Veteran broadcaster Chris Stigall is taking his brand of honest truth-telling and unwavering faith nationwide. On January 13, 2025, “The Chris Stigall Show” will be syndicated across the country by Salem Media Group, offering an upgraded platform to a radio host who doesn’t shy away from sharing his Christian values.
With Salem radio host Dr. Sebastian Gorka departing his post to join the White House as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s incoming Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism, Hugh Hewitt will now host the afternoon hour, while Stigall will take over Hewitt’s former morning hour. This move marks a significant step for Stigall, who has found both professional success and personal fulfillment by embracing his faith on air.
Today, Stigall is a beacon of faith and truth in the media landscape. However, this wasn’t always the case for the man behind the microphone.
Recalling his first role as a music broadcaster right out of college, Stigall said: “I thought being on the radio was talking, and my bosses didn’t like that. They just wanted me to play [music].” This early frustration led him to pursue the world of talk radio, where he found his voice and a platform he was craving—the ability to engage with listeners on a deeper level.
In 2006, he launched “The Chris Stigall Show” in Kansas City before progressing to Philadelphia in 2010, where he’s been broadcasting ever since. In his decade there, he felt he had finally become “a long-term radio success story.” Yet, the constant pressure to keep that success alive continued to haunt him.
“When you built your entire life and your entire identity on being one thing professionally, how stressful is the daily living of just hanging on to it?” Stigall recalls. Though he was still a professing Christian, and regularly attended and led in church, he “tucked all that away.” Excessive alcohol consumption became his way to cope. The more success he had, the more pressure he felt. He kept his faith exclusively for Sundays and didn’t want it to leak into his professional life.
“After all, when you’re trying to grow an audience, you can’t risk talking about Jesus,” he thought at the time.
He had a reality check after getting pulled over one night. But while that experience was embarrassing, it took another two years for him to be “reacquainted with Jesus” and get his life turned around.
That moment came at church one Sunday, during a sermon covering John 5, which tells the story of a crippled man who sought healing at the pool of Bethesda. Jesus’ message to the crippled man resonated with Stigall: “Do you want to get well?” Stigall felt the Holy Spirit asking the same of him. This marked a turning point in his life, inspiring him to truly surrender to Jesus, share his testimony openly, and embrace sobriety.
“I haven’t touched a drink since,” he said. Not only was he healed, but as Jesus said in John 5:14, he could go forth and sin no more. He learned “to show outwardly” his trust in Christ.
In November 2019, Stigall was hired by Salem Media to host his own talk show. For the first time in his career, he felt emboldened to share his faith on air, an opportunity uniquely afforded to him by Salem. He sought to be a trusted source of factual news, presented with a touch of humor. His goal was to inform and uplift his listeners.
Beyond his daily show, Stigall is deeply committed to Christian education and mentoring the next generation. He and his wife Christine, who have three teenage children, actively promote the Herzog Foundation, which focuses on growing and catalyzing Christian education nationwide. Together, he and Christine host a separate podcast, “Making the Leap,” and Stigall contributes to Herzog’s content strategy.
While he continues to offer political and cultural commentary, his perspective has evolved. His renewed faith informs his approach to current events on-air. This year, he shared a unique insight with listeners: “I felt we had a choice. We could either place our hope in Christ or place our hope in an election.” Even a political victory, he acknowledges, cannot be the ultimate savior. With secular culture encroaching on the church, he emphasizes its vital role as the “backbone” of communities.
“We have to be bold in what we believe,” he said. “We must never apologize for telling the truth. And I mean that mostly for our churches, not our politics.”
Stigall’s story is a testament to the impact of yielding our efforts to God and trusting Him to enlarge our influence according to His will.
“I used to think you wouldn’t be able to amass an audience if you were honest about who you were as a believer in Christ,” Stigall said. “And I now realized it’s just the opposite. You actually grow an audience, and there’s a hunger and a need for people to hear the truth of Christ.”
In January 2025, “The Christ Stigall Show” will be syndicated nationally by Salem. Learn more and listen to Chris Stigall’s radio show, which is also available as a podcast, at chrisstigall.com. Salem Media Group has been an NRB member since 1977.