A Kentucky woman is going viral for exposing how some of America’s largest megachurches respond when someone calls asking for help.
In a TikTok series that’s drawn millions of views — and plenty of outrage — creator Nikalie Monroe, an Army veteran from Kentucky, pretends to be a desperate mother trying to feed her baby. She doesn’t actually have children, but her goal, she says, is to test whether churches that preach compassion practice it when someone calls in need.
“I’m calling your church to see if they would help feed a starving baby,” Monroe says in video after video, dialing one megachurch after another as the sound of a crying infant plays in the background. Her request is simple: a can of baby formula.
As of Tuesday, Monroe says she’s called over 30 churches across the country. Only nine offered any kind of immediate assistance. Thirty-three said no. Among them was Houston’s Lakewood Church, led by celebrity pastor Joel Osteen, one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the U.S.
Monroe’s call to Lakewood followed the same script. On camera, she told staff she needed help feeding her baby. The response: she could fill out an application through their “benevolence ministry” — and wait days or even weeks for approval.
When she hung up, Monroe was stunned. “A church that big, that rich,” she told her followers, “and they can’t even buy a can of formula?”
Lakewood Church, which reported $59 million in net assets in 2017, has not commented publicly on the video. Osteen himself is estimated to be worth at least $50 million, and social media users were quick to bring that up.
“Joel Osteen would NEVER!” one user wrote. “He didn’t get a mega mansion by helping people!”
Another viewer fumed, “They said if approved — approved?? To feed a baby?? What kind of approval process is that?”
Others referenced the church’s infamous 2017 controversy, when it initially closed its doors during Hurricane Harvey, turning away people seeking shelter. “They wouldn’t let flood victims in,” one commenter wrote. “Mattress Mack did more with a furniture store than Lakewood does with a stadium.”
Monroe, who has shared more than 40 videos in the series, says the project isn’t meant as an attack on religion, but a reflection of the gap between faith and action. “I’m not even a church,” she said in one clip, “and if somebody called me needing to feed a baby, I wouldn’t hang up — I’d find a way to help.”
The experiment has taken on new resonance amid the ongoing government shutdown, which has left 42 million Americans temporarily without food assistance through the SNAP program. For many families, churches and charities are the only remaining safety net — one that Monroe’s videos suggest is fraying.
Her footage is messy, emotional, and often uncomfortable to watch. But that’s the point. It asks a blunt question that transcends politics, religion, or TikTok trends: when someone is hungry, who actually answers the call?
