The resurgence of Gen Z in church attendance marks a significant shift within the spiritual landscape, as Dr. Jeffery D. Skinner elucidates in this enlightening discussion. We delve into the implications of this generational revival, addressing the paradox of a declining church juxtaposed with a burgeoning interest in authentic faith among young people. Gen Z’s attendance averages 1.9 times per month, surpassing previous generations and indicating a profound yearning for spiritual identity and genuine connection rather than mere entertainment or social validation. This episode compels church leaders to recognize the need for a revival that is centered on Jesus, highlighting the potential dangers posed by algorithm-driven discipleship, which often distracts from the essence of forming authentic disciples. We emphasize the importance of maintaining an organic, relational approach to ministry, where genuine presence and discipleship are prioritized over numerical growth, thus ensuring that the church remains a transformative force in the lives of young believers, rather than a mere reflection of contemporary culture.

Takeaways:

1. The resurgence of Gen Z in church attendance signals a profound spiritual awakening, with young individuals attending church 1.9 times per month on average, surpassing preceding generations' engagement.
2. Revival, characterized by a deepened desperation for authentic faith, is not merely a trend but a significant movement among young people seeking genuine connection with Jesus.
3. Discipleship must transcend conventional programmatic approaches; it should be organic, relational, and focused on forming disciples who can replicate their faith in others.
4. The role of algorithms in shaping spiritual identities poses a challenge, as they often prioritize engagement metrics over meaningful discipleship, potentially leading to superficial faith practices.
5. Church planting efforts should prioritize the cultivation of discipleship over mere attendance, aiming for multiplication that reflects the genuine growth of faith communities.
6. The authenticity of Jesus must remain central in ministry to Gen Z, as they desire a faith that is transformative and not merely an echo of contemporary cultural trends.

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Peace in that Finds You in the Middle of Chaos

Cozyearth.com. Use Code Echo for a 40% Discount Dr. Jeffery D. Skinner shares his experience with Cozy Earth's products, highlighting their impact on his family's comfort since moving to Nashville. He discusses the benefits of their bamboo-based bedding and blankets, emphasizing their softness, temperature regulation, and luxurious feel. The episode also includes a special discount offer for listeners. Keywords Cozy Earth, bamboo bedding, temperature regulation, luxury comfort, Nashville, family warmth, discount offer, Christmas gift, home sanctuary, podcast partnership

Peace in that Finds You in the Middle of Chaos

Cozyearth.com. Use Code Echo for a 40% Discount Dr. Jeffery D. Skinner shares his experience with Cozy Earth's products, highlighting their impact on his family's comfort since moving to Nashville. He discusses the benefits of their bamboo-based bedding and blankets, emphasizing their softness, temperature regulation, and luxurious feel. The episode also includes a special discount offer for listeners. Keywords Cozy Earth, bamboo bedding, temperature regulation, luxury comfort, Nashville, family warmth, discount offer, Christmas gift, home sanctuary, podcast partnership

Last episode we talked about something uncomfortable but necessary. Selfies in front of the cross, the danger of personality driven church planting.

What happens when the messenger becomes more visible than the message? Today we want to build straight on that platform because right now something real is stirring in the church. It's not hype to begin with.

There were people that kind of looked cautiously at it. But we're three years into this and Barda, Carrie Newhoff and many others in the church planting space exponential.

It's beginning to be noticed, and that is that the next generation is surging, especially young men, the Gen Z. And the interesting thing is they're bringing millennials with them. That's starting to get a church. Not nostalgia. It's not just a social media trend.

It's something measurable, something spiritual, something with both promise and peril. Gen Z is coming back to church and the question isn't whether revival is starting.

The question is whether we will steward it well with Jesus at the center. Not us, not trends, not algorithms. If Marcus Aurelius said what we do in life echoes through eternity, what is your life echoing through eternity?

Welcome to Echoes Through Eternity with Dr. Jeffrey Skinner. Our mission is to inspire, engage and encourage leaders from across the globe to plant missional churches and be servant leaders.

So join us and hear the stories of servant leaders reverberating lives as God echoes them through eternity. Brought to you by Missional church Planting and leadership development in Dynamic Church Planting International. Welcome in to Echoes to Eternity.

I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey D. Skinner. This is a space where we slow down, where we listen for what God is saying beneath the noise, and where we ask one simple question together.

What is God echoing through your life today? Well, last episode we talked about something uncomfortable but necessary.

Selfies in front of the cross, the danger of personality driven church planting. What happens when the messenger becomes more visible than the message?

Today we want to build straight on that platform because right now something real is stirring in the church. It's not hype to begin with. There were people that kind of looked cautiously at it.

But we're three years into this and Barda, Carrie Newhoff and many others in the church planting space exponential. It's beginning to be noticed and that is that the next generation is surging, especially young men, the Gen Z.

