Earlier this year, several news outlets reported on increasing openness to Christianity among Silicon Valley tech elites. The stories focused on the work of an organization called ACTS 17 Collective, whose name is both a Scriptural reference to Paul’s preaching in Athens and a backronym for Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society.
CT spoke with Michelle Stephens, the cofounder and executive director of ACTS 17, about the organization’s mission and event strategy, as well as some of the pushback it has faced from inside and outside the church. The conversation also turned to Peter Thiel (Stephens’ husband, Trae, was an early employee at Thiel’s software company Palantir and is currently a partner at his venture capital fund) and the next steps she hopes Christ-curious people in the Bay Area will take.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
To start, Michelle, how long have you lived in the Bay Area? What’s been your experience of being a Christian in tech circles—and how has that experience changed over time?
I’ve been called to live out here for the last 11 and a half years; we moved here for my husband’s job. I had the opportunity to get my PhD at the University of California, San Francisco, but I left academia to build a company for parents to reduce stress—which in turn reduces child stress, which is the subject of my dissertation.
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Through my relationships in academia and tech and my husband’s relationships with venture capital, we’ve come close to technologists and investors around deep questions about the meaning of life. Those questions have been enthralling, authentic, and vulnerable. We were bringing the Christian lens, and people were welcoming that, curious, and wanting to know more. We realized we had to get smart on this stuff. But we couldn’t stop what we were doing and go to seminary; we had two small children and were building companies.
We decided to start a faith-and-work group at our church, EPIC. We created our own curriculum, and people came from all over the Bay Area, 7:30 every Tuesday morning. We’d serve hard-boiled eggs and bananas and coffee and dive into the theology of Thomas Aquinas, Miroslav Volf, René Girard, and Martin Luther.
Let’s talk about your relatively new organization, ACTS 17.
By the end of 2023, my company was winding down and my husband’s 40th birthday was that November. I wanted to celebrate big. We invited over 220 of his closest friends to a three-day birthday party in New Mexico called “The Roast, The Toast, and The Holy Ghost.” On the Holy Ghost day, we thought we’d have a sort of remixed church service. Wouldn’t it be funny if we tricked a bunch of people into going to church?
We served caviar bumps, breakfast pizza, mimosas, and spiked coffee. DJ Canvas had come out with his crew to play a Saturday night set, remixing all of our beloved movie-themed songs into a trap beat. He also does this for Christian and worship music. He’s got the best dance moves. He’s got the best vibes. He performed while we were hanging out, having breakfast, communing together.
Then my husband Trae’s partner at Founders Fund, Peter Thiel, gave a 55-minute lecture on forgiveness and miracles—the meaning and significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection—and testifying to his belief as well. We were blown away. A lot of people were looking like he had 10 heads, like, “What are you talking about?”
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But people were also coming up to us saying, “Whoa. I did not know Peter Thiel was a Christian. I didn’t know Christianity could sound like that. So thoughtful, intellectual, rigorous. What are you reading? Where are you going to church in San Francisco?”
Meanwhile, my Christian friends were like, “That was heretical. How dare you put a non-seminary-trained individual up on a platform, call it a sermon, and have him talk about Jesus?” That’s from my friends! I’m like, “Okay, my goodness, I messed up.” But then some of my Christian friends were like, “Did you just trick over 220 people into going to church?”
I thought, let’s test this in San Francisco, one of the most unchurched cities in America. We can party with a purpose the night before and then do a Sunday service the day after. We planned an event for May of 2024, a whole DJ set at a warehouse venue in the Dogpatch. The tickets for the event cost money, but it was free to come the next day. We wondered, Can we lure people in with a party and have them come to the Sunday service afterwards?
We did the Sunday service at Garry Tan’s home. He’s a famous tech investor, and his home is a converted mission church in Dolores Park. We had alcohol. We had really good local food. We had DJ Canvas again, remixing worship beats in the background—CC Winans with Jack Harlow. And then we had Peter Thiel come back to give a talk on political theology.
The Sunday service went low-key viral on Twitter. It had an over-400-person waitlist. We were getting death threats as well. From the non-Christian side, things like “Peter is the worst” and a lot of aggression and weaponizing. And then on the Christian side, accusations that we’re being heathens, essentially.
