I felt like in the last year or so like a lot of our students really have like been able to track better. They want they want more in-depth stuff. They're rebuilding some muscles. Yeah, they're like they're even like in conversation like they're they're more verbal like they're more conversational. They're funnier. Yeah. They're they're they have yeah good clips and comments. They're engaged in the conversation and I don't know. Let's uh let's roll the tape back. Did you just hear that millennial move there? I said roll the tape back. Yeah. What's a tape? No, I'm just kidding. Welcome to Dwell on These Things, a podcast by Dwell Community Church in Columbus, Ohio, where we hear stories and examples of how God is moving in the church at dwell and around the world. Welcome to Dwell on These Things. I'm Pat Reeder, director of equipping here at Dwell Community Church. Today we'll be discussing what it's like to serve Gen Z. I'm here with Catherine Akers and Doug O'Malley and why don't you guys just start by you know introducing yourselves and you know tell us tell us like what your role is here at dwell how long you've been on staff and you know just kind of what sort of even just sort of basic credentials you might have for you know commenting on Gen Z. Sure, so I have been on staff at Dwell for eight years now. I started when I was 18 actually so I am the resident Gen Z-er of this conversation today and personal experience yes so not only have I been serving Gen Z for that long I was also joined to this church when I was just starting high school and I oversee the events that we plan for our high school and our college groups so a large age range and I also just recently started coaching leaders of middle school groups so kind of overseeing almost the entire swath of Generation Z in our church in different ways. Cool, great. Doug? Yeah so I came on staff in 2017 and been here ever since so right now I teach one of our high school central teachings and I lead in a high school and college group and when I went into a high school group in 2011 I did not expect to be there for longer than two years and I'm still there and you couldn't get enough of Gen Z. I know yeah I really got to see the shift there but yeah so I help oversee our high school ministry and I coach some of the college home churches in our sphere and I oversee one of our young adult groups so yeah similar to Catherine kind of the whole array. Cool and also you were mentioning to me that something when you did your master's degree tell us a little bit about that. Yeah so my capstone project was on discipling high school students or discipling Gen Z because those were the high school students at that time and so yeah I ended up getting to do a bunch of reading about different statistics about Gen Z and did a lot of interviewing doing different leaders and things like that and eventually ended up making a thesis out of it. Awesome cool I hope that comes to bear a little bit here this morning while we look at this. To get us started generational cohorts are primarily a tool for sociologists and demographers but of course they kind of bleed into pop culture and everyday language but of course you know once they bleed into pop culture and everyday language they tend to take on a life of their own so you know you might find people saying things like you know if they ever find someone that's irritating to them and young that person's a millennial or their Gen Z depending on you know how kind you know aware of the terminology is or on the flip side anyone who's old and frustrating gets called a boomer you know even if they're you know in their 40s and so we probably need to get like some some working definitions here so the boomers come from the war right that's right after the war born in roughly 1945 until 1965 this group entered adulthood in the 1970s and 1980s right and following that group was what we call Gen X that group was born in roughly 1965 to 1982 and then you have the Millennials so Doug and I are the you know local Millennials they were born in the period roughly 1982 to 1995 depending on who you ask but some people go later right and that's kind of important to is that you know you get the lines blur at a certain point but so these aren't super rigid I think that's important for us to say but roughly speaking yeah Gen X is 65 82 but you have people like on the on the edge millennials 80 85 excuse me 82 to 95 anyhow the Millennials are in somewhat easy to understand because they have that name because they live their entire adult lives in the new millennium right so I'm a perfect example of this I was born in 1982 I graduated college in 2000 everything that I've experienced as an adult has happened with 2-0 in the front and by and large this group their parents are boomers Gen Z the group that we're really focusing on today was born in the late 1990s and people see this finishing up around 2012 though because some of these are developing you know these these sciences and how to really understand how a general generational cohort operates and where the sort of you might call cultural boundaries of a generation are that this you know they're throwing the number 2012 but I'm sure again there's there's some you know borderline cases again by and large these the Gen Z's parents are from Gen X okay so there's kind of this natural rhythm of course there's exceptions but this is sort of the the basic shape that these different groups take sometimes even people use the expression cuspers for people who are born on the edge and I actually I count as someone like that so people sometimes like actually earlier in the earlier before we even started Doug was like you're an exer and I was like nope technically a millennial but yeah in any case you see you see the blurring of the lines let's start off with research and kind of what's out there in terms of like actual data actual studies like what are some of the distinctives that either of you guys have read or heard about Gen Z let's start with Doug so I think a lot of times when people want to talk about that kind of a question it's easy to think of all of like the the flaws and the weaknesses and I generally just think it's helpful to remember that like every generation thinks the one after them is like the worst completely losing it yeah and uh and generally I think with making disciples it's like the things that have worked for 2000 years are still going to work right uh and and so we shouldn't like have like sociology get elevated above scripture or something like that and I also think it's helpful to think of their strengths first I mean there's there's certainly things that drive me crazy of like I think six sevens probably the mark of the beast but in terms of like their their strengths they uh they have like a thirst for justice yeah statistically they're they are and they will be the most like racially diverse generation um school and I think that they also um they love to pray that was uh that's something that like anecdotally I've seen they just they really enjoy prayer like I I like to pray too and I think it's good I think it's good for you and I like that it works but they like they really just enjoy praying and I was surprised even the like the Barna group started to find data to back that up of like when they started surveying them and asking what are the things that matter the most to you about your like walk with God what are the things that matter the most to you spiritual life the top two had to do with prayer yeah can you actually clarify that a little bit are you talking about like private prayer reading scripture or are we talking like in groups like both yeah tell me more about that I've never heard that um my general take is that the study didn't really delineate between the two but anecdotally I just think they really enjoy both they love praying on their own they really like to connect with God they really value spiritual experiences but they also they really love to pray in groups um that's sometimes you wish that they would pray publicly a little bit more it's like why do we bring you to this prayer meeting if you're not going to pray but uh but they really enjoy like being there and being a part of it that's cool that's funny you say you have people you wish would pray more we got people in our group I'm like you're praying for a long time we're in a group right now maybe a little right yeah