Ben Phillips
Youth & Young Adult Pastor
Mitchell Berean Church
One Billion. A one with nine zeros behind it. That is the number of teenagers on the planet right now. More than there have ever been before. The reality is that this number is beyond our ability to fathom! To give you a little perspective, if you were to take every teen on Earth and line them up front to back the line would wrap around the planet… over seven and a half times! So many teenagers spread throughout diverse cultures, regions, and climates.
What amazes me about teens the most has almost nothing to do with them, but actually has to do with the generations above them. Generations that walked through their own seasons of adolescence full of passion, hope, desire, and a seemingly unending supply of angst. These generations that should look at the current world of teenagers with an understanding of what they are going through instead seem to live with an endless “facepalm” mentality toward what they are witnessing daily from Generation Z. Useless, hopeless, broken, lost, incapable… This is how the largest generation in history has been described over and over again. And, sadly, the song sounds the same in the Church.
For centuries of church history young people have been instrumental in leading mighty movements and great revivals, but over the last fifty years a major shift has taken place. If you were to ask a Baby Boomer, Gen X-er, or Millennial what has led to this change you would likely hear similar sentiment to what is shown in the Garden Of Eden immediately following Adam and Eve’s sinful snack. “It’s their fault!” resounds from each group with a finger pointed to the next. Generation Z doesn’t have a large cheering section as the shift I referred to before has gone past the point of no return. What exactly is this shift? Focus. A new focus on what is important and what gives life its meaning has come in. Where my generation would have jokingly responded to questions of life’s meaning with the answer “42” (if you know you know!), Gen Z responds with a post-modern, hedonistic like attitude stating: “Whatever makes you feel good!”, or “Whatever your truth is!”.
You can read the entire column in the January 2022 issue of Nspire Today! magazine. A one-year subscription (12 issues) is only $20. You may sign up for a subscription by sending $20 to Nspire Today!, P.O. Box 454, Scottsbluff, NE 69363, or you may pay with a credit card by calling 308-220-8865.
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