And the interesting thing is they're bringing millennials with them. So anyway, we want to kind of talk about that. That's starting to get a church today. It's not nostalgia. It's not just a social media trend.

It's something Measurable. It's something spiritual, something with both promise and peril. Gen Z is coming back to church. And the question isn't whether revival is starting.

The question is whether we will steward it well with Jesus at the center. Not us, not trends, not algorithms. If the church institution.

When I talk about the church, Big C, a lot of times that's what I'm talking about is that the institution of the church. And look, I'm not against institutions. I just think that they function in a different way than what we have to function as a church plant.

And so if we allow the institutional bureaucracy, for lack of a better word, to co opt this movement, then we're going to start trying to shape Gen Z and their spiritual identities in our image.

And that is the same problem that happened truthfully with, with the church leadership back in Jesus day when he called him a pit of vipers and, and strong language vipers for, for that peep, for those people that was harkening them back to the desert when they were, you know, out there wandering around and, and they were being killed and poisoned by those vipers as a punishment from God, at least from biblical standpoint, there for their lack of obedience. And so when Jesus used that language with them, it was not complimentary language, obviously, but it was, it was strong language.

It was, it was essentially a curse word, calling them bad names in that E there. And so we don't want that institution, bureaucracy to start shaping them in our image, but we want to be sure that we keep Jesus at that image.

It's already required reading for pastors, planters and leaders. The data is startling. And what he did was he just basically took Barna's research and did an analysis on it.

Gen Z now leads in church attendance averaging 1.9 weekends per Wolf, the highest division generation, those of us who have been part of a church for a long time, and that's what I'm talking about, shaping, trying to shape them in the image of us, in the image of the church they're attending 1.1.9 times per month. When we were growing up, we were there every time the church doors open.

We were there Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and everything in between. Right now at Tribeca Community Church, we're in the middle of a musical.

We're there three or four times a week trying to prepare for that musical that will happen in March and which is you know, if you're listening in the Nashville area, you definitely want to hear that. It's coming along really well. It's called the, the Deliverer and was written by our pastor, Dr. Shawna Sanger Gaines.

She adapted it from her dissertation, which talks about the. The pastor as midwife, in other words. But what we're giving birth to is spiritual identity helping facilitate that birth and helped it come along.

That was a great analogy for, for the church. Anyway, I, I digress here, but, but if you're in the Nashville area, that'll be happening in March. Keep an eye out for that. But that, the point here.

09 times a. A month is, is low, you know, okay, you're only there half the time. The doors are open. Remember, one, that's an average.

There's some that are higher, some that are lower. And two, it beats out other generations. It marginally beats millennials. It's meaningful, meaningful, meaningfully higher than Gen X or boomers.

Almost half of US adults, 48% now qualify as non practicing Christians. Only 24% actively pursue their faith. So we're living in a paradox. The church is shrinking, revival is stirring.

At the same time, Gen Z is in revival and retreat simultaneously. The mission isn't yet accomplished, there's much to do. But this surge among the young is a God given window. I want to talk about now.

From despair to desperation. One line from the report has stayed with me.

Luke Lefebvre, a Gen Z preacher who's spoken at Saddleback, led gospel responses at raves and high schools, and founded Consecrate put words to what many of us have sensed. He says Gen Z has gone from despair to desperation and that's driven many to Jesus. That's it. They grew up exposed to everything early.

Unlimited freedom, endless affirmation, curated identity, digital belonging.

It promised everything and delivered emptiness, anxiety rising, loneliness, epidemic AI, companionship replacing real Relationships, truth, feeling unstable. Culture offers, cultures offers. Collapsed under their own weight, Gen Z moved from passive despair to active desperation.

They're not looking for an echo of the culture. They're looking for an alternative. To put it in religious terms, they're looking for holiness. And I don't mean. You and I have discussed this before.

Holiness is not a term of morality, is not a term of ethics. It's a description that was used for God himself. It meant completely other, set apart from everything else.

Yes, that means sanctification means set apart as well. But holiness goes beyond set apart. Holiness means there is no description for that particular thing.

And so that's why we struggle sometimes in the church to put into words and language these movements of God because they are holy. And so Lefebvre and his friend Daniel McLeod described this in raw terms on Carrie's podcast. They preached over a thousand high schoolers at raves.

They've seen hundreds respond to the Gospel boldly. Gen Z evangelizes directly, one on one online. No filters. They share because they've stated they've tasted the emptiness and found Jesus satisfies.

They don't want fog machines and celebrity pastors. They want something solid again, holiness, a faith that cost something and that hunger is God breathed. But hunger alone does not produce disciples.

So let's talk about revival. And as God's work, stewarding it is ours. Here's where the church must be careful. Kerry says it's clear.