but they do love to pray I'm looking right now and the two highest values that they have as Christians are talking to God in prayer but also learning how to pray which is a big thing I've noticed too that people say you know Gen Z doesn't know how to learn their attention span isn't that great they love to learn it might not be in the same ways that we expect them to you know hitting the books in the library or something like that but they love to learn different things and I think prayer is one of the highest goals that they have as Christians at least Gen Z Christians on what to learn yeah I'm sure some of that stuff about attention span is also a little bit exaggerated too yeah I remember you and I dug a while ago or arguing with someone who said that they couldn't handle more than like a 10 or 15 minute teaching I was like they're in high school yeah they sit through at least an hour of class before a break yeah I think they can handle not that we should make it like impossibly long or boring but like come on like right they they can handle like they sit in class all day like yeah are we talking about here if they're learning the periodic table and how to use the Pythagorean theorem I think they can like follow a little bit of Romans yeah seriously absolutely it's good so you know those are some of the statistical you know you know uh generalities we could say but of course you guys have personal experience you know Catherine you just look in the mirror and there it is just kidding but tell tell us a little bit more I'll start with you Catherine what have you seen you know like what's been your personal experience and how does that interface with some of the stuff you see with Gen Z or like some of the some of statistical information I think one of the buzzwords associated with Generation Z is authenticity which what does that mean you know they're saying that they value authenticity but I think I have seen that in some ways and sometimes in small ways one thing I love about my generation is I'm wearing sweatpants right now we can show up in sweatpants at work and that's what it means to be authentically me you know um but I think that we see that in our ministries that um they love the home church model that they can be in a smaller group and feel known they love discipleship that they can meet one-on-one with somebody I have my girls show up to my house and uh that's the real me you know laundry's not done and we're trying to cook dinner and everything else and um I think I've seen that they really value that that they want to be known but they also want to know people who are like them and who are flawed like them and I think it adds a lot to our ministry when we can kind of show them that that authenticity is really out there and they can have friendships in that way yeah actually if I could um get to draw you out a little more on that how does that interact with the performative picture that exists on social media like instagram you know so it's like yes I think when I think of people who fully understand the social media ecosystem I mean these are people who were eight or nine when the iPhone and when twitter and uh facebook you know like this has been there essentially their whole lives so right how does how does what you just said interact with that phenomenon right um it really does interact closely I mean we were using these tools I think I got instagram in middle school before anybody knew how damaging they were going to be especially to girls and so you know we grew up yeah trying to perform trying to show people that we deserved likes and things like that and um I've always said this to be successful in the high school ministry as a boy you have to be athletic and good at sports and to be a girl you have to not be insecure you have to be confident in who you are and um I think that is because they don't want to be performing on social media for these people but they don't really know any different way to try to reach out for connection and so when we model authenticity in christian community they see that there's actually an alternative to having to please people in that way sure so it kind of comes out as a almost a reaction to the overly curated even dishonest picture yes I think on social media people will say that they don't like that social media is that way but they don't know an alternative so they're stuck yeah yeah Doug do you have any thoughts on that or or just the question about your experience yeah I think I think I mean I agree with what you're saying it's it's interesting because I'm like they're we've we've found that they're so spiritually receptive like we see that across the country with all the revivals we've seen that in our own church with all the students coming to christ and uh I think that social media certainly has a stranglehold over a lot of people I think especially like women I think it really like can crush them but I do think that one of the things that guys used for good out of it is um I think it has woken people up to how broken the world is um I was talking with some guys in my high school group in my college group about like what is it about the gospel that's so appealing and one of the things they were saying is like we have so much information now at our fingertips about everything that's happening in the world and in some ways it seems like you were promised that like the more honestly it sounded like ecclesiastes of like there's nothing new under the sun I look for wisdom and it was all vanity the more I learned the more grief I had they're just like the more you learn about how broken the world is the more you're looking for an answer of like why is it that way and is someone going to come and fix it um and so I think that like it in some ways it like hurts people but I think it also like wakes people up of like there's there's got to be an answer for some of those things yeah it's sort of interesting I don't I don't know um Catherine I guess I don't know how much you experienced this but Doug um you might have with what you might call sort of a techno futurism of the millennial generation you know so I remember in the 90s people being like the internet is going to be amazing you know it's the information superhighway it's a library it's a you know all these positive things and of course you know at the exact moment that they were saying this one of the highest grossing things on the web was pornography you know so it's like there's there's some naiveté there and you know like so all these and that was that was just the web and PCs and then of course you throw in social media you throw in iPhones and so there's a sense in which Gen Z seems to have caught a sort of like down wave in terms of people's views of technology and the way that millennials kind of had were on an up wave and so you know like that yeah that I think that there's so I'm just curious like do you see that like you just mentioned like this negativity and or like you know maybe an awareness like a sensitivity that things aren't working but you know there was kind of this odd yeah I mean my experience as a millennial was even when things were going wrong there was still this sort of strange optimism especially about technology and I was curious was that a gear experience and and anyhow yeah speak to that if you can I mean I think like you definitely got a lot of the messaging of like technology is is the key like technology is the future one of the things that's interesting when I like talk to some of the students now is they they feel kind of disenchanted well one they like they definitely seem aware of like my I'm not proud of my screen time or something like that okay but then the other thing is they um I think they feel a bit disenchanted by it yeah because they're like it's this moving target of trying to keep up with all these trends and it's exhausting and the gospel is really appealing then because then it's like a release from that release from the pressure right and then they're also like technology is supposed to make my life easier but technology is taking all my jobs so I don't know if you have anything yeah I was just gonna say that lines up with what the data is saying that over half of them agree that they wish they spent less time online wow yeah that's cool yeah and I think that that's helpful too that specifically like that kind of demographic information is helpful because I think