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3 Core Convictions of GenZ’s Religious Worldview

“Kids these days!”

It’s an expression many of us have either said or thought. They seem so different from the way we were at their age. And usually, it’s not in a good way. (Although if we’re honest, we probably need to question the reliability of our memory of our teenage lives.)

As we collaborate to pass our faith from generation to generation, it’s important to recognize the differences between generations without exaggerating them. Our core needs are all the same, regardless of age: love, grace, meaning, joy, hope, etc.

At the same time, it’s undeniable that the culture we live in as teenagers has a life-long impact on our adult years. If you understand someone as a teenager, you will, in many ways, always understand them. With this in mind, here are some central shifts in the worldview of today’s kids, also known as Gen Z.

Safety: The New American Dream

Teenagers today have never experienced a world without school shootings, terrorism or social media. Older generations grew up with fire drills, bomb drills and other safety drills, but they were fairly routine without frequent news reports of students needing to actually follow those protocols to stay alive. Many students today live with the realization that their school could be the next one to experience a very real threat.

Additionally, these kids were raised in families where they were always supervised and had fewer freedoms than previous generations of kids. For example, you’ve likely heard about parents being visited by DCF because they allowed their elementary-school-aged children to walk down the street to the playground without adult supervision.

Safety is the new
American Dream:
physically and emotionally.

Safety is the new American Dream – physically and emotionally. This is why colleges are increasingly facing the request to offer “trigger warnings” before discussing topics that might trigger someone else’s emotional pain.

Instead of casting a superior glance at Gen Z for being emotionally fragile, ministers would be wise to assume the posture of a shepherd. Care for them when they struggle and disciple them into maturity by helping them discover that personal failure is often the fertilizer of faith. Ultimately, our security is not in this world, but in Christ. This leads us to live with faith and hope rather than fear and despair in an unsafe world.

Tolerance: The New Golden Rule

Our culture’s expression of tolerance encourages everyone to “speak your truth” and says “you do you.” This view of tolerance encourages people to overlook their differences in order to affirm one another’s value. Muslims and Christians and atheists are all equally free to speak their minds. In many ways, this is good and biblical.

In reality, however, tolerance assumes disagreement – otherwise there’s nothing to tolerate. Red Sox fans and Yankee fans need to tolerate one another because there’s a very real difference between them, and well-meaning friends who say, “It’s just a game, get over it,” clearly don’t understand. Tolerance runs deeper than the logically true statement, “It’s just a game.” It speaks to the emotional weight of different commitments and looks to bring people together who are emotionally, relationally and physically different from each other.

“Tolerance means respect
despite disagreement.”

When I speak about tolerance with kids these days, I explain to them, “Tolerance means respect despite disagreement.”

It isn’t about merely putting up with people who are different from you, but genuinely respecting them despite your disagreements. You still think the other person is wrong, and you’re both still trying to persuade each other – but in a circle of respect.

Fellow pastors and leaders: we need to be models of a Christian tolerance that loves our enemies and turns the other cheek. If we continue to demean those who are different from us (politically, religiously, ethnically, etc.) then Gen Z will continue to hear and see a bad definition of tolerance. If students see Christian leaders showing respect to minorities, homosexuals and those who may be easily labeled as “enemies of the faith,” then we will be obeying Jesus’ command while setting a godly example for the next generation.

Threatening Others’ Safety Cancels Your Right to Tolerance

This is the key that many adults fail to recognize: if you threaten someone’s safety, then you will be “cancelled,” and your right to be tolerated revoked. This is why so many Christians read the statement above (“Muslims and Christians and Atheists are all equally free to speak their minds”) and disagreed. I agree that Christians face increasing scrutiny and skepticism in our culture today – but we need to acknowledge the ways we’ve done this to ourselves by failing to love our enemies. We have believed that speaking the truth without love is honoring to God – but it’s not.

So if you want to reach kids these days, you need to love them with the truth. Listen, encourage and shepherd them. Recognize the ways their world is genuinely different from the world you grew up in, while remembering that their hearts are the same as yours. Don’t treat them like immature children, but as people you are nurturing and guiding in the faith.