The event went off without a hitch. We had about 45 percent non-Christians for that initial event. People were saying, “You have to do this in my city.” People had flown in from all over the world for this event!
It was very clear at the end of the event that we needed to do something with this. And so DJ Canvas and his team, Joshua Raines and Jae-Lynn Owsley, and myself formed ACTS 17 Collective.
We’ve now put on five or six events, two in the UAE over Thanksgiving of last year. Of course, the press got word of all of this. We’re just riding the wave with open hands, open hearts. This is unlike anything I’ve ever done. I’ve never done anything outwardly Christian with my career, and so I’m very scared. But I think God is calling us into something. For me, God is doing a work in obedience, in listening to the Holy Spirit, letting go of control. It’s really fun.
What’s next for the organization?
I don’t know if you’ve been following anything in the press about Peter talking more about the Antichrist.
I just listened to the Ross Douthat interview.
Honestly, that is the tip of the iceberg. Peter’s been doing Bible studies about the Antichrist for years now. He feels ready to present what he’s prepared through ACTS 17 in a four-part lecture series, which we’ll host in the fall in San Francisco. And a South Bay event on a different subject has been percolating with the help of former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and others.
What else? We’ve got a funnel established with events. But how do we reach more people other than 200 in a single city in a single time frame? How do we let people know the voice and the feel and the sound of ACTS 17? How do we create an abundant amount of next steps for folks to take? That’s the whole purpose and mission of ACTS 17 at this point—you are on the faith journey, Christian, non-Christian, and everywhere in between. Take a next step. So we’re developing a content strategy.
And then the third focus that we’re pursuing in the next six months is going to other cities, places like New York and DC. LA has been pushing for us to come. These world-class speakers that we’ve been getting in tech: How do we get them in the entertainment industry? Boy oh boy, is it tough. The archetype is someone who is very successful in their field but not very well-known for being Christian. They’re using all of their money, fame, and power for the Lord, but they’re not public about it. That combination is actually very hard to find.
Reading about ACTS 17 reminded me of my campus ministry at Harvard—an organization that only operated on Ivy League campuses and at Stanford. An explicit goal of that ministry was to serve students who had the potential to eventually exercise some kind of influence in government or industry.
There was always a tension, I think, in that mission. On the one hand, it was certainly true that people at Harvard were spiritually impoverished: riddled with anxiety, obsessed with status and money and power. We needed Jesus! On the other hand, there was something strange about being deemed “worth the investment.” Some of us wondered, Is this coming into tension with Jesus’ call to serve the least of these?
One of the critiques that I’ve seen of this kind of Bay Area “revival” movement is that it’s focusing on people who already have access to the wealthy and powerful, that parties with access to influential speakers and craft cocktails aren’t really aligned with the teachings and life of Jesus.
I’m also thinking of Elizabeth Breunig’s critique in The Atlantic. She writes, “Christianity at its core is not a religion that can reliably deliver socially desirable outcomes, nor is it intended to be. … The formation of [the martyrs’] faith was contingent not on temporal success, but rather on another principle altogether: that Christianity is worth following not because it has the potential to improve one’s life, though it can, but rather because it is true.”
That tension is absolutely there, and I’m so glad that you brought this up. In doing this work, it doesn’t mean that the work for the poor, the marginalized, the least of these, if you will, is any less important. (I was a nurse in Honduras and in South Africa, serving folks who are very poor. The need is so great.) It’s just saying this work is important too. Jesus said it is harder for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle then enter the kingdom of heaven. And we know that Jesus is for everyone, radically inclusive. So how can Jesus also be for the rich, the powerful, the wealthy?
God is using each and every one of us in our skills and talents and giftings to serve his kingdom; and in his kingdom, he wants everyone. Maybe we’ve been neglecting the rich and wealthy because we’ve thought that they’re gods, right? They can take care of themselves. That is such an illusion. If anything, they need God even more, because the pressure of being “gods” themselves is so great.
