What I Told 1,000 Ministry Leaders About Sextortion

There's a dreadful silence from the pulpit.

On October 2, I delivered a 9-minute message to 1,000 business and ministry leaders titled In the Case of Sextortion. It was my first time attending the THINQ Conference, and while standing backstage, I had no idea how many people were there. I had never even set foot in the room where I was about to speak until that moment. I just knew I had a strict 9 minutes (there’s a countdown clock for the audience - I’m not kidding) to tell a full room that they might be part of the problem.

My backstage view. 3 minutes until go time.

In the Case of Sextortion

Friends, we find ourselves living inside a mind-blowing and vast digital world. Maybe the greatest gift humanity has ever created.

Sophocles said: “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.”

I can FaceTime with my younger brother while he’s on the bullet train in Japan! When you think about it, that’s nuts.

But, oh, the curse. Misinformation, division, pornography, sextortion, and exploitation. Always felt heaviest by our amazing children.

Be honest: when you opened your phone in the hotel this morning, did you feel like you’re stepping into the gift… or the curse? As it sits there on your table right now, do you feel more connected, rejuvenated, and free?

If you’re a parent, you feel the fragility of this “gift.”

Jordan DeMay was a high school senior in Marquette, Michigan, looking forward to graduation and college. He was a popular student, homecoming king, who enjoyed football and basketball. His parents, John and Jennifer, monitored his tech closely and spoke openly about dangers.

On March 24, 2022, Jordan received an Instagram DM from a girl who wanted to be friends. She had friends in common and was kind and pretty. After earning his trust, she requested nude photos, and Jordan unfortunately complied. The combination of arousal, pressure, ease, and a brain driven by feelings created an overwhelming, toxic force. Even for a “good” boy, like Jordan.

But this was no teen girl. Brothers Samuel and Samson Ogoshi, part of a Nigerian-based criminal network called The Yahoo Boys, were operating a hacked Instagram account and demanded $1,000 from Jordan, threatening to send the images to his friends and family. A devastating thought for Jordan in a small town. The Ogoshi brothers leveraged his distress with evil taunts and pressured countdowns, “I’ll send it in ten, nine, eight…”.

After Jordan paid $300, he threatened to kill himself. They responded: “Do that fast…or I’ll make you do it…I swear to God.” Jordan died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound six hours later. A beautiful future wiped away by financial sextortion.

Friends, Jordan’s story is one of hundreds. And what happened to him isn’t his fault.

As ministry leaders, we stand at a crossroads between the gift and the curse, and we have been dreadfully silent about this [hold up iPhone].

In 2024, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says it received “nearly 100 reports per day” of financial sextortion.

To better understand why sextortion plagues our boys, we must understand their amazing brains. During this unique phase of development, it feels all the feels, 100x more than we do. If it feels good, do it. Risk, adventure, impulsivity. It’s why young people jump off things we only take pictures of. All go and no slow. And that’s not their fault.

This is a FEATURE. Not a BUG.

And when you understand this feature in young brains, you start to see an issue like sextortion differently. With empathy. When you hear Jordan’s story, your default becomes, “That’s not his fault.” During this phase of life, when you’re supposed to make some mistakes, that’s a perfectly logical response to god-like technology. Pitting our amazing tweens and teens against the world’s most brilliant, MIT-trained software engineers was never fair in the first place.

Solving insidious digital issues like sextortion demands a multi-faceted approach from all layers in society:

• Home

• Schools

• Churches

• Policies

• Companies

Here, I only want to focus on two: HOME and Churches.

First, the HOME. Parents are first. It’s always our job to be the primary disciplers of our kids, to do whatever we can to prevent issues like sextortion and, when needed, respond with grace and grit. If you are going to be a parent today, then it’s just part of the gig to be:

• Ridiculously involved.

• Have ridiculously frequent talks.

• And say ridiculously direct things.

We have to say things you never thought you’d have to say. Like with your teen son, settling your hand behind his head, and saying, “Hey, you might be tempted to send someone a nude picture. AI, fake and hacked accounts, they are messing with amazing boys like you. She might seem hot, and you might be excited. But look at me – don’t ever take a picture of your penis and send it to someone else. Ok? But if you ever find yourself in trouble, I’ve got you, I will fight for you, and we’ll get through it together.”

Our parents need to be taught step-by-step and chat-by-chat how to do these things. That’s the home.

Then there’s the church.

And I’ve experienced a deafening silence from the pulpit and stage about the pervasive spiritual degradation occurring in the hearts and minds of God’s children because of the early introduction of smartphones and social media into their lives.

Why? Why aren’t more of us telling our parents to quit giving their children this access? Why isn’t one sermon a month begging them not to introduce all this confusion, distortion, chaos, and sin into their lives?

Because NOTHING is darkening childhood innocence like their connected devices.

We’ve all seen an image of Jesus in the kids’ wing of a church where he’s in a meadow with His arms around a group of children from Matthew 18:1-5, where Jesus says, “Hey, let the kids come to me.”

What I’ve never seen in that kids’ wing is a second picture right next to the first one with someone drowning at the bottom of an ocean with a millstone tied around his neck, but that’s next in the Bible in verses 6-9 (NIV): “If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Have you ever seen a millstone? I’m certain a medium-sized rock would have been sufficient for drowning, but Jesus is making sure we’re listening. DO NOT HARM MY CHILDREN.

The collective silence of the church is harming our children. What if Jesus is talking about us?

We have a responsibility to tell our families about sin. Is it sinful to give our children social media?

I want you to imagine that it’s a typical morning in your seventh-grade year. For me, that was 1986. You just finished your cereal, and you grab your backpack, where you have a history book, notebook, and pencils. But before you leave, your mom says, “Wait! I have a few more things for you!”

And she puts in:

• A Walkman. Your CDs. Like all of them.

• A radio.

• A digital camera.

• Pictures of all your friends.

• A DVD player.

• Movies. Lots of them.

• A small television

• The NES. And Mario Brothers.

• MAD Magazine.

• Pokémon Cards

• Your Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.

• A basketball.

• 5 porn magazines.

Zips it all up, and says, “Don’t touch anything other than the notebook, pencils, and history book. All day. Or you’re in trouble. And I know most of your friends also have all these things in their backpacks, and even though their parents don’t care if they use them, you’re not allowed to use any of their things either. And if I hear that you touched any of the things in your backpack or any of the things in their backpack, you’re grounded for a month. Have a great day at school!

Crazy. Right?

Yet, that’s what it’s like to give our amazing kids smartphones and social media today. We expect our children to exert a daily level of self-control that we never had as children ourselves.

I’ve asked a friend to share a short word over video.

Ministry leaders, your families need to hear more of you making direct, bold, and loving statements about the realities of their digital decisions. Because it might be sinful to give our children social media.

But are we bold enough to say it? If we do, that is how we begin to point our children toward the gift of childhood, and away from issues like sextortion. Away from the curse.

Thank you.

If you would like to read our full sextortion write-up, not constrained by what fits into nine minutes, you can find it here.