sometimes it's just out there that like Gen Z they're stuck on their phones and like that's just they love it and you know yeah I just think there's a naive or kind of a dishonest presentation of like oh the Gen Z they're digital natives and you know it's like in some ways that's cool because it means they're fluent if you could call it that in the use of technology but the the fact that many of them are saying like I kind of would like to dial this back and they they seem conscientious that's anyhow you wanted to say more yeah I think that they do have a critique on it and they do over half of them say that in-person relationships 54 agree that those are more valuable than online relationships that's cool so how has reaching students changed with seeing this kind of generational turn Doug you said that you started doing high school ministry with millennials you know you you would you graduated in 2010 right so this is like you were you were dealing with people not too much younger than you people who are still money millennials and then you through that time you know you're still working with high school students so you know switched over to Gen Z like what are some differences that you observed in terms of the Christian work and the types of like tools that were necessary for that yeah I think um one of the there's like a pendulum I feel like where so when I was a student in our high school ministry I remember noticing that all of our groups were really guy-heavy but then you know like but then all the boys discovered porn and video games and the pendulum really swung the other way yeah where you have high school groups of like four or five boys and then just a bunch of girls and then I felt like maybe in conjunction with like probably a lot of factors but like the mental health crisis and stuff it's it's certainly swung back the other way where like in our college ministry you might have a home church with two guys ministry houses of guys that just all live together and then you might have a girl's house that has the one or two single girls from two or three different home churches living together wow right so you're seeing kind of a pendulum swing and that that hat there's a gender element to that that's really interesting and um yeah older Gen Z women are struggling the most with their mental health in the generation and I would guess maybe even among the entire population I haven't done a lot of reading about the older generations but yeah that has been your personal experience that's what the data is showing yeah they're more depressed they're more focused on how they can please other people they fear they feel you know yeah more anxiety related to their career and their future interesting what do you think from someone on the inside it's like my exact age range I was like dang we're not doing good out here what what what do you think is driving that like what's hmm yeah I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and I don't feel super confident in my answer I think we're still trying to discover what is driving that anxiety and that depression I mean I shared earlier that we started off with social media just completely uninhibited yeah I think that that plays a part I think um I think we have a lot more opportunities now as women but that's also causes a lot of pressure to live up to that expectation yeah um man yeah I don't know I think it's the pressure to do it on your own the individuality that pushes people away from opportunities like Christian community because I shouldn't need that I shouldn't need other people I should be able to do this on my own week if you need community mm-hmm I see women living on their own more often just because they want to feel that sense of independence but it often leads to a sense of loneliness too yeah I think what you're describing too is is borne out by reading I've done as well like you know Jonathan Heights anxious generation talks a lot about some of the negative impact on this generation but especially women and the specifically the role that social media plays in that and you know I mean the data is harrowing absolutely disturbed like troubling just the way that men the spikes in mental health men are struggling to maybe with different things like you said pornography or heavy-duty video games but yeah it wouldn't surprise me if a heavy share of what you just described was having having child a large portion of your childhood and formative years being shaped and structured by tech corporations that have zero interest in your well-being except and primarily and there are primary their primary interest in you is engagement in their platform and increasing their profits right and so you're about to say something please oh yeah I was just gonna say that's why you know we take discipleship seriously especially as women in this age demographic and I'm discipling three women who are close to my age they're within that 18 to 24 age range of struggling women and man I've shared that with all of them because I want them to know that the women that they're interacting with day in and day out probably are fitting into some of these categories and they're convinced that Christ is real and that his message can change people's lives so it really adds fuel to the fire to say and God has placed you around so many women who need that and you are the outlier that you have that you know so yeah I think that's right you know um sometimes you know Paul and Philippians talks about like I think it's Philippians too where he describes Christians as being like stars in the night sky you know there's this picture of darkness and you know the stars are these little bright spots and that's a great point there's a there is a sense as things become darker or as more people are suffering or feeling like they don't have meaning or at least to the extent that they're meaning they do have meaning it's defined entirely on this constructed identity that's online and of course they they sense that that's not enough and that that's not really what they're made for you know that that's going to make people who don't operate that way stand out one one thing I was thinking Katherine you mentioned like uh the different differentiating like older and younger Gen Z that's that's something I've definitely noticed anecdotally and I was surprised that Gen Z is now old enough that the Barnet group differentiates between the two but I'm like I I definitely think that with some of the younger ones there is like in both men and women there's like an enhanced spiritual receptivity I was not surprised that there are now like fewer people that think that in Gen Z that think that like what's true changes over time that really lines up a lot with what we see in our ministry like I don't really remember the last time that we had a hardcore dogmatic post-modern relativist yeah come out to one of groups and um I even think one you'd mentioned earlier about like data and stuff and how that interfaces with what we see one thing I was surprised by is I was actually really surprised when Barnet said that one in five of the Gen Z people they interviewed identified as something other than LGBT because I do not see that and not just like our church kids but like in like the non-christians that come out to our high school groups and college groups over the last couple of years they are not as into that stuff interesting um so you're saying that the the data countrywide suggests that one in five members of Gen Z identify as one of the cluster of you know LGBTQ right uh gay lesbian yeah bisexual trans right the letters um and so they but you're saying in your personal experience that's at least that's not what you're seeing in Columbus Ohio you know which is a super liberal city right yeah right no that's that's that's totally what I'm saying like um I there's probably a lot of reasons why that might be um one gospel coalition article said something to the effect of um yeah I mean you can tell someone the sky is purple and they'll play along for a bit but eventually they're gonna be like it's come on man it's blue yeah I think for some of like the high schoolers in particular I think they all are definitely like you should not hate people regardless of what they identify as but they definitely seem to have a little bit more of like an eye roll attitude towards it of like I'm kind of sick of having some of this stuff like identity