The Gospel is our only hope. It is truly good news of great joy for all people. Help them to see how the Gospel fuels the way we love our brothers and sisters and the way we love our enemies. Encourage them with the reality that we are fully secure in Christ because nothing can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. When we walk in the light of the cross, we can handle worldly rejection and failure because we know we’ve been fully accepted by the grace of Jesus Christ.

(note: this article was originally posted on the BCNE blog with the title, “Kids These Days.”)

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Is Youth Ministry Biblical?

This is a question that frequently comes up on youth pastor facebook groups. Perhaps that’s a surprise to non-youth pastors, but it’s a question most youth pastors have asked, at some point or another. Sometimes it’s prompted by critics who accuse us of usurping parents’ primary role in passing on the faith to the next generation; other times it’s an honest inquiry into the validity of their own vocation.

My book, A Biblical Theology of Youth Ministry, was initially named “Is Youth Ministry Biblical?” since that’s the driving question behind it. That also means it’s a bigger question than a blog post. In this article, I’ll attempt to capture the biggest arguments from the chapters on Youth Ministry in the Old and New Testaments. For more, you’ll want to just buy the book and savor every delicious word of it.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Deuteronomy 6 is the most-shared text to highlight parents’ primary role as disciple-makers of the next generation. This is an undeniable biblical truth that youth workers should wholeheartedly affirm without feeling threatened in the slightest. Moses’ words about family discipleship are given within his address to all Israel. Nuclear families (mom, dad, and their kids) are foreign to the biblical context. Instead, families lived in an intergenerational family compound. And those family compounds were located within their clan’s territory. Raising children is the primary duty of parents, but it was never meant to be a parent’s duty in isolation from the intergenerational network of their clan. Parents who interpret Deuteronomy 6 to point to the parents’ sole authority are completely missing the context of this passage. Students need a bigger family than their nuclear family.

Judges 24:14-15 & Joshua 2:7-10

Deuteronomy 6 and Judges 24 both take place during covenant renewal ceremonies. While Moses’ generation was faithful in passing the faith to the next generation, Joshua’s wasn’t. The commitment Joshua’s generation made in Judges 24 was not kept, “and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10). Israel’s failure to evangelize and disciple the next generation is portrayed as a clear warning against future generations about what happens when they neglect their duty to pass the faith from generation to generation.

Psalm 78

The Jewish liturgy of worship, in many ways, was built with a conviction to pass their faith from generation to generation. Even when children were not overtly mentioned, they were frequently in mind. This is especially clear through Psalm 78:1-8, which introduces a thorough account of the LORD’s saving work in Israel’s history. In some ways, this psalm could be considered as a “children’s sermon,” condensing all of the Historical Books into one song that children could learn and recite. This Psalm was constructed by Asaph, one of David’s chief musicians who oversaw Israel’s worship during David’s reign. Teaching children was not relegated as something for parents to do at home, but was a high calling that was worthy of celebration and emphasis in the gathered assembly.

Nehemiah 8:2

The biblical witness overwhelmingly favors the inclusion of children and adolescents in the gathered worship of the people of God. This, however, doesn’t mean that nurseries and various types of children’s ministries are unbiblical. For example, during Ezra’s reading of the Torah all the people “who are able to understand” are gathered together to hear the Word of God. That implies that children who couldn’t understand were excluded from this highly important gathering. Considerations for how wide of an age-range this involves is too much to include in this brief post, but it sets the precedent that some form of “children’s ministry” was practiced in Jewish worship.

Jesus and the Disciples

It is an overstatement to say Jesus was a youth pastor… but only slightly. The ages of the apostles at the time when he first called them to follow him likely ranged between 13-30 years old, with most of them being late-teenagers to in their early twenties. When Jesus paid the Temple Tax in Matthew 17:24-27, he only paid it for himself and peter – which implies that they were the only two present from the group of apostles over the age of 20 accountable to pay it. Of course, we cannot know for sure how old each apostle was, but John is widely regarded as the youngest of the apostles (and as Jesus’ cousin, it was more reasonable for him to be entrusted into Jesus’ care at such a young age). If John wrote the book of Revelation during Emperor Domitian’s persecution of Christians between 95-96 A.D., sixty-five years after Jesus called the apostles to follow him, then he would have been around eighty years old when he died in exile on Patmos – and that’s with him as a thirteen year old when he began following Jesus! My book explores the rabbinic practices of calling disciples, how old those disciples usually be, and other evidences we have for the apostles’ age.

