September 10, 2026 was the anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death.
At exactly 12:23 p.m. Mountain Time on September 10, 2025, a bullet struck Charlie Kirk in the neck while he was speaking to students at Utah Valley University. Within moments, a husband, a father, and a young man who had devoted his life to his convictions was gone.
Some people cheered, and some people cried. But what broke my heart was not the political loss. It was the human loss.
Two little children lost their dad. A wife lost her husband. Parents lost their son. And, in my own heart, I believe a nation lost a saint.
I know that word can make people uncomfortable. Saints are not perfect people. They are people who belong to God—people who stumble, make mistakes, and yet choose to live for something greater than themselves.
But the story did not end at 12:23 p.m. In some ways, that is where another story began. The aftermath was amazing.
His Kids
Charlie and Erika had two young children, a daughter born in 2022 and a son born in 2024. Their family made a deliberate effort to keep them out of public view, and I respect that. We do know they are among the few people who have the privilege of using their father’s desk. That image stays with me—a little child sitting where their father once sat.
We also know that Second Lady Usha Vance offered Erika a word of comfort from one mother to another. Erika told her, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this.” Usha gave her an analogy about being on an airplane with screaming children fifteen minutes before landing. You don’t have to figure out the rest of your life. You only have to get through those next fifteen minutes. Then the next.
“15 minutes at a time.”
There is wisdom in that for anyone who has ever grieved. Sometimes God gives us grace for those fifteen minutes, and then for the next ones.
The people came
On September 21, 2025, roughly 90,000 to 100,000 people gathered at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, and its overflow areas for his memorial. It was not simply a political event. It felt like a funeral, a worship service and a revival meeting all at once.
Fox News alone averaged 5.2 million viewers, peaking at 6.6 million during Erika’s remarks. Turning Point’s Andrew Kolvet said its partners counted more than 100 million overall streams—a figure reported by the organization, not an independently audited count.
Young people didn’t walk away
They stepped forward. By September 15, TPUSA had received more than 37,000 inquiries from people wanting to start chapters. After the memorial, that number passed 120,000.
A year later, TPUSA reports its college chapters have grown by 64 percent and its high-school clubs by approximately 180 percent. The Washington Post has independently reported similar growth: 64 and 168 percent.
Whatever one thinks of Turning Point’s politics, Charlie’s death did not cause the organization he built to disappear. It caused many people to ask, What can I do?
And then people opened their Bibles
In September 2025, Americans bought approximately 2.4 million Bibles—the highest monthly total of the year. Bible sales were already rising before Charlie’s death, so I want to be careful. We cannot prove that every Bible was purchased because of Charlie Kirk, and I don’t want to manufacture a revival statistic where one doesn’t exist. But I also don’t want to ignore what happened.
People prayed. People sang. People opened Bibles. People talked about Jesus.
His books and the songs
Within days, several of Charlie’s books had climbed into Amazon’s top ten. His forthcoming book, Stop, in the Name of God, later became an Amazon No. 1 bestseller; its publisher printed 200,000 copies and had to reorder. People were looking for his words.
And people sang. Tom MacDonald’s tribute song “CHARLIE” reached No. 1 on the U.S. iTunes chart. My favorite was by The Preacher Man.
Erika’s forgiveness
Perhaps the greatest tribute came when Erika stood before nearly 100,000 people and said that she forgave the man accused of killing her husband. She didn’t say that justice didn’t matter. She said that forgiveness mattered because of Christ.
What does a Christian do when the worst thing imaginable happens? I don’t have all the answers, but I believe Charlie would have pointed people toward Christ. And I believe Erika has tried to do the same.
The children
This is where I think we should be quiet. The family has not made public who helped with meals and bedtime, and we have no right to demand it. The children were protected. That is enough for me.
They don’t need polls or chapter counts. They need their mother. They need the freedom to remember their father as Dad, not as a political symbol. I hope they get to sit at his desk. I hope someone tells them how much he loved them.
What does one life leave behind?
One year ago, Charlie Kirk was alive. Today he isn’t, but his wife is still standing. His children are growing. His organization is larger.
Death is supposed to end a life. It does not always end a mission. And for a Christian, death does not have the last word.
Knowing the Price Love Had to Pay
Reflecting on Charlie’s death, I found a poem I had written long ago. Here is its first stanza:
On a hillside called Calvary
Hung the King of the galaxy,
Raised in garden-walled gallery,
Fruit filled branch; the root of Jesse,
A shepherd of sheep gone astray.
For the sin filled earth below
Where up and down the people go
To wherever the breezes blow
This was the price love had to pay.
That is where I want to leave this. Not with politics. Not with numbers. Not even with Charlie Kirk. But with Christ.
The grave is not the end. Love is stronger than death. Forgiveness is stronger than hatred. And the price love had to pay was paid at Calvary.
We never really know where the seeds will fall. We only know that sometimes, after the storm, something begins to grow.