stuff shoved down my throat yeah I think 10 years ago when the coddling of the American mind came out which I think that was 10 years ago was it not roughly 2018 I think an original article came out in like 2015 in the Atlantic but uh yeah so people were talking a lot about safetyism and you know words that you can say and people were afraid to speak out and share their opinion I definitely think that that's changed a lot I mean we saw that in the data that a lot less people were answering like I don't know or I don't want to say they're like here's my opinion I'm gonna say it I don't hate anybody who has a different opinion I'll talk to them but you know there's a much less neutral zone of people being afraid to share what they think they're pretty opinionated way less politically correct yeah that too you see that in the in the TikTok memes and everything else for sure when you can some of that makes sense you know youth culture often is shaped around you know like where where is the profane if you could call it that like what what what's sacred what's profane and what is sacred which for you know a good 10 or 15 years has been certain identities like gender and sexual identity racial identities and you can imagine that some of these sacred things could become profane for the that young group like they are they're going to go after that and uh in you know if they feel like they're being like bound by certain speech conduct or you know whatever it may be there that's that's ripe for being rebelled against and they do yeah right that's interesting and I think that that that sort of is probably a surprise for someone like me you know on the like older millennial side sort of like oh Gen Z's just like this and then to hear no they they might actually be kind of um comfortable with being offensive is is kind of surprising because it's like oh these guys are surrounded by this this is just what they're going to believe and it's like no actually they're they're kind of like bucking um actually I'm curious if you guys could comment you know maybe this comes up with authenticity you know so there there is a way in which what we were just talking about there's a kind of um you know Phariseeism to political correctness yes and that you know that there's there's rules and if you break the rules you're in trouble um you might be canceled you might be ostracized whatever you want to call it whatever that form takes that there's rules and then there's punishments for breaking the rules and that some of those um like political correctness issues are just kind of what you might call identity politics is something that this group has been surrounded by and I'm curious so you can see that kind of being a it's their legalism you know they maybe they didn't have like a church culture that was like here's how you have to live you know Sunday morning we do this um make sure you follow the Ten Commandments make sure you know when you when you get older don't smoke don't drink whatever it is you know you can kind of have a caricature of that for Gen Z it seems like the the rules heavy and the sort of pharisaical mindset came in the form of secular political correctness so I was wondering if you guys could comment on like have you observed an attraction to the grace picture to the idea that your life uh yeah that that Christ um um yeah essentially just that like what Christ offers in in his life and in his death and kind of the way that he combats Phariseeism and the way in which he offers salvation as a gift not but you know because really in the Pharisee model salvation equals following the rules and it's like Christ offers salvation for free I have a couple thoughts I don't know if this is exactly answering your question but they pertain to the idea of like what do they find appealing about the gospel sure um I think one that maybe ties in a little bit more directly is I think they really love the simplicity of it and this is sort of where it's like yeah there's there's things that have always been true of people like the the love of just like the simplicity of grace but uh there's so many like like if you grow up in a maybe like a Catholic or more formal church there's so many convoluted doctrines or like there's so many like buzz words flying around social media about the key to fulfillment of like you have to like manifest and like all this other all this other stuff and uh a number of them recently have been like there's just something really appealing about just the simplicity of it of like no God just loves you and you're messed up and he died for you yeah um and it's almost like they I mean I don't know how many of them like the younger ones know what Occam's razor is but it's it's almost kind of like that of like that's like pretty straightforward and pretty easy to track and so I think they they like that and um I also think that because they have access to so much information there's so many different opinions like from people sometimes that really care about them that they're close to and sometimes from whatever influencer of the day or youtuber they want to watch there's so many different opinions telling them like here's what you need to do you need to do this um here's how you need to like actualize your goals and all this stuff and they were like a millionaire by 25 yeah for sure um I think they find the relief from the pressure really appealing like where Jesus is like my yoke's easy my burden's light I think they think that's really appealing to them well yeah with the you know with political correctness it's just like you feel like you're walking in a minefield you know you don't know what part of the ground is going to explode um things that were once considered you know relatively fair game or suddenly like shocking you know you could get in a lot of trouble for even offering a scientific opinion on that um you know so I think you know you could see that that fear of the minefield and and you it's interesting you mentioned Occam's razor you know obviously maybe they're not mentioning you know they're not speaking in those terms but the explain there's even an explanatory simplicity um you know if if the morals of the day are constantly shifting and there's a kind of like overwhelming complexity to that the simplicity of the gospel has a very like it's clean it's a very straightforward presentation yeah and I think when it's paired with Christian community that they actually get to see that lived out and experience it that makes a really big difference too because despite how simple grace in the gospel can be I feel like you can still take somebody you know hearing it eight ten twelve times over and over again to understand oh god really does love me like that but I think one thing that aids that understanding is interacting with people who do love them and accept them when they do make a mistake or they say something totally crazy or you know their mental health gets the best of them and they do something hurtful and they see somebody actually receive them yeah that shows oh this love for me is actually real yeah that's great yeah I mean uh I've been walking with god in some regard for almost 30 years at this point and I'm still trying to make sense of the gospel yep I don't mean that I don't understand the words but it's like there's such an ingrained um performance element you know whether that's a human element probably it's probably it definitely is an American element you know I think that there's kind of a the hustle concept um is very natural it's sort of part of our experience and yeah I'm was just I'm reading this book right now um it's called The Secret Place of Thunder and I'm gonna admit that's kind of a corny title but um I was actually like finding myself convicted about it like oh yeah like he's talking a lot about performance and how you have to work and it's like living living in Christian community making and making mistakes and realizing that that's that people are still there with you you know they may they may not be like oh I'm so glad you blew it on that thing but you know like you know they love you still they accept you still and they're you know part you know they're you're still part of the family so to speak and some of the most convinced Christians that I know have an experience like that in their past where they really messed up and somebody received them back because of Christ's grace and