This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on August 4, 2026.
What could be worse than “Snakes on a Plane”? How about “Preachers on a Plane.”
This is the latest trend going viral in white evangelicalism’s spiritual warfare campaign. And as Samuel L. Jackson would say, “Enough is enough!”
Attention to this annoying practice has been spreading online due to viral videos by Whitney Lynn, known as the “Sky Evangelist.”
“Good evening, San Diego!” Lynn calls out as she stands in the middle of a plane filled with 200 people. “I just want to make a quick announcement for everybody while they’re getting their bags! You know, San Diego’s known for the beautiful landscapes, right? And the perfect weather. But I wanna tell you who is so perfect and so beautiful. Better than anything in this life is knowing Jesus Christ personally as Lord and Savior. He died on the Cross for all your sins. He rose again in three days. He’s alive. He’s the one true God. But the wages of all our sin is death, hell forever. But the gift of God is eternal life. And if you know him personally, one day you’ll go to heaven and walk the streets of gold and have beautiful perfect peace like nothing you could ever imagine. So I pray you know Jesus, put your faith in him, repent of your sins. He loves you so much!”
Most evangelicals wouldn’t find anything objectionable in her message. It carries all the hallmarks of what most evangelicals believe: God is perfect, we sinned, we deserve to be punished forever in hell, Jesus took the punishment for those who place their faith in him. To evangelicals, the idea of their neighbors burning in hell forever isn’t objectionable. It’s justice.
The current controversy has more to do with whether or not an airplane is the place to proselytize. For most of us, that doesn’t fly.
White evangelical obsession with airplanes
Growing up in independent Baptist fundamentalism, I often heard preachers talk about evangelizing people on airplanes. I don’t remember many calls to evangelize in other specific contexts. But they always pressured us into witnessing to the person sitting next to us on airplanes, told us it may be that person’s only opportunity to hear the gospel and warned us their blood would be on our hands if they went to hell for eternity and we were too afraid to witness to them during our two-hour flight.
“Growing up in independent Baptist fundamentalism, I often heard preachers talk about evangelizing people on airplanes.”
In Manifesto for a Normal Christian Life, Bethel Church pastor and Seven Mountains Mandate promoter Bill Johnson tells the story of a pastor offering to heal people on an airplane.
“This was on an airplane over the Atlantic Ocean!” Johnson points out. “People started coming to him on the plane that understood what was happening.” In typical charismatic fashion, passengers started falling backward in the aisles as they were supposedly being “slain in the Spirit.” So Johnson says “a large Englishman” began catching people.
“He kept praying for people and they kept falling over,” Johnson writes. “Then the Englishman came over to him and said: ‘You have got to slow down. I’m running out of places to put bodies.’ He looked around and everywhere there was space there were bodies!”
Imagine if they ran into severe, unexpected turbulence.
According to Johnson, “It was a two-and-a-half-hour-long healing meeting over the Atlantic Ocean. … That is just the normal Christian life.”
But is it really that normal?