Daniel Darling: Hope for Gen-Z

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, June 7th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: Generation Z, people born in the late 1990’s through the early 2010’s. What’s ahead for them, and where is their hope?

WORLD Opinions commentator Daniel Darling is an author and teacher. Today, he speaks as a father.

DANIEL DARLING, COMMENTATOR: This year, almost four million students will graduate from high school in America. That number includes my oldest daughter, Grace. It’s hard to capture in words the emotions I feel, the slow letting go of our parenting control as we ease her into adult life.

My daughter, like her Generation Z counterparts, is facing a world of challenges. Those include a divided America whose only leadership options seem to be 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 is the first fully wired generation, having grown up immersed in the digital age. They’ve also grown up in the shadow of failed wars, racial tension, political violence, and a global pandemic that robbed them of too much of their school years. No wonder Pew Research reports 37 percent of public-school and private-school students admit to poor mental health.

And yet, there are hopeful signs that so much adversity has made Generation Z resilient. Consider the outpouring of prayer, fasting, and worship among Christian college students first at Asbury College in Kentucky and then 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.

The Wall Street Journal reports a turning to faith among young people post-pandemic. I’m quoting The Wall Street Journal here: “About one-third of 18-to-25-year-olds say they believe—more than doubt—the existence of a higher power, up from about one-quarter in 2021, according to a recent survey of young adults.”

There has been so much ink spilled on the decline of faith in the next generation of American evangelicals, but many of these narratives have been disputed by researchers such as Ryan Burge. Perhaps our young people are not forsaking the faith after all.

What we do know is that the world our graduates are walking into is a world different than the one we faced a generation ago. Economic conditions make launching into adulthood more difficult. To live out the faith will likely require more courage in a country where the demands of the gospel are not just considered strange but dangerous. And yet, we can embed hope in the next generation of the church because we know that this mission field was not given to them by accident. See Acts 17:26. God is not in heaven wringing His hands over the things that cause parents to lose sleep at night. Our kids can live with fearlessness and joy, knowing that Christ has overcome the world.

The difficult things the next generation will face can be used by God to shape their character. And we can rest in this promise: Christ is still building his church, mostly through the quiet and ordinary acts of redeemed sinners. Keep this truth in mind as you congratulate your favorite graduate.

I’m Daniel Darling.

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