Matthew 28:16-20

The Great Commission calls all Jesus’ disciples to “go make disciples of all peoples.” This is the primary mission of the Church. Certainly, teenagers should be numbered among “all peoples.” In our increasingly post-Christian culture, teenagers are largely growing up with zero Christian background. Passing youth ministry off entirely to parents leaves the majority of teenagers unengaged by Christian ministry without a non-family member taking initiative to evangelize and disciple. Youth ministry is a Great Commission ministry of the church where Christian men and women proclaim the gospel to teenagers and disciple them in order that they would honor Christ for the remainder of their lives. How is this anything short of a biblical picture of the mission of the Church?

Ephesians 6:1 & Colossians 3:20

These are instructions Paul wrote for children. Remember, his letters were read during the public gathering of those churches. This means he expected families to be gathered for worship, so fathers, mothers, and children would all be hearing the letter at the same time – which is why he addresses each of them in his letters. This continues the Jewish commitment to including and valuing children’s participating in corporate worship once they are old enough to understand.

Other Foundations for Youth Ministry

There are various other theological and historical foundations for youth ministry explored in the book that I cannot capture in this one blog post. It is enough, for now, to say that a good theology of the church, the family, and the gospel all affirm the primary spiritual influence of parents while also affirming that all kids in the church belong to the members of the church. The Church is called the “family of God.” Many pastors emphasize “we are family” to the congregation. If this is true, then they should put their money where their mouth is and support ministries to children and teenagers without making it a “junior ministry” for people to cut their teeth before graduating into real ministry. After all, can you think of anything more difficult than teaching the Trinity to a room full of middle school boys – and yet, this is the very thing we are called to do! Youth and children’s ministries need godly, mature, knowledgeable men and women to invest themselves for the sake of the next generation rather than always assuming their gifts are better utilized with adults.

Many of our pastoral/theological heroes (Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Whitefield, Wesley, Edwards, Bonhoeffer) spent time with the “church kids” to discuss their sermons. They did not view their ministry as something exclusive to the adults, but demonstrated the importance of the church’s ministry to the next generation. There are areas of modern youth ministry that greatly concern me, but this doesn’t make “youth ministry” inherently unbiblical any more than preaching is unbiblical because there are forms of modern preaching that stray from biblical norms.

God’s people have always been passionate about raising up the next generation of Christians. This has been the case since Adam and Eve left the garden. It remains true today.

Biblical Essentials for Youth Ministry

These bullet are points from the conclusion of the book. For more elaboration and application, please read the book since I’m only offering these bullets for sake of brevity.

  • Parents First
  • Worship Together
  • The Church Must Commit to Discipleship
  • Gospel Always

This is all to say: Yes, youth ministry has biblical foundations. Not every youth ministry is built off those foundations, just as many churches today overlook biblical foundations for their church. I wrote A Biblical Theology of Youth Ministry: Teenagers in the Life of the Church to encourage youth workers to build on a biblical foundation rather than merely copying whatever they experienced as teenagers (or what they see others doing to draw students today). There is so much guidance for us in the Scriptures and in the broader Christian Tradition – may those truths guide youth workers in the coming era of modern youth ministry.

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Evaluating the “Word According to GenZ” Controversy

The Word According to GenZ is a devotional for teenagers published by LifeWay. It’s written by a ministry named “Sunday Cool,” headed up by Carll Hooper, who is well known for their YouTube videos. “Cool Carll” and his crew are known for their over-the-top depictions of today’s teenagers and often include some form of biblical message intertwined into the video, though some of them are simply intended for comedic relief. Their videos are obviously meant to be caricatures and should be taken as satire.

The book was cancelled by LifeWay only a few days after its release when there were significant complaints about it being irreverent and disrespectful. It seems that many who were in uproar didn’t realize this was a devotional book, not a new bible translation – although I doubt that would have changed their opinions. Further, it was cancelled very shortly after Lifeway Students had concluded a livestream for youth workers that featured a segment with Cool Carll and the Sunday Cool team, discussing this very resource. Needless to say, the response from the youth ministry community felt like a whiplash and they were left confused. It came off like youth pastors were being called into the Senior Pastor’s office after parents started complaining about their ministry based off a partial truth.

