It might go without saying, but today’s teenagers are not growing up in their grandparents’ or their parents’ world—not even in their twenty-something cousin’s world.

Rapid changes in technology, communication, science, law, and worldview are creating a world for teenagers that leaves many parents, church leaders, and other mentors feeling perplexed. I asked David Kinnaman and the Barna Group who have been studying the Gen Z’s culture, motivations, and beliefs to help us re-envision how the church can disciple the youngest generation.

The Influence of Culture

Of course, changes to culture are not changes to the essence of what it means to be human. Teens today, like teens of long ago, wrestle with insecurity, bullying, boredom, loneliness, raging hormones, and paralyzing doubt. They navigate their first crushes, question their parents’ beliefs, and dream of their future. Perhaps what adults need first and foremost to remind ourselves is this: We were there once too. They are not so very different from us at that age.

“Yet it is foolish to believe teens—even Christian teens—are immune to the surrounding culture. The trends Barna identified among millennials—high priority on career achievement, low priority on personal and relational growth—are amplified in Gen Z.

Fewer teens are interested in starting a family or becoming more spiritually mature. Nearly two out of five want to spend their twenties enjoying life before they have the responsibilities of being adult—significantly higher than the one-quarter of millennials who said this.

More than half of teens want to follow their dreams, yet just three in ten want to find out who they really are. But the faith segmentation on these statements is interesting.

Teens with no religious affiliation are much more likely than engaged Christians to want both to follow their dreams (62 percent vs. 42 percent) and to find out who they really are (41 percent vs. 25 percent). This may indicate an impulse in those with no faith to seek greater meaning.

Engaged Christians, as we might expect, are more likely to say spiritual maturity is a goal (46 percent) and a bit more likely to say they’d like to get married (29 percent) and have children (16 percent) before age thirty.

Yet these low percentages suggest the cultural tide against marriage—or at least toward delaying it—is tugging at faithful Christians along with everyone else. Perhaps many teens consider marriage and parenting to be “adult responsibilities” that they are planning to avoid during their twenties.

How will they know when they have arrived at adulthood?

Barna also asked this question among millennials in 2013—and the generational differences are stark. Financial independence looms large for many teens in a way it did not for eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-old millennials; doubtless the country’s (and their parents’) financial problems since the Great Recession are a big influence here.

Emotional maturity, on the other hand—of such supreme importance to many millennial twenty-somethings—is significant to fewer than one in four teenagers. It will be interesting to see if these priorities shift as Gen Z moves into adulthood.

There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with having enough money to care for family and meet financial obligations. But the New Testament writers are clear that making pursuit of wealth one’s primary life goal is spiritually dangerous and even destructive.

Gen Z is certainly not alone in their battle to put wealth in its proper place—this is an arena where American Christianity overall has struggled to maintain its prophetic witness to a culture consumed with consuming. Perhaps walking alongside the next generation will also help older Christians rethink our own relationships with material success and personal happiness.

Reflection

How can Gen Z become disciples in a post-Christian culture? Thankfully, the church has centuries of experience communicating the gospel across religious, linguistic and cultural divides. We call it “missions.”

When a missionary immerses herself in a culture different from her own, she doesn’t expect the people who live there to speak and act and think like people from home—in fact, she expects quite the opposite: that she will have to change in order to connect with people.

A similar situation confronts churches today. Will older Christians insist that the youngest generation must speak, act and think like us? Or will we help young exiles become and remain the people of God in their own culture?

If the latter, then Gen Z disciple-making must actively engage a two-way dynamic: faith in light of culture; culture in light of faith. How we follow Christ is inevitably shaped by the culture in which we find ourselves. But it is at least equally true that the surrounding culture is transformed as we are transformed in Christ.

The pace of cultural change may feel overwhelming, but don’t be discouraged. Even the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church—and that promise is for God’s people in Generation Z too. 9

How can we equip Gen Z not just with information about faith but also with critical thinking and experiences that deepen faith?

An Excerpt from the book, “Church for Monday” by Dr. Svetlana Papazov.

Svetlana Papazov is Lead Pastor and Founder of Real Life Church, President/Founder of Real Life Center for Entrepreneurial and Leadership Excellence, a first of its kind model of church and business incubator that educates in entrepreneurship, leadership and faith praxis.