“Gen Z loves the spiritual disciplines. But disciplines separated from church community do not create disciples.”
That sentiment is how Daniel Kunkel began his recent article on some fascinating trends among Gen Z Christians. From watching clips of Billy Graham on TikTok to embracing spiritual disciplines like silence, solitude and Sabbath-keeping, the Christianity embraced by young people today has echoes of what previous generations have experienced, but the differences are important to note as well.
As Kunkel — who pastors in New York while also serving as a teaching fellow in New Testament at Fordham University — noted, “Whereas the Emergent Church movement of the previous generation prized a casual and comfortable expression of faith, I find many in Gen Z value a sense of sacredness and have a strong desire for practical change.”
Warning
He goes on to warn, though, that “This is a wonderful trend — yet there’s something peculiar about this wave of interest in spiritual formation among the younger generation. Namely, it is not accompanied by a significant spike in church attendance.”
Now, church attendance tends to be a relatively volatile way to measure commitment to the faith, and a Barna study found that Gen Z and millennials actually attend more regularly than older generations. However, the overall decline in attendance still means that Gen Z is less religious than their counterparts were in the 2007 and 2014 versions of the same study.
So, if more and more young people are coming to the faith, but their numbers are not necessarily reflected in Sunday morning attendance, what should we make of these seemingly contradictory trends?
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Ryan Denison and published by Denison Forum.
