One way to offer collaboration is through intentional intergenerational discipleship and guidance — mentoring in a way that is less like facilitation and more like how family members interact with one another. As Tim Alford, director of the youth arm of the Elim Pentecostal Church, says: “Young people need spiritual parents more than spiritual programmes.”
Recruiting more volunteers to help to run programmes for Gen Z — whether groups for youth or for those in their twenties — is not enough (research carried out by Youth for Christ suggests that only two per cent say that youth clubs are a favourite place to spend time). What is needed is an ongoing commitment to relationships between the generations throughout the Church.
I have loved opportunities to walk alongside some amazing women in their twenties, as they settle into adult life and learn what they want that to look like. They are passionate, empathetic, and have grown up trying to navigate a connected, constantly changing, and uncertain world.
The American author Simon Sinek suggests that many young adults in Gen Z project a self-confidence that they do not feel. In a precarious job market, they navigate side-hustles on top of their day-jobs; their peers constantly present their apparently perfect lives and selves on social media, whatever the reality when the camera isn’t there.
Gen Z, Explained notes that, for this generation, “revealing a weakness is honest, authentic and appreciated”. In Faith Formation in a Secular Age (Baker Academic, 2017) (Features, 3 January 2020), Professor Andrew Root describes our current “age of authenticity”. Gen Z are looking for authenticity, honesty, and integrity in not only what we say, but what we do and how we say it.
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