yeah I think that's a time in our ministry when we tend to lose a lot of students when they feel that shame and they feel like they can't come back but for the ones who do who take that risk and um you know they might experience rejection but they take that risk and they come back to Christian community they're usually more convinced than ever I think that's that's a very interesting observation and in an environment a broader environment like we're saying where even if they have not personally experienced being canceled or whatever and you if you're in a broader environment where you feel like there's I have no idea where that the like what I could do that would basically irredeemably destroy my life just even knowing that's out there can be really threatening you know this this might happen maybe you guys could just briefly my experience is primarily with millennials and people getting cancelled in their jobs that kind of thing like stuff that's happened in I don't know the last decade or so I wonder if either of you guys could comment just maybe for kind of understanding the Gen Z cohort and their mindset like what does this look like in high school like what is canceling you know you're not going to get cancelled that's a good question like people aren't there's only some limited way in which you can be de-platformed when you're 15 you know you're not a writer you're not a professor you know it's like so but there's ways that this probably is experienced at the level of the high school so have you seen stuff like that I think Catherine you should take this one because my immediate thought is if anyone spent time with my high school group for five minutes they would all be cancelled oh my goodness um okay here's something I guess sacred to Generation Z is the group chat and if you get kicked from the group chat that would be a way to be de-platformed in terms of your friend group yeah I mean they're online so much being blocked or apparently there's a difference between being unadded versus being blocked on Snapchat one of my high schoolers was explaining that to me yesterday that's so deep I know I'm one of the older Gen Z I'm like what do you mean um but I think that that's a big way of being socially isolated from your friends especially on your screen I mean there's no way to really reconcile if somebody blocks you right so I think that that's a big fear that people have social isolation and stuff like that I feel like um now that I'm I'm thinking about it and you're talking and getting me thinking about it a little bit more I think like one of the biggest values is like loyalty and so if you do something that's perceived as like a betrayal of trust or like like disloyal in some way then I think that gets you booted from the group chat interesting yeah it's funny I've never been removed from a group chat before but I'm also mainly dealing with like boomers and millennials so yeah right they don't know call call the IT department or something earlier you guys have already kind of commented somewhat on this about the effect that home churches might have in benefiting Gen Z or even the role that a ministry house could play I'd like it if either of you could comment on potential benefits but also maybe costs or like things things about these uh ways of doing ministry or ways of organizing communities that that might even be unattractive or create obstacles for Gen Z yeah I mean we talked a little bit about authenticity earlier there's really nothing more authentic than living with another person you can't hide what you're really like what your weird tics are things like that um and so I think that that is something that again Gen Z really values is authenticity but also fears right you can't hide behind a screen when you're you know share it bunking with a roommate or something like that so I think that's an example where it kind of hits on both things it's what they really want but simultaneously they're too afraid to enter into the risk that that would afford them that's interesting it kind of reminds me of you know a millennial thing which is like and I suspect this could be a Gen Z thing but there's many of them are still on the younger side is just the way that people really like want things like marriage but are they they're scared of the cost the commitment the the lift that it's going to be and it it makes you wonder if this is like you're seeing kind of a form of that as well in living with other people um yeah yeah that's that's an authenticity you asked about ministry houses specifically uh yeah and and if you if you have thoughts on home churches let me know too yeah I mean I think with with ministry houses um so you know earlier I said like man like this next generation like you have to avoid that like this next generation like these kids are all like their priorities are all messed up something like that I think with this next generation um no I mean everyone always said the millennials that we were all like materialists and that kind of thing and that that was probably true but I I think that like one of the things I've noticed with Gen Z in terms of getting them to want to move into a ministry house is that them wanting their personal space is a lot more of a holdup like I felt like when I was in college and we were talking to like a guy for instance about like what do you think about moving in with us it's a great way to grow with God like you can live in community um grunge was maybe a little bit more in yeah I know what you're talking about and so I feel like now there's a little bit more of like a reticence of like well I the idea of like really packing it in isn't as appealing right yeah and you know kids used to love sleeping over right the idea of a sleepover and now it's like we actually had somebody recently he didn't spend the night at the ministry house because he didn't know where to plug in his phone charger that was his reason and do you think right so here's a funny question I mean obviously someone might throw that out as like a BS excuse but you know like I think he was actually I think people seriously want to know that they can scroll on their phone until they fall asleep I mean wow how else could you go to sleep you know yeah like if someone said that to me I'd be like you don't really are you joking yeah like you know it's like okay look just tell me you don't want to come over and it's like no I actually just want a three plot three prong plug yes okay but to be honest I think that exact response is sometimes exactly what's needed and I think that sometimes people are really afraid of giving that because they don't want to be offensive and sometimes I do think that's what you need yeah just bro like come on yeah of course we have blood outlets yeah and I've had people come back and thank me for saying something like that I was like man I was I was being kind of stupid there like that was really fun that we ended up doing that thing yeah that's interesting so part of it is there's kind of a I mean I've heard this in general there's a risk aversion to Gen Z that there's there's a lot of anxiety you know and of course you know height called it the anxious generation and of course he was focusing really on the impact of technology but I do think people have described the way that millennials are a little bit more you know action oriented more materialistic as you put it more um heedless of caution you know I mean unfortunately like a key figure in the millennials would be like a Mark Zuckerberg you know who's you know many many billions of dollars at this point and uh is only a couple of years younger than me um and it's like this guy you know yeah like their motto when they started Facebook was you know move fast and break things you know it's like and I think that kind of you know race and just you know whatever whatever goes you know we don't care what the past has brought us and we're going to try to move forward and and but I sense you guys it sounds like you're saying too that that you've seen a kind of like hesitation and like a what or I'm not going to run into that quite as quickly uh yeah I think people are afraid of commitment and relationships but also with jobs I mean I see people I see that changing um for example in like the nine to five work day that Gen Z are like I don't want to do that I want to work just enough so I have enough time and money to play you know so it's not