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The other criticism I get from Christians is around opportunism, which is what you’re speaking to with the Atlantic quote. Some other Christian organizations are attacking ACTS 17, saying that we are delivering a sort of a sort of cultural, convenient Christianity: “Oh, now you’re just going to get more people to be Christian so that they can pitch Peter Thiel or be friends with him.” Good luck if you think it’s that easy to pitch Peter!
My not-so-popular take on this is that maybe this is going to create more of a cultural Christian movement. Maybe it’s opportunism. I’m not going to say that you’re wrong, because I literally don’t know, and it keeps me up at night.
This is where trust comes in: God, please do what you only can do. Please convert the hearts and minds of folks that may be very convinced around the cultural aspects of Christianity. Take those thoughts and convert them to be giving their lives to you. Use it all! Use the preacher with the microphones on the street corner. All of it can feel weird, abrasive, wrong, even, but can we trust God to do what only God can do? The war is already won. We don’t have anything left to prove.
I like this “next steps” framework you’ve outlined above. What are some of those next steps? Put another way, what would be some signs of a movement of God in Silicon Valley? More people in local churches on Sundays? More Scripture reading groups? More money given away?
It’s what you said, Go to church. Start giving your money away. See what that’s like. You know, you don’t have to get generosity exactly right either. If you want to be generous and abundant, that’s what matters. Believe me, I’ve made all sorts of weird decisions around giving away my money, and it’s an opportunity to learn and grow.
Also, connection, community, going into the Word, reading a piece of theology, reading Scripture, going to church, coming together with other Christians to talk about these big questions you have, doing an Alpha Course. Like I said, we’re in really early stages with this, less than a year in—but it’s those things we are compelling people to do.
We’re unabashedly saying things like “Jesus changes everything.” And I think people love that directness, that confidence, that truth. People are seeking truth. They’re seeking discourse where you can talk about your unbelief in Jesus as much as your belief in Jesus. Everything is welcome here.
I also want to address the “movement of God” framing. It’s a bit triggering for me.
I’m a researcher, a scientist, so I’m hesitant about causation above correlation. And I’m really not okay with churches or Christian leaders saying that any one thing that we’re doing or not doing is all of the sudden a movement of God. I think it’s fine to present the data and make connections, but I really want us to hold it more loosely and also recognize God is God. God is always working. God is not working any more or any less. Why are we even trying to quantify that?
So let’s not try to be right about this; let’s just do our part and see what happens. I think what feels different than 11 years ago is that even though a city like San Francisco has been so open—so curious, so willing—what they’re doing now that’s different is taking action. I see people taking steps toward going to church and talking about their faith.
We’re living in a post-Christian place. People have not heard the gospel from their parents or grandparents. They do not know Jesus. What an incredible opportunity, where we’re situated, to deliver the message of the gospel in a fresh new way, meeting them exactly where they are and bringing them toward Jesus.
I’m sure people are coming to these events whose choices—around substance use, sex, wealth—look different than maybe what you believe is the Christian vision of flourishing. But you also know that those Christian ethics aren’t going to make sense to people who have never heard the gospel.
For starters, we’re very unattached to whether or not we have alcohol at our events. It feels culturally appropriate to offer it; but we’ve also had purely nonalcoholic events. We can have alcohol or not, and it wouldn’t change much.
We call out that some of our attendees are tracking every health metric in their bodies, meditating every day to help with sleep and stress, low-dosing on mushrooms in the morning to help with productivity and focus, joining a YPO group or a conscious leadership group. And then hiring an executive coach to be a better leader. And then going on an ayahuasca ceremony or an MDMA journey to dissociate their egos.
You do all of these things, and you find yourself still with this God-shaped hole. We name it—we know what you’re up to. Some of us are doing some of those things ourselves; we’re right here alongside of you, in the tension as well.
But is what you’re doing now leaving you with the answers that you want? Is it leaving you with the feeling that you are full? Are you still on this search for wholeness, for aliveness, for love? I think that is the recipe—not saying that we are judging it but we are challenging it, and we’re also being vulnerable. We’re figuring this out too.
And so then we can say, “Jesus, try Jesus.” That gives them another option to explore, just like they’re exploring all of these other things. And if we trust and know that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, then we can trust that it’ll somehow stick—we don’t know when or how, but we trust that inserting “Jesus is the answer” will put them on a journey.