Revival is God's action, not something we manufacture. It's not something we brand. It's not something we scale. We cannot control revival if we're controlling revival. It is man made and it will not last.

The Bible is clear. The flowers fade, but the word stands forever. But you can position yourself to receive it. History teaches us a sobering lesson.

Every genuine moment of God faces the same temptation. Replace Jesus with the experience of Jesus. Protect the method instead of the mission. Confuse momentum with maturity.

Revival without discipleship collapses. Emotion without formation fades. Excitement without multiplication becomes spiritual entertainment.

We've seen all of these forms over the last 50, 60 years. We've seen them throughout history. Truthfully, we steward this surge by keeping Jesus central. It's not atmosphere.

It's not our platforms, it's not our algorithms. We're not going to make this better by tweaking it with AI. Which brings us to our fourth segment here, which is the algorithm problem.

One of the most prophetic warnings in a report is that discipleship is now largely controlled by algorithm. Most people aren't being discipled by their pastor. They're being discipled by TikTok and Instagram YouTube podcast feeds.

Believers average 49 hours per week consuming algorithm driven content. Then we expect a 30 minute sermon to reform them. That's not realistic, that's math. Algorithms don't disciple toward Christlikeness.

They disciple towards outrage, tribalism, fear, identity politics and performance. When churches chase algorithms instead of anchoring in Jesus, something tragic happens.

Carrie says plainly, when you become indistinguishable from culture, there is nothing left to convert to. I speak to this in my book seven Keys to Loving, Leading and Mentoring the Church of the Next Generations. It's available on Amazon.

I'll put the link in the. Any notes there? I'm not trying to promote that book necessarily, but there's good information in there and, and it's a. It is seven keys that.

Everything that I'm talking about in this podcast, everything that, that I shouldn't say, everything. I don't talk about the, the algorithms and things like that in my book.

But a lot of the stuff as far as making disciples of the next generation, I lay out in that book and I talk about how we. The first key to making disciples of the next generation is presence. And what I mean by that is they want personal touch.

I've told you guys several times now, I picked up a little job in the process of planting this church, the refinery. I picked up a job locally to try to get to know the people. I wanted to get to know the community. And that's working.

But what I didn't expect was an inside look at Gen Z. And they're hungry and many are lost. And I don't mean lost as in not saved. That may be true, but when I say lost, I mean they're searching.

They're trying to figure out, they're trying to find their center. They're trying to find out who they are in their identity. And many are still experimenting and what I've done.

And again, I'm not trying to place myself at the center because I didn't intend for this to happen. This was a God thing.

But by taking this job and trying to get to know the community, God has placed me in the center of a ton of Gen Z kids and I'm getting to know them, but I'm present. And that is that first key to reaching that next generation is you've got to be present.

You can't do it from afar because you can only, you can only minister to them. You can only have conversations with them and get permission to form them and understand you're going to need their permission.

They don't need a marketing pitch. They're looking for something real. We've already talked about that. But you've got to be present with them.

You can't do it from afar and you can't lecture them. But inside of a relationship you listen to them and you'll be shocked at the number that will come to you for advice.

That's happening where I'm working right now, so I want to go back to when you become indistinguishable from the culture, there's nothing to convert to. That sentence should sober every planter. If Gen Z shows up and find it's the same noise, they fled, they won't stay.

And what I mean by that, if our pulpits are with Fox News or even CNN or msnbc, they're not going to listen to that. They don't.

They don't need a Christian identity that looks like a Republican or a Democrat or a communist or a socialist or a conservative or anything like that. They're looking for Jesus. Throw those labels out the window. If you don't, they will not stay. I don't talk agendas.

When these kids come to me and are talking to me, the first thing I do is listen. That's it. And oftentimes the conversation ends at listening. But later we come back to it after I've had time to pray about it and think about it.

Sometimes I give advice on the spot. I always bring Jesus into the center of it. I always let them know that my perspective is coming from a Christ centered perspective.

But I'll come back to them. Why and how do I do that? Because I've got a relationship with them. And that's what I mean, that the discipleship for Gen Z is organic.

It's not a, it's not a program. So if you don't. When they show up, if they find that same noise, I won't repeat that. If they find the same noise, they will.

That they fled, they will not stay. Now let's talk about the multiplication mandate. This moment demands multiplication, not attendance. Growth. Growth is not the point here.

Growth is the language of bell. You know, you worship the gods and do things in a specific way and growth happens. And that, that's the language of empires.

Truthfully, we, we hear that turn on the news and listen to anything that any world leader says is all about growth. The church is about kingdom multiplication. Kingdom multiplication. Christ multiplication. Not better branding, not viral sermons, multiplication.

Jesus never said build large crowds. He said make Disciples, not converts, not consumers. Disciples who make disciples. Four generation faith.

Paul tells Timothy, what you have heard