As a veteran, theologically-minded youth pastor who’s still in the trenches, I’ve been watching this conversation with interest and am sympathetic to both camps. I don’t actually have a copy of the book. Now that it’s unavailable, it looks like that won’t be possible for quite some time (Sunday Cool seems to be working on its own distribution plan for the book, apart from LifeWay). Here’s my attempt to capture what we can learn from this controversy.

What’s Good About The Word According to GenZ

The devotional was based off the ESV translation and included a devotional message for students. This is a good and helpful way to engage students with Scripture and to guide them into further reflection about the Word of God.

Screenshot from a youth pastor, shared on a Facebook group
(I was unable to locate the original poster, sorry!)

As the image above shows, each day’s devotional included a devotional intended to help a postChristian generation consider the truth of Scripture. There was never any intention to provide an actual “translation” of Scripture. The section headed as “GenZ Translation” is a tongue-in-cheek way to draw students in. As students read the ridiculous “translation,” they need to refer to the actual ESV translation to make sense of the GenZ version, and then read the devotional to understand what the passage means for life.

GenZ is composed of today’s teenagers through early 20-year-olds. They are the least Christian generation in American history, many of whom have very little familiarity with Christian teaching or the contents of Scripture. Gone are the days when pastors and youth workers can assume any biblical foundation off which to build. Statements like, “As you know…” and “You’ve probably heard this verse/story before…” only makes GenZ feel like they don’t belong, because they don’t know and they haven’t heard. A resource like The Word According to GenZ might actually be compelling enough to draw unchurched teenagers to read it.

Cool Carll, and Sunday Cool, understands the worldview of GenZ and is committed to the call of the Great Commission. These should be affirmed and cause Christians to have a posture of graciousness towards their ministry.

What’s Concerning About The Word According to GenZ

Today’s generation of teenagers have a sarcastic and irreverent sense of humor. As someone who tends towards sarcasm, I can easily get drawn down those paths. That also means I know how easy it is for sarcasm and jokiness to overshadow something that’s valuable and meaningful. This is my chief concern here. The form may be overshadowing the function.

Even if we give The Word According to GenZ the benefit of the doubt and view the “GenZ translation” as a type of teaching-hook or introduction into the actual content, I’m skeptical that students would remember that content. More realistically, I think they’d read through the GenZ translations, laugh about it, then close the book. And then what are we left with other than turning the words of the Bible into a joke?

This is where I can sympathize with the critics. I think it’s a stretch to say this devotional is blatantly disrespectful to Scripture, especially when you consider the intended audience and purpose. Indeed, the very purpose is to point students to the timeless truth God’s Word, rather than to try and re-create it to be palatable to a new generation.

And this reaches my primary concern. Much about youth ministry over the years has been very well-intentioned, but the actual ministry didn’t measure up with the mission because it has been so clothed in the culture that the gospel has been overshadowed. Consider students who attend a high-energy evangelistic event with lots of giveaways and food where the materialism of the night actually counteracts the treasure-in-heaven that was proclaimed. God can (and does!) use any opportunity where the gospel is proclaimed to transform lives, but that doesn’t mean it was the best vehicle for evangelism.

Consider the video below. Although I do think it’s funny and entertaining, I’m also somewhat uncomfortable with that. Not uncomfortable because I feel the need to impress anyone or be accepted by the “serious people,” but because it actually does make the Bible into a punchline. Although it’s funny, it’s the type of funny joke that slowly erodes the foundations of what is good and true and beautiful.

Devotionals are good and helpful resources for those of us who are committed to passing the faith on from generation to generation. This is especially true when discipling students who didn’t grow up attending church and have little (or no) biblical background. But, despite Cool Carll’s good intentions, I have a hard time seeing this as the best resource for the job. Students who would actually read the devotional portions would be better served by other resources, while students who won’t read the devotionals are merely laughing at the GenZ translations.

All this said, I do not believe The Word According to GenZ deserves the hate and criticism it’s receiving. There are many books that actually mislead readers, teach false doctrine, and should be cancelled immediately for teaching heresy. This is not one of those books. While I don’t plan on using the devotional with my students, I am thankful for Sunday Cool’s ministry. I merely believe they’ve missed the mark on this particular project because the form has overshadowed the function.

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