Building a bridge

Healthy institutions—especially Christian ones—do not endure by accident. To remain faithful beyond their founders, they must deliberately reach and form the next generation. That is the work before us now.

At WORLD, we have seen this pattern before. In 1981, we began publishing God’s World News for students. Those publications reached hundreds of thousands of young readers and, over time, drew entire families into WORLD Magazine. What began as a student product became a bridge to the next generation.

Today, we are building that bridge again.

You may have seen Nick Eicher’s column in the April issue of WORLD introducing Reality Check, a new pilot series now part of our WORLD Watch program. His focus was on the concept behind the series—helping students recognize the ideas shaping today’s cultural debates. Here, I want to place that effort in WORLD’s broader generational context.

The background starts with WORLD Watch itself. Among our paid subscription products, WORLD Watch is the fastest-growing. Its target market is every Christian family in the United States with school-aged children. That’s a real opportunity, even when we narrow it to the families we are most likely to serve.

Equally important is who those families are. The WORLD Watch audience is younger than the audience for WORLD Magazine. Many of our magazine readers are more likely to think of WORLD Watch for their grandchildren (and what a great idea, by the way). WORLD Watch, by contrast, is reaching parents who are raising children right now. That shift is more than demographic. It is generational.

If we are going to grow and serve that audience, we have to provide content aimed at the problems facing this generation. Students today are growing up in a culture with no shared framework for truth. Every day, they hear false claims about identity, morality, and purpose—often through media designed for speed and reaction rather than careful thinking.

As Reality Check co-host Jonathan Morrow says, a worldview must “explain what needs to be explained.”

At the same time, students are learning to think rigorously in other areas of life. They take advanced courses in history, science, and mathematics. They are capable of serious thought. But their understanding of the faith does not always develop with the same depth. When that gap persists, faith can begin to feel like something outgrown rather than something built upon.

That is the gap we are working to address.

Reality Check is one way we are doing that. Each episode runs about five minutes and focuses on helping students recognize the ideas behind the arguments they hear every day. The goal is not simply to provide answers, but to train students to see more clearly—to identify assumptions, to ask better questions, and to understand how a biblical worldview speaks to the issues they encounter.

In a culture characterized by quick takes and ­competing voices, the ability to slow down and think clearly is not automatic. It must be taught.

And Reality Check is only a beginning.

Because it airs once a week as part of the WORLD Watch feed, it opens the door to additional programming throughout the rest of the week. For example, we are planning a segment that will help students think biblically about work, money, and the economy. Lord willing, that pilot will be ready for next fall. Other ideas are in development as well. Over time, our aim is to build a consistent, week-by-week framework—something families can rely on as they train their children.

That work complements the God’s World News magazines, which are as lively and relevant as ever. We believe—and our audience continues to affirm—that students still read, and parents want them to read. By providing compelling news and features in print and online, we are encouraging both a love of reading and a love for God’s world.

Taken together, WORLD Watch and God’s World News are a gift to Christian families. We consider it a privilege to steward that gift for a new generation, and we pray that, as before, God will use it to draw families into a greater understanding of His world—generation after generation.