A Knowledge of God Inspired by a Passion for His Story
My grandfather’s generation sat at the breakfast table reading the morning newspaper. Generation Z—kids born from 1996 to 2014, a group that’s now the largest segment of the US population (24.3 percent)[1]—gets up to check Snapchat and YouTube. Ninety-two percent of teens go online daily.[2] And it’s no wonder. The internet is the place kids go to achieve. It’s not just that assignments and quizzes are online at Google Classroom or Code.org.
Youth are also looking for achievement through the world of social media.
When they go online, today’s teens are doing what kids have done for generations before them; they’re trying to fit in. “Because of this,” writes Danah Boyd, sociotechnical researcher for Microsoft, “teens are inclined to present a side of themselves that will be well received by these peers.”[3] In other words, the number of comments, likes, and follows young people have—like the clothes they wear or where they sit in the school cafeteria—communicates something about their social standing.
What’s different for youth today is that smartphones have made the social pressure to fit in portable. As a result, the work of managing friends’ impressions online can become a full-time job. Some kids embrace managing their platform with a passion. The likes and love from friends bring confidence and pleasure, and the joy they find in social platforms isn’t all self-indulgent.
Being socially connected has had the added advantage of helping many young people develop empathy, realism, and a sense of purpose. The growth of the online world has exposed them to more diverse friendships, connecting them with others from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and cultural experiences. Gen Z is more aware of suffering and injustice in the world, and they’re often ready to use social media to share passion about their favored causes.
But for every kid online happily posting selfies or crusading for social justice, there’s another who has been a victim of cyber-bullying or who has grown disillusioned. “Likes” come to be superficial. And if voices of justice remain online and unheard in day-to-day life, they seem superficial too.
How can the church respond to Generation Z’s passion for affirmation, acceptance, and justice? I believe we should see it as an opportunity. After all, we’re all made for more. Both the joys we experience in this life and our unfulfilled desires reveal a deep longing for God’s kingdom.
Kids are longing for holistic covenant love and kingdom justice that transcends their daily experience. They’re looking for commitment that’s more lasting than a social network can offer. They’re looking for a place where the work of justice is done and not merely talked about. That’s why it’s essential for us to do more than teach them the basics of the faith, we need to help them embrace the love that’s better than life (Ps. 63:3) and the true justice which will one day roll across the world like ocean waves (Amos 5:24).
As Champ Thornton encourages us, we need to help them make the connections between “the goodness of God and the wonders of science, the vigor of athletics, and the joys of language.”[4] This will help them to see that Christ isn’t merely a chosen part of life; he is our life (Col. 3:4).
Kids need the Bible’s better—more holistic and more transcendent—story:
It’s a story that shows us a redemptive love that transcends this life’s superficial experiences. It will show kids that their worth is not tied to comments or likes, because all people are valued as image bearers of the Creator King.
It’s a story that shows kids a Savior who stood starkly against a superficial culture. A bold church that knows and loves him will stand out today as well. Loving Jesus publicly will be socially awkward at times. Teaching kids about sins and talking about hell and judgment are nearly always socially awkward. But loving the next generation means speaking the truth even when it seems strange.
It’s a story that explains the world’s brokenness in ways that are more contemporary than we sometimes care to admit. If we open the Bible with our kids to narratives from Judges and Kings, we can help them see that the religious pluralism and sexual confusion they encounter in their friend groups doesn’t take God by surprise. In our children’s departments, we’ll need to be careful to make the stories age appropriate. But preteens often see all the brokenness on social media already. So, we shouldn’t be afraid to show it to them in God’s Word.
This is the story Generation Z needs to hear. And they need to hear how we’ve embraced it personally. That means that as parents and church leaders we must confess our own personal and corporate sins. Gen Z kids need to see a church that is actively repenting from a history of racial discrimination and a lack of concern for the poor. Kids need parents who are gracious enough to ask forgiveness when they lose their temper or speak out of turn.
If kids are going to put down their phones and find deeper satisfaction in Jesus, they need to see parents and ministry leaders who are passionate about telling the big story and modeling the story’s character. They need to see us model this passion day after day.
Content taken from A Knowledge of Keeping Your Children's Ministry on Mission: Practical Strategies for Discipling the Next Generation by Jared Kennedy, ©2022. Used by permission of Crossway and The Gospel Coalition.
Jared Kennedy (ThM, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) serves as an editor at the Gospel Coalition. He is also cofounder of Gospel-Centered Family, a ministry that helps parents and church leaders share Jesus with the next generation, and the author of The Beginner’s Gospel Story Bible. Jared lives with his wife, Megan, and three daughters in Louisville, Kentucky, where they attend Sojourn Church Midtown.
[1] Aaron Earls, “Catching Some Z’s: How the Church Can Reach the Most Connected and Distracted Generation Ever,” Lifeway Research, September 29, 2017, https://lifewayresearch.com/2017/09/29/genz -single-page/.
[2] Amanda Lenhart, “Teens, Social Media, and Technology Over- view 2015,” Pew Research Center, April 9, 2015, https://www.pew research.org/internet/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology -2015/.
[3] Danah Boyd, “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life,” in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume, ed. David Buckingham, MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), https://www.danah.org/papers/WhyYouthHeart.pdf.
[4] Champ Thornton, “How to Raise Radical Children,” The Gospel Coalition, February 6, 2017, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article /how-to-raise-radical-children/.