their values are changing maybe away from you know I'm going to run as hard and as fast as I can towards success but I want to be able to create a comfortable life for myself and that's where my energy is going towards yeah so it's like so part of it's a values thing it's not just a you know you you see that like countries or groups or you know countries cultures they kind of have a temperament and you know and like kind of saying that like the millennial kind of has a type a temperament and maybe that like Gen Z is a little bit more of a type b temperament yeah and I think people would look at them and say oh they're lazy or they're afraid that they're not running as hard and as fast as we did but Gen Z would say well we don't even want to be doing that yeah yeah why are you wearing skinny jeans that's so uncomfortable why wouldn't you just rather wear sweats yeah and you know gigantic you know I don't know we saw these in high school the jinko jeans that were like 38 inches at the bottom it's like how is that even possible yeah yeah I think it's a work smarter not harder mentality that I think they've adopted I have a thought that ties into it's something kind of you're asking about like what's appealing about the community and also it goes back a little bit to like the we are starting to see more men than women maybe for the first time ever in the American church and I was like asking a few of the guys in our home church who've like come to Christ in last year or so like why do you think that is like like when you look out at like your your friend group like why do you think that like the the guys are more interested and one of the things he said that was interesting was like well we're told that men need to we need to prioritize like our mental health we need to talk about deeper things more there's definitely like an awareness of the need but there's not really like viable spaces to do that like if I were to like turn to like a friend of mine and start talking about how I've been like feeling depressed or my emotional life or something like that most of my friends would be like what are what are you bro what are you doing here um I'm trying to watch a game yeah yeah but but I know that like a community like our home church is a place where like deeper conversations will happen and so that's appealing but I don't fully know is why that wouldn't necessarily be the same for women but uh but he was like for men that's definitely like a a pull to this clear there's like an obvious venue to have real relationships to have closer connection you're not going to be shunned for being honest um that's cool yeah and I think I've heard too that men are just you know this is kind of like what's going on with like Jordan Peterson stuff it's like I think men have felt kind of like aimless and I think kind of like the idea of having structure and you know um having some kind of like yeah like a community that cares about you and is willing to like check up on you yeah I there's definitely something happening with Gen Z that's very different than what was going on with millennials one one thing I know that this this is more about like Gen Z but in terms of the younger Gen Z and then sort of the one after them Gen Alpha I I felt like one of the things that is probably going to happen next is like I felt like with Gen Z for a while it was like we have to teach them that like it is okay to disagree and it is okay to like think that someone is wrong and what they want to do I think that we're going maybe to have to swing the other way where it's like a lot of people are being raised sort of with like the um I guess I'm on a podcast but like the podcast bro mentality of like you look at the people who disagree with you in like a condescending kind of like I actually do think less of you or something like that and so I that's just a prediction but I could see that kind of slant if like the freshmen in my group or any sophomores any indicator that I think that might be where things are tilting a bit yeah it seems like the who's doing the canceling might be switching but seems like people are still pretty dedicated to like what you said offends me and I'm gonna like destroy you and it's like maybe maybe like we'll have a conversation but you know it seems like there's still kind of like an outer limit like if you if you say something that's really liberal in the pot you know in the manosphere like you might get like roasted and destroyed over that and it's like I thought we were actually trying to have genera genuine conversations here where we're like sorting through ideas and if I'm going to be scorned and mocked here as well like that's not actually an advancement it just means that the sort of like the people canceling have just like switched sides or you know like who's really or who has the power to cancel and I think that's that's kind of ugly in a different way yeah so that's I guess to put it more bluntly I think what I was trying to say is like I think we're starting to see maybe more kids who are alt right than kids with like blue hair I think I see what you're getting at yeah right so you're seeing a lot of people be maybe tilting conservative you know Donald Trump winning a second time and actually there's there's all this you know surprising interest in Christianity right now yeah specifically as you know as we were talking about a moment ago with like young men Gen Z men being drawn to Christianity and we talked a little bit about that but there's not a identical interest coming from women I'm curious where that but what is behind that or if we have any at least initial thoughts this is still fairly new information yeah um I think Christianity is still associated strongly with conservatism which and I haven't done a ton of research into the political field in terms of if women are becoming more conservative than they were before but I would assume not as much so I think the fact that Christianity is associated with those ideas most women aren't interested in that especially when you talk about things like um you know the fact that Christians tend to be pro-life I don't think that that's something that a lot of women would say that they want to adhere to and so they're not even interested necessarily in checking out a church or maybe even associating with a woman who claims to be a Christian because they have these views that I think are peripheral of course to the message of Jesus but unfortunately it gets tied together one thing that I'm kind of curious about too is so from what I understand one of the best predictors of someone's political position right now is education at least the last I heard and it's my understanding that women are overtaking men significantly in university areas like in terms of their performance and then even career right and I wonder to what extent that demographic shift is also playing a part here I think so I mean you kind of I feel like it's a little bit of a joke like women in stem you know I don't have you heard that oh okay like hit us you know a girl does something like cool competent it's like women in stem you know we can do this too you know that's kind of the you know that's how women feel is we're finally being considered for you know these higher roles and companies and education and we want that I mean the women who come out to my home church especially my college group are so competent I mean we had a woman come out she's in her early 20s and she just ran a 50 mile race she ran for 50 miles I'm like oh my god like you are a hard worker um she's put together she's in school and you know you talk to them and they're a lot of them really want to be in the medical field they have purpose they have drive super smart and um I think they see the Christian lifestyle as maybe kind of motherly kind of nurturing interesting well I was thinking too like based off of that it's like it's one thing to ask the like 23 year old in our college home church like what if you moved around your schedule at Kroger so that you could come to fellowship more and it's another thing to like ask the like woman who's studying to be a doctor like come on it does it's not that important like just like kind of this so there's like there's like maybe more to lose in that regard yeah and for a lot of them they've been putting like steak into this career maybe even since they were 14 or 15 I mean a lot of our high school