Why are Christian leaders going public with their personal struggles?

Prominent Christian leaders are questioning and even departing from their faith in a very public way: their Instagram profiles.

Author and speaker Joshua Harris announced recently - on Instagram - that he had left his Christian faith. Marty Sampson, a songwriter from Hillsong, also had taken his personal faith journey public by posting his questions about faith on the social media platform.

Why would these prominent Christian figures share this with their combined 39,400 followers?

"I think it's very interesting that these figures have gone to social media to make these grand revelations about their spiritual journey.", says Dr. Nicholas Greco, Associate Professor of Communications and Media at Providence University College.

Greco suggests that social media may be more than just a place to share photos for leaders like Sampson and Harris.

Greco says, "Perhaps social media for these figures provides a kind of community that they're not experiencing themselves within their own faith community. Which is strange, but it's possible the social media community is a little stronger for them than what they're experiencing in their churches."

Instagram may be the safest place for these people as they question or renounce the faith they once were known for. Instagram has become their new place of confession as the ones receiving the news have already established their commitment and support of them by clicking 'follow.'

"It could be that the social media community that they are revealing this info to, they figure that these are fans of theirs, that they're people that will support them and whatever they say," Greco says.

"So they are perhaps speaking to the sympathy that they will receive from this group of people who will appreciate their honesty or supposed authenticity."

"Maybe that's one of the symptoms of this relationship that they've had with the church where the church is not that community that they are wanting and social media is this supportive community."

They are searching

Greco suggests that these well-known Christians are finding are searching for community, answers, and he says, "I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing."

Greco calls Christian to see this as an opportunity for their own reflection: "It's easy for us to judge them and say, 'Oh, they've fallen away from their faith for ridiculous reasons.' ... I think for those of us who are Christians and relatively solid in our faith, the first thing we should do is pray for these people, of course, and also know that we can be caught up in the same sort of situations or traps that they are involved in."

"I think we should try to talk about them. That will make our faith stronger."

The questioning of the faith is not the problem, says Greco. "It sounds like Marty Sampson didn't have the opportunities to question the faith that he was so invested in."

"This the kind of thing that we should ask ourselves: 'How strong is our faith?' If these two figures who are leading figures, 'celebrity figures within modern Protestant Christianity can fall away from their faith so easily, well how secure are we in our faith? ... A way to make our faith is stronger is to wrestle with our faith - to sort of question it before it falls apart."