When Allan Dayhoff was last profiled by byFaith, he had completed several hundred tattoo interviews with people who had stories behind the ink on their skin. Finding people eager to talk about what their tattoos meant to them, Dayhoff realized that a simple tattoo was, in fact, a gateway to profound questions of identity, love, grief, hope, and the state of their souls. 

Questions that often lead to God.

Over the last decade, Dayhoff – who received his doctor of ministry degree from Covenant Theological Seminary and is a PCA teaching elder in Potomac Presbytery – has completed over 10,000 interviews, trained 60 resident evangelists, published a handful of new books, and held numerous conferences in multiple countries exploring faith, trauma, and storytelling. 

But as any seasoned minister knows, numbers can be a trap: numerical growth does not necessarily mean growth in maturity or faithfulness, and the challenges of spiritual formation remain as formidable as ever.

Redefining the Parish

Much of Dayhoff’s work stems from his notion of the difference between ‘orthodox’ and ‘unorthodox’ real estate. Throughout most of church history, a parish was defined primarily by geography, usually bounded by a village or network of towns, with a church building and resident ministers at its core. 

In the pre-Industrial age such a model made sense, but in an age in which travel and mobility are now the norm — and digital communities have increasingly replaced traditional gathering spaces — the hub-and-spoke model has given way to a decentralized, affinity-based social structure. Fewer nonbelievers are seeking out the church than in the past, so the church must seek them out instead.

This shift in parish structure, Dayhoff contends, requires new approaches. “If 92% of the population isn’t coming into church,” he says, “we have to send people out to them. We’re heavy on churchmen in church buildings, but we have to take the risk to go off that real estate and scout out the landscape as it is, not as we imagine it to be.”

Hence, the creation of the Evangelism Explorer program. Dayhoff mentors dozens of pastors and lay leaders each year, teaching them how to define their church’s parish where they live, and to enter it in a posture of listening and relationship-building. Often beginning with tattoo-hunting but expanding into other areas of ministry, this fieldwork helps to instill humility and curiosity in budding evangelists.

“Evangelism is too often thought of as a reply-apologetic,” he says. “But a listening apologetic—that’s where the magic happens.” 

Digital Pews

The COVID-19 pandemic made painfully clear the trials of virtual church. The inability to gather in corporate worship led to severe setbacks in ministry, including many churches shrinking or closing, but there was one silver lining. The pivot to new media technologies, where you can interact with people in digital spaces.

Dayhoff has been swift to embrace this trend, posting the vast majority of his interviews, worship services, and teaching on his social media channels where, he argues, the masses currently reside. He is particularly active on TikTok, where he has more than 8,000 followers.

“This is by far my biggest account, and my followers have responded loudly to what we’re doing,” he said. “They want me to hold space for them, and I am fiercely protective of them.”

A two-minute social media clip is not meant to replace a true worship service with sacraments and the means of grace, Dayhoff grants — there will always be a need for orthodox real estate to serve that purpose — but for the unchurched, the de-churched, and the biblically illiterate, those two minutes might be the first time they hear the name Jesus as something other than a swear word. Just recently, he posted a series on Genesis 1 and 2, tying biblical narratives to the creation-story tattoos he found out in the wild.

“Why are people writing all over themselves?” Dayhoff asks. “To get back to the blessing of Eden, just like God is doing. The image-bearers of God cannot stop asking where we come from, why we’re here, and where we’re going.”

With over 8 million total views on TikTok alone, clearly, he is striking a nerve.

Needful Work

But back to the numbers question: those 8 million views do not always translate into meaningful conversations, much less conversions to faith in Christ. Sometimes content is just content, and a ‘like’ could come as easily from an earnest spiritual seeker as from a bot. 

Nevertheless, Dayhoff persists, partly because he has no idea how many lost sheep are out there, only that he is called to speak to them however he can. When not on the road leading workshops and seminars, he still calls the Washington, D.C.-area home, worshiping at Capitol Presbyterian Fairfax Church (PCA) and attending the PCA General Assembly as often as possible. 

With 10,000 interviews now in hand, Dayhoff admits there is no telling where the next decade will take him. Under his Evangelize Today banner, he hopes to lead more conferences and workshops, as well as train pastors in the ET residency program. “We need to make a way for the next generation of evangelists, the next generation of explorers and discoverers, to be developed,” he says. “They won’t be made exclusively on orthodox real estate: we need to equip our evangelists not just with knowledge, but with experience in the wild.”

A regular contributor to byFaith, Benjamin Morris is a third-year student at RTS.