girls they're already stna's in the hospital they're working towards something and they see sometimes fellowship meetings or even putting in daily time with god is getting in the way of studying and you know who's to say that studying is a bad thing it's obviously not as somebody with multiple advanced degrees I think studying is great but I think what you're getting at is actually really important when you invite somebody and the alternative is whatever you know like they're just like screwing around on their phone or watching like a show they don't even like on netflix that's that's not a hard ask right but you know Jesus does call us to a certain kind of lifestyle you know he talks about us losing our lives to gain it and that the one who tries to gain their life will lose it I mean if you've got a pretty darn good life or that there's a sense that your goals are within reach that's that's a that's a big big call you know and I think that um yeah like in other words like there's probably people who follow Christ went by following Christ their lives on unambiguously improve there are other people who because they believe it's true yeah have to make surrenders and hard decisions that means leaving behind a great like maybe very high-paying job or some other kind of like accolades and maybe at least one thing you're saying here is that women are in that's that camp and men are are less so or at least they're the senses the broader cultural senses that these are that women are and men are splitting apart on these issues yeah um I'm actually curious with um you know this is this is sort of like we joked about this earlier but like is it your impression that people's attention spans are actually short like is it is it really shorter like we joked about that earlier and and then the other one is yeah suppose okay so it is okay okay my answer to that is if you're a Gen Z you're listening right now what else are you doing yeah right you're never so far good for you yeah right i'm actually impressed and uh they're probably yeah watching tv and doing the dishes is something else driving at the same time in some ways that's probably good you know hey like there's some kinds of multitasking that are good i guess if you're like also trying to write a paper for school or whatever like i don't know i would recommend that there are certain types of things you can combine yeah like i like to listen to audio books when i do the dishes and stuff but uh okay so you see Gen Z that's interesting so your experience has been they really have so here's another question is it just Gen Z or is it because all of us it's not it's not the millennials because oh no it's not us but yeah Gen Z for sure wow i don't know about that let's compare screen time let's see yeah i think um do you what to what extent has this created obstacles to um doing christian work i feel like it has changed the way we think about preaching somewhat um i think sometimes people can change it too much and they start to become gimmicky and they want to be just as entertaining as tick tock and you're not a multi-million dollar company so you're not going to be that you're a 19 year old who's taught the bible one time right right but um it does change the way we think about teaching that we do want to be engaging and um i don't know you teach RCT i have thoughts on that but yeah i think um i fully agree the thing about like it it changes it but you can't be gimmicky yes that like that like spoke to my soul but um yeah i think like it's changed the way we we preach i think also it's like you it's made a lot more of an emphasis on like you have to be very clear um which has always been true of preaching like clarity is helpful but i think that since you have less and less students coming through who like read for fun or like read well i don't think you can take it for as much of a given that like uh they're going to follow your thought process and right i think there's like an art to doing that without it seeming like condescending um but i think like making sure that like your your thought flow is like very clear i think is like helpful so yeah we don't need to create needless obstacles to people hearing or understanding the gospel um yeah i it's funny because i think you know even jesus used speaking techniques you know like if you read right jesus's sermons a lot of them are are formatted you could say you know like especially if you look at the beatitudes it's like it's repetitive um and i think that's to help with memory um and so you know i mean that that was the specific thing he was trying to deal with is like okay he had a different technology problem no one had books you know he's like i'm going to say this and then i need you to remember it right we have a different technology problem we have tons and tons of technology constantly coming at us but the point being that like being comfortable with the fact that there that we are aware of the fact that the culture that we're interacting with has certain obstacles or you know barriers to understanding and working with that i like what you said i mean again doug affirms too we don't want to be gimmicky you know we need to hold forward hold forth the gospel clearly you know if you look at like what um paul says in first corinthians where he's talking about like you know he's interacting with a group that kind of had certain expectations in terms of of speakers you know they're thinking about like the sophists uh the greek sophists that they should be able to like speak really eloquently and that that's how things need to be presented but he's like you know i came and just preached christ crucified like you know that there there is a level where like we need even though it's appropriate to be sensitized to format at the end of the day we're really looking for the holy spirit to do its work we're really working we're really looking to see the gospel itself as a message not just in the like you know the garb that we drape it in is going to like have an effect on people and that that you know that and that's true of any age you know like it's you know it's whether even though tiktok of course is kind of silly and like only so many only a certain amount i mean people like my parents were the tv generation you know it's like they were seeing episode half an hour episodes like that that was shaping their expectations so it's not like any of this is new it's just it's a different new yeah and for those who want to learn they will learn like they will overcome the challenges the distractions in their own minds like i was even thinking i heard recently you're teaching in october for the halloween party it was kind of short and um one of the girls in my friends group was like i want him to keep going can he keep going you know and and they can do longer format stuff if they're interested in the content if they know how it applies to their lives and i haven't really seen that be an issue i totally agree with that i think that so i felt like in the first couple of years after covid there definitely was like a i mean i felt this myself and i was listening to teachings like if like our ct teachers went for the same length as they did before covid i'd be like what is wrong with this guy like uh and and so i felt like for the first couple years after that yeah definitely there was a lot more like you really got to keep this going i felt like in the last year or so like a lot of our students really have like been able to track better they want they want more in-depth stuff rebuilding they're rebuilding some muscles yeah they're like they're even like in conversation like they're uh they're more verbal um like they're more conversational they're funnier yeah they're they have yeah good clips and comments they're engaged in the conversation enough to i don't know yeah and i was like i was even thinking like just biblically like we're told that like we're supposed to be transformed by the renewing of our minds and i think part of that like it's like god will transform their minds but also like neuroplasticity is a thing and so he can transform their brains and yeah and help them regain that and sometimes i think not as much like maybe in our preaching but in our like discipleship with the attention span stuff we have to be willing to call people towards some of those things like i've seen studies before about how like um maybe since the pandemic