5 things Generation Z needs to know, and see from us
In my last post, I shared 9 things that Barna’s newest comprehensive worldview survey revealed about Generation Z (those born 1999 and later). In many ways, they continue the trends that began with my generation (the millennials), but in a few others they are very different. For those of us with close connections to people of this next generation, it’s very important to know the different mindsets that are emerging today and what we need to say and do to interact with the values of the modern world.
Every generation has its unique qualities and struggles, and Generation Z is developing its own. In a technology-saturated, fast-paced, materialistic, scientific world, Generation Z needs to know what Christ has to say to the struggles of this generation. But even more so, they need to see the examples of the older generations living out these principles. Here are 5 things that come to mind for me:
1…Success, without Christ and the church, is failure. Young people today are highly driven, focused on success and financial security. They put much lower priority on relationships, including family, and on any knowledge not immediately relevant to the here and now. They want to hone their skills and achieve honors and make money. But behind all that is the Creator who gave us the ability to learn and accomplish all the things we do, and he gave us that ability for a reason— to in some way spread the gospel. We can learn and accomplish all we want, but if we are not doing it in line with the reason he gave us the ability to do it, it’s a total waste — no matter how many people’s attention it gets or how many dollars you make.
Older generations: What means more to us: earthly success or heavenly success? Do we spend most of our time talking about work, school, and finances, and hardly any talking about God? Do we blow off time with God and time with God’s people for things that we could have done at another time? The next generation watches. They see where our priorities are, and they will follow our example.
2…Christianity is a reasonable faith. Christianity is not just subjective experiences or feelings, and it is not a bunch of fairy tales. It is important to know that science is not the only way of gaining empirical knowledge, and there are good personal experience-based reasons to follow Christ. But there are also good scientific and historical reasons to believe, too, and the younger generations are very interested in them. We need to talk more about the scientific evidence for a Creator (and when we do, be sure the science comes from a reliable source), and historical evidence for the resurrection. When it comes to this, we tend to spend way too much time on the creation/evolution controversy — in direct competition with what they hear in school from teachers and friends — when there’s a great deal of undisputed science out there that points to Christianity’s truth as well. We also need to expose the irrationality of relativism and the glaring flaws in the idea that atheism is the scientific default.
Older generations: We often talk about absolute truth and denounce the moral relativism of our society, but then focus almost entirely on emotion and experience when it comes to our faith. This can come across to younger generations as being content to ignore the facts for what makes us feel good. How are we presenting Christianity: as a blind faith, or as a reasonable faith?
3…We need the body of Christ. We cannot be content to interact just behind a screen. We need to gather with others and be in community with others. God made us to be in community with others. And the community he made us for is the church, the body of Christ. We need to all be invested in the body of Christ and part of a local Christian community. You will almost certainly never get to know someone from behind a screen, because you’re never really with them. We need to be present with each other and walk through life with each other.
Older generations: Do we model by our actions how important it is to spend time in the community of God’s people? When we go to church, do we do it just to check off the box that we went this week, or do we invest ourselves in the community and make God’s people one of the top priorities in our lives?
4…You are not what you do, or how you feel. The idea that our accomplishments and feelings define us is practically taken as absolute truth in a world where absolute truth is in many cases taboo. If your feelings or level of accomplishment changes, then so does your identity, which makes people very perfectionist when it comes to academics and very protective of their emotions. But this couldn’t be farther from the real truth. God, in fact, knows us far better than we know ourselves, and so it’s God who has the most authoritative definition of our identity. And what he identifies us by is not what we do or how we feel, but by our relation to him (children of God, people of God, elect of God) and bywhat he has done for us (saved us, washed us, sanctified us, ransomed us). We are all people whom the Creator cared for enough to die for, and whom the Creator knows down to the deepest parts of our souls and still loves us.
Older generations: What message are we sending to the younger generations when we congratulate and reward them for getting As and winning sports trophies, but we don’t congratulate them on doing good deeds and practicing spiritual disciplines? Which do we model as a more important part of our lives — how hard we work at our jobs, or how hard we work at our relationship with God? It’s important that we find and model the balance between fulfilling our responsibilities as workers and parents and teachers and yet still making it clear that our relationship with God is more important than any of them. The younger generation will pick up on whatever priorities we model in our own lives.
5…Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ. Paul said this to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 11:1. Obviously saying this is useless unless we then go on to set an example that’s worth following. The point here is that young people need to be discipled. They need real-life examples of what a living, vibrant faith looks like in the modern world. They see too many examples of people identifying as Christian but then living the same way as everyone else, or identifying as Christian but then disregarding parts, or all, of what the Bible says. Young people need us who are Christ-followers to model what real Christ-following is like, both in our personal lives and in our communal existence as a church.
