(Post by: Lilly Hobbs)
My own generation, Generation Z, is the first generation within America to be considered unreached with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
When looking at the shocking numbers regarding how many young people are leaving Church, I think many of us can be rather unsettled.The whole thing just seems rather hopeless.
There are a lot of different ideas about how we can fix “the Church”. Entire programs have been created to help solve Church issues, and I’m not here to reinvent the wheel. Most of us already know the solution. Discipleship. We just don’t want to do the work.
To previous generations, church attendance seemed to be a reasonable expectation and was even a societal standard. It was a natural, and for the most part, an unthought about cycle. This, however, is no longer the case. As a result of these expectations and standards being lost in a cultural wave of ungodliness, inclusion, and sin, the world is now witnessing the existence of one of the most anxious and uncertain generations it has ever seen.
According to research in a new book which has quickly become popular in Christian and Conservative circles, The Anxious Generation (Haidt, 2024), the rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide have more than doubled in many areas for adolescents. Is Gen-Z an extremely weak generation, more so than others? Why are we witnessing these rates skyrocket?
One of Haidt’s (2024) arguments for why this is occurring is that Gen-Z members are the test subjects for a new method of growing up which removes us from any and every source of community or meaningful and consistent human interaction. He calls it “the great rewiring of childhood” (Haidt, 2024, p. 6-7).
It is through the rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide more than doubling that Gen-Z members are desperately calling out for help.
It is my firm belief the American Church should be the first to respond to their cry. What Generation Z is communicating to us through this call for help is a need for meaningful community and a radical, personal relationship with Jesus. Unfortunately, the American Church has not been responding to the urgent needs of Gen-Z members but has instead been intentionally ignoring them.
Gen-Z, from a distance, appears to be a complicated generation. Gen-Z members (like me) have been raised in a world that has instilled in their very core the belief that technology matters more than anything else, which has placed a heavy and unnecessary burden on my generation.
We feel the need to live a majority of our lives online, constantly living for the next small dopamine rush that we experience when someone “likes” our latest Instagram or Facebook post.
It is due to this burden and the extreme amount of our technology usage that the outside world views us as incompetent, complicated, disrespectful, and antisocial.
When in reality, we have never been taught how to, or given the opportunity to, meaningfully interact with those around us. Yet, if someone were to invite us into relationship and into their world, what I think they would be shocked by is just how badly Gen-Z is craving to live everyday life within a solid community of people who care.
My generation is looking for more than what the internet, pizza parties, and youth games offer. Jennie Allen (2022) makes a thought-provoking point all throughout her book, Find your people, when she states that we are living in a world that’s both more connected and more isolated than ever before.
Though young people are “connected” digitally, they are not connected physically, and we are now experiencing the consequences of relying solely on social media and the internet for connection and relationship. Gen-Z is tempted to do life alone, sometimes due to the fact we’re so busy or other times because relationships can seem risky and hard (Allen, 2022).
Within Christian community, we are called to encourage one another (Hebrews 3:13), serve one another (Galatians 5:13), honor one another (Romans 12:10), be patient with one another and forgive one another (Ephesians 4:32), and finally bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2).
This is the radical community Christ intends for us to immerse ourselves in, as it brings so much encouragement and meaning to our lives in the midst of living in a chaotic and distracted world.
The American Church must reach this generation with the good news of the Gospel, or we risk losing every generation that follows.
Gen-Z needs bold leaders who are passionate about and in love with Jesus, and most importantly are willing to do whatever it takes to bring them along for the adventure so they can experience a relationship with Jesus themselves.
I am confident that if the American Church dedicates themselves to sharing the Gospel in their little corners of the world and discipling those who desperately need to be discipled, they will quickly realize their little corner of the world can powerfully impact the whole world.
References
Allen, J. (2022). Find your people: Building deep community in a lonely world. WaterBrook.
Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation: How the great rewriting of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin Press.
SO, WHAT IS YOUR RESPONSE?
= How are you going to be a part of discipling the next generation?
= What are you going to do differently?
The Few 
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