That’s when Jay had an idea – to film him and Lewis attending Alpha for a video series that asked: “Can you go from atheist to Christian in twelve weeks?” Being a good friend, Lewis was eventually persuaded to partake in the experiment “for the ’gram”.
“I don’t know if I would have convinced him without the video series,” Jay admits.
As evangelism techniques go, it’s unorthodox – but did it work?
