The 3 Necessities to Keeping Gen. Z in the Faith
What it takes to See Christianity Flourish in the Next Generation
I am the parent of four young people who are all apart of Gen. Z. Gen. Z for the unaware are young people born between 1997-2012. I’ve grew up in a Christian family and my wife and I are currently raising a Christian family. I grew up in a pastor’s home surrounded by Christian families. I went to a Christian school. I now interact with a lot of Christian families in the Speech and Debate League my children are competing in. One thing I find in common with all Christian parents no matter what their demoninational leanings or theological distinctives are, is a deep longing for their children to continue in the Christian faith. There is nothing better than your Christian kids continuing in the faith and nothing worse than them abandoning it. Like the apostle said, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth (3 John 1:4 NIV).”
I want to share the three components that I believe are necessary to keep Gen Z in the faith. This is from my perspective and experience but I don’t want to pretend that these are three simple steps or that these three things guarantee success in passing on the faith. After all, we are in an all out spiritual war over faith continuing to the next generation. In Revelation 12, the dragon is at the foot of the woman about to give birth so that it can attack the offspring. Satan is always trying to break up the blessing of generations and attack the children of the righteous. Too much is at stake. Right in the ten commandments in Exodus 20, God warns us that curses flow 3-4 generations on disobedience but blessings flow to thousands of generations to those who love God and keep His commandments. Satan is throwing every worldly distraction and evil in the face of our youth from cell phone addiction, suicidal ideation, the erasing of moral truth, sexual confusion, immoral seductions and on and on… Ultimately, it will take a work of God to keep the lives of our young people trusting in God.
But like a three legged stool, each of these elements is necessary to win this war. Without any one of these three things, the stool collapses:
Understanding the Word of God.
Personal Encounters with God.
Relational examples and influence.
1. Understanding the Word of God.
The Christian faith is the revelation of God to us. Revelation comes directly from God Himself to humanity through the general revelation of His creation and natural law. But God has given us something even greater: the special revelation of His Word, the Bible. It is the writings of God’s Word through the prophets and apostles from who our faith is built upon in the Holy Scriptures (Ephesians 2:20). The Scriptures point us to the even higher special revelation of God, the incarnation of God Himself in the flesh, in Jesus Christ the Son coming for us as a fulfillment of the Bible prophecies and promises. The Christian faith is passed on by a knowledge of God through the Scriptures.
This is a no-brainer. If you are a Christian, it’s obvious the Bible is important. There is no solid faith without a commitment to reading the Bible, understanding it, applying it and meditating upon it. The faith is sustained by passing on a love for God’s Word and walking your children through it over and over again. “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates (Deuteronomy 6:6-9 NIV).” Read the Bible to them and with them. Teach it to them. Use catechisms, books, tools, podcasts and sermon notes with them. Take them to church to be taught. Reward them for reading and memorizing the Bible. Teach them the reliability of and defense of the faith through Scripture.
2. Personal Encounters with God.
I’ve heard so many Christian parents in our Speech and Debate League be totally convinced that if kids learn apologetics (apologetics means how to defend our faith with reason) they will not ever abandon Christianity. But this is short-sighted and unbiblical. God is not an abstraction, an idea to be studied, He is a person to be known and loved. Jesus heavily rebuked the religious community of His day in John 5 for knowing the Bible but not knowing Him. “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life (John 5:39-40 NIV).” You can know the Bible and not know Jesus, which means you have missed the entire point of the Bible according to Jesus.
If you have experiences with God but you don’t get rooted in the Bible, you can be deceived by false doctrines and counterfeit experiences. I will grant the critics of spiritual encounters that. But I won’t grant them everything they claim. To know the Bible without a personal experience of Christ is literally contrary to every person’s experience in the Bible. As many have said before me, “you need the Word and the Spirit. Without the Spirit you dry up and without the Word you blow up.” We need the power of experiences with God coupled with a strong Biblical foundation. Prayer being answered, worship that brings supernatural joy, spiritual gifts, tears in experiencing God’s manifest presence, failing to stand under the weight of God’s glory, seeing visions, having dreams and experiencing miracles are all a normal part of the Christian life. Church history is full of people from all denominations experiencing God’s manifest presence and power through the casting out of demons, prophecies and miracle God encounters. Young people need their own history with God being who He says He is in His Word in their lives. If you have Gen. Z students and young people in your life I would try and get them to any conference, camp, church service or special meeting that gives them a chance for a God encounter.
3. Relational Examples and Influence.
Young people might make it pretty far with reading the Bible and having an experience with God or two at church or summer camp. But the faith is not likely to stick with them if they don’t have parents, mentors, pastors and a community surrounding them with a living example and influence. The most powerful thing besides the Bible and prayer is seeing someone else live out the Bible and prayer. We have the power to provoke each other to good works (Hebrews 10:24) and to minister love to one another in a way that builds one another up in faith (Ephesians 4). The greatest examples of faith are my parents and my wife’s parents. They along with many others I have witnessed may not be totally perfect but they exude love, grace, integrity and righteousness. They have peace. They have a blessed life. Not an easy life, but a richly blessed one. They enjoy life and they enjoy God.
Young people need examples around them who share from their life witness and testimony that God answers prayer, helps people through trials and that His ways are above all others. But they also need the influence of praying parents and mentors. Again, we are in a spiritual war. Satan is throwing everything he can at the next generation. Our prayers have the power to defeat the hordes of hell in their onslaught against our youth. Time would fail me to tell you of all the prayers that have been answered by Grace and I as parents and just the parents we know. We have to keep our hearts and influence connected to the next generation by paying attention to them, praying for them and being a faithful example. We can’t rely only on getting young people into the Bible and into places they can experience God, we need to be there for them intentionally blessing them. If we are divided in our families and across generations, we fall apart. But where we stay connected in blessing through our example and influence, we will subvert the curse and pass the faith on to Gen. Z. “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction (Malachi 4:5-6 NIV).”