Kids Can Inspire: How One Family Chose Bold Faith

Jesus didn't die so we could be safe. He died so we could be dangerous.

That's a line I've said for years in this Tribe, and it's exactly what came up when I sat down with a family you may already know from social media: Heather, Justin, and their three sons, Liam, Porter, and Finn — the family behind Kids Can Inspire. If you haven't seen their videos, you've probably seen someone share one. What started as a failed science experiment turned into a ministry reaching over 100,000 people, and the story of how they got there is a masterclass in what it actually costs to be bold for God.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of Getting Real with Real with the Kids Can Inspire family here.

From a Failed Experiment to a Movement

Kids Can Inspire almost didn't happen. Heather and her son Porter set out to film the classic "rice jar experiment" — speaking unkind words to one jar of rice and kind words to another, to show kids how words affect us. They forgot to add water. Fourteen days in, neither jar had molded, and they were running out of "still no mold" footage to post.

So they pointed the camera at Liam and asked him to say something kind instead. He talked about how God is with you and for you, and how every person is amazing. Heather posted it almost as a backup plan. Her mom saw it and told her: you need to start an inspirational channel. Heather checked if the handle "Kids Can Inspire" was taken. It wasn't — on any platform. She grabbed it that day.

The Backlash That Made Them Bolder

The channel grew fast on inspiration and kindness content. But something was missing. "There was a sprinkling of our Christian faith, but it wasn't the resounding theme," Justin told me. When they leaned into a few more faith-focused videos, the family got hit with unkind feedback — and had to decide what the channel was actually for.

They stepped away for a month. No family meeting, no group decision — each of them individually asked God what to do next. Every one of them came back with the same answer: keep going, and be bold. Not popular. Not safe. Bold.

That decision cost them something. Their account got shut down once. They've been accused of "using their kids" for content. Liam, one of the boys, put it plainly: kids at his school now know who he is, and some people only watch to make fun of them. But as Liam told me, "there's definitely way more than two good things about it" than bad — and none of it has been enough to make them stop.

Believers vs. Followers

One of the most striking moments in our conversation came when I asked Liam what separates a believer from a follower. Without missing a beat, he said: "A believer is someone who just thinks God is real. But a follower is someone who goes to church every Sunday, does what God is calling them to do, spreads the gospel — and when you get that gut feeling and God tells you to do something, you do it."

That's the whole episode in one sentence. It's why I keep telling the men in this Tribe: delayed obedience is disobedience. And it's why I told this family what I tell every leader I coach — watch out for the three-letter word that will end your assignment faster than anything else: ego. Edge. God. Out. Whenever someone compliments you for what God is doing through you, give it back to Him immediately. That's the posture of Matthew 5. That's Isaiah 6:8 — "here I am, send me." We're just vessels.

"God Has a Plan": Porter's Story

If you want to see what real faith under pressure looks like, ask Porter about camp this past July. During a woodshop class, his hand went through a bandsaw — the blade cut past the knuckle of one finger, into the bone, and into the second finger, missing the tendon by what the children's hospital surgeon called a near-impossible margin. His finger was left hanging.

While he waited for the ambulance, with his hand torn open, Porter wasn't screaming in fear. He was screaming, "God has a plan. God has a plan."

Heather posted an urgent prayer request the moment it happened. The healing that followed — full function and feeling restored within weeks, on an injury the surgeon said she'd never seen recover that way — is something this family credits directly to that flood of prayer. And Porter didn't stop there. On that same hospital trip, he saw a homeless teenage girl and couldn't stop thinking about her. He took the money he'd earned from the channel and filled a duffel bag with a tent, food, blankets, and pillows to bring back to her. "I think this is why this happened to me," he told his mom.

What's Next: Feeding 10,000 Kids

Heather works in marketing for Nourish International (formerly Orphan Network), an organization that feeds and cares for over 10,000 children every single day. Last year, with an audience of about 5,000 people, the family's followers helped raise $3,000 — 3,000 meals for kids in need. Today, with an audience more than twenty times that size and growing by thousands a day, the boys are launching a new fundraiser to help close Nourish's $300,000 funding gap.

It's the natural next step for a family whose eight-year-old once tried to give his iPad to a stranger on the street. As Liam put it, their purpose was never about followers or making money — "it's to bring people to Jesus and the gospel."

The Takeaway

Nobody in this family called themselves special. Heather said it herself: "We're just an ordinary family. We don't know any more about the Bible than anyone else. We just felt called to be bold, and we listened." Justin's closing thought is the one I want you to sit with: being bold doesn't have to look like starting a channel or writing a six-figure check. It can be as small as smiling at someone at the gas station, giving a stranger your coat, or having the one conversation you've been avoiding.

Faith. Discipline. Action. Go do a random act of kindness today — and don't get caught.

Listen to the full conversation with the Kids Can Inspire family on Episode 2 of the Getting Real with Real podcast, linked at the top of this post.