Rooting for Gen Z

The world our kids are entering as adults looks much different than it did a generation ago. Still I'm hopeful

Photo by Leon Wu on Unsplash

This last Saturday my daughter Grace graduated high-school. It was and is a swirl of emotions for me and Angela. We are thrilled for her and yet it’s hard to let go. I wrote my latest World column on my hopefulness for the next generation:

My daughter, like her Generation Z counterparts, is facing a world of challenges, including a divided America whose only leadership options seem to be broadly unpopular Boomers from both parties. At home, mass shootings and a fragile economy greet them. Across the world, war rages in Europe and parts of Africa and is threatened by China in Asia. And everywhere, the institutions we once trusted have shown themselves to be vulnerable.

Gen Z has born a disproportionate burden of our dysfunction, growing up in the shadow of failed wars, economic collapse, racial tension, political violence, and a global pandemic that robbed them of too much of their high-school years. It is no wonder that Pew Research reports 37 percent of public-school and private-school students admitting to poor mental health. This is also the first fully wired generation, having grown up immersed in the digital age.

And yet, there are hopeful signs that so much adversity has made Generation Z resilient. Consider the spontaneous outpouring of prayer, fasting, and worship among Christian college students, first witnessed at Asbury College in Kentucky and then spread around the nation. I’ve experienced this fervor for God, for theology, and for the Great Commission both at my own institution and in speaking around the country at churches and on college campuses.

You can read the whole column here: