Which pastors and megachurch networks have publicly endorsed Turning Point USA or TPUSA Faith?
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive summary
Turning Point USA’s religious arm, TPUSA Faith, has secured public backing from a set of conservative evangelical pastors and affiliated church networks who have hosted events, co-chaired initiatives, or spoken at TPUSA Faith gatherings—most prominently Rob McCoy of Godspeak Calvary Chapel, Sam Masteller of Freedom Life Church, and Lucas Miles, TPUSA Faith’s director and an Indiana pastor—while TPUSA’s own materials and reporting document a broader recruitment effort funded at scale [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Rob McCoy — the California megachurch pastor who became a public ally
Rob McCoy, pastor of Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Thousand Oaks, is repeatedly cited as a public co-chair and early host who zealously promoted Charlie Kirk and TPUSA Faith events; reporting states McCoy encouraged other pastors to host Kirk, served as co-chair of TPUSA Faith, and used his platform to lionize congregations that resisted COVID closures—positioning his megachurch as a node of partnership with Turning Point [2] [1].
2. Freedom Life Church and Pastor Sam Masteller — local hosting and promotion of TPUSA-branded events
Freedom Life Church in Christiana, Pennsylvania, led by Pastor Sam Masteller, has publicly hosted multiple TPUSA-branded events including a “Worldview Weekend,” and Masteller’s onstage endorsement of local school-board candidates at a TPUSA-linked gathering is cited as an example of a pastor using the pulpit to advance TPUSA-aligned civic engagement [2] [5].
3. Lucas Miles — TPUSA Faith’s in-house pastoral director
Lucas Miles is identified explicitly as the director of TPUSA Faith and described in reporting as a charismatic-leaning pastor from Indiana who thanked Catholics in the crowd at a Pastors Summit, signaling both his formal leadership role inside TPUSA Faith and his function as a pastor-network bridge within the organization’s outreach [1] [6].
4. Pastors summit attendees and broader evangelical networks — signs of expanding endorsement, not universal support
TPUSA’s Pastors Summits—one in Gainesville, Georgia, and earlier events—drew hundreds of pastors and spouses, with speakers including Charlie Kirk and provocateurs like Matt Walsh, and were framed by TPUSA and critics alike as recruitment and activation tools; MinistryWatch and Word&Way note 400 pastors and wives at an early summit and describe the gatherings as pressure points to “Christianize” civic engagement, indicating an expanding but selective set of clergy endorsing or participating in TPUSA Faith programming [4] [1].
5. Institutional posture and funding that help explain endorsements
TPUSA’s own materials and investor prospectus lay out TPUSA Faith as a funded initiative—budgeted at $6.4 million in the 2021 prospectus—explicitly designed to “engage thousands of pastors nationwide” and run faith-based voter drives and training, which helps explain why some pastors and church networks have publicly aligned: the program offers events, legal support messaging, and a coordinated platform for political activism from the pulpit [7] [3] [4].
6. Alternative viewpoints, incentives, and limits of the public record
Reporting shows clear alliances but not unanimous endorsement across American evangelicalism: some sources frame TPUSA Faith as pressuring pastors to blur lines on political speech and to defy IRS rules—an angle pushed by news outlets and watchdogs—while TPUSA and participating pastors frame their activity as “biblical” civic engagement rather than partisan politics; the sources document examples of public endorsement (McCoy, Masteller, Lucas Miles) and participation but do not provide a comprehensive roster of all pastors or megachurch networks that have ever endorsed TPUSA Faith, so claims about universality would be beyond the available reporting [2] [1] [4] [3].
7. What the pattern suggests and what remains unreported
The pattern in the sources shows TPUSA Faith relying on high-profile pastors to seed conferences and local events—using megachurch platforms like Godspeak and Freedom Life to scale messaging—and funding to amplify recruitment; however, the sources stop short of listing a national directory of endorsers, meaning that while several named pastors and churches have publicly allied with TPUSA Faith, the full map of endorsements across denominations and megachurch networks is not documented in the provided reporting [2] [7] [4].