aggravated some of these things of like 18 year olds are kind of like what 15 year olds used to be maturity wise or like 15 16 year olds or like 12 year olds and then like incoming freshmen are like kind of where like sixth graders used to be and i think there might be some truth to that but i think that like part of your job if you're like discipling these students is to like call them forward yeah and so like um like i had a conversation a couple of months ago with a guy who's uh he's about 16 and like me and his dad um it was like it was loving but one of the things that we communicated was like paul talks about when i was a kid i reasoned like a kid but now that i've become a man i've like done away with childish things and it's like you're two years away from being an adult and you reason like a child and so you like you need to grow up a little bit yeah thinking yeah um and he's like so far he's responded really well to that but i i think that like if you're like discipling a high schooler sometimes you just have to level with them of like you're getting closer and closer to being an adult and so you need to like you kind of need to like um what's that jump up a couple levels here yeah i feel like the same conversations have been necessary with college people as well people who experienced the pandemic during high school i think missed some formative years of maturity and yeah especially when it comes to people's functional lives like being able to actually help them to succeed in school and to keep a job even when it gets difficult and yeah i think that's been necessary across a lot of different ages i like what you guys are saying too about that this this is is learnable you know i think that gives people agency you know i think that if if they're taught that like you know this is just too hard and you can't do it that they'll they'll internalize that but if you're like okay hey you're not where you need to be but we can work to get you there you know like this isn't this isn't impossible it's like you know thinking just about i don't know like sports training like hey you know you you need to you know we need to do a little bit more leg we need to put more weight on the legs and you know it's going to hurt but it'll be you know you'll be stronger on the other side and if you just feed your brain a steady diet of tick tock and mr beast then like you should not be surprised if like your capacity for higher level thinking isn't just magically developing yeah that's the topic of conversation in my discipleship time well did you did your brain rot this week do you think that could have had an impact on your time with god on your relationship with your roommates things like that oh i didn't even think about that yeah yeah that's uh wow it's funny i mean like i said there's new uh things are in a strict sense new right in that you've got these things in your pocket that you carry with you everywhere but you know even when i lived in a ministry house some over 20 years ago it's like people had video games like there there were guys who maybe didn't play video games but man the amount that they would just watch television like i would it was astonishing like they would sit in front of tea they come home from work and be in front of the television and they're cultured pat they're men of culture yes that's right that's right television is a very very um a subtle art yeah um well i appreciate a lot of the stuff you guys have been saying uh as we've talked here and i actually i just want to start to wrap up with the following question let's project this out 20 years 30 years what are some of the things that gen z brings to the table that could really you know what would make them really fantastic christian leaders you know they they are going to be leading you know um our home churches are going to be led by by the catharines of the world um in in 20 years god willing and um so what what are the the what do we think that's going to look like what are the strengths that they'll bring um and uh yeah just comment on that please i mean we've talked a little bit about this but just how much they love authenticity and community and i think that the communities that gen z is going to create into adulthood are going to be amazing i mean they love to be together especially post pandemic i think people are starting to wake up to the reality that this is how life is supposed to be lived it's supposed to be lived together and um i think we just keep seeing our communities improve and get better so i'm excited to see what they're going to be like even as parents as well and creating those communities in the home and i don't know i think that's one of the biggest things that they bring to the table yeah that's cool yeah i got a i guess i have my thoughts are more in terms of like our specific church like i think there's some stuff that's like general of like yeah i think as people's families become more and more fractured i think it'll like stand out a lot more to the lost world when they see a healthy one but i think in terms of our church i think that we've really done really well with winning students um to christ and we've done really well with winning college students to christ and uh and like becoming disciples of jesus but i feel there's been a couple a couple like ministry areas where we haven't fully been able to like get that down as much i think that since they're the most racially diverse generation i think they might be the ones in our church that really start to succeed in a higher percentage in terms of winning disciples out of the inner city oh wow that would be that would be amazing so i think that would be like something that i would hope to see at least and then the other one is um i think that the world to gen z is a lot smaller because of like technology and things like that and the other thing that we haven't really been able to crack in our church is like uh planting in other cities like extra local church planting and i could definitely see them doing well with that yeah tell me what you mean by the world's a little bit smaller um well i mean they can if they work remotely they can keep their job here and look go move somewhere else so i think you mean like it's you mean smaller like it's bringing the world closer to them so in some ways i think that affords that like and they're they're used to that and i also think that like um i don't know i mean if you've if you've grown up hearing about like and being able to see in real time what's happening all over the world in other cities then like actually being in those cities isn't as crazy i have another place i've seen that place like i just i don't know if you're just on your computer all the time it's like what difference is there between a city or that yeah yeah just scroll tiktok just kidding scroll tiktok in detroit and it's all the same well and they're so aware of the world around them how can you not be when you're that connected and i think that's grown people's love and their burden for other places and other people yeah that's really cool all right well thanks doug and catherine for joining us this morning and uh before you know we really wrap up do you guys have any resources you want to point our listeners to yeah um been reading the gen z volume three book published by the barna research institute they have three volumes but the third one is obviously the most recent and i think it just gives a wide swath of information about their religious beliefs and um you know their beliefs about lgbtq and kind of everything so i would definitely read that great yeah i was thinking um that book is great so the next generation may know by jay warner wallace and shawn mccowell is really good and then um if you want to know more about like teaching or preaching to students shane coulter has a teaching from our zina summer institute from i think two years ago that's that's really good okay great well thanks for joining us on dwell on these things um and uh look out for um a our next episode which is actually gonna cover something that we we've barely touched today or just slightly touched today on you know how can we effectively uh win young women like there's some struggles with uh winning young women and what's that look like and so we're gonna we're gonna cover that in our next episode for any more resources go ahead and swing over to our website at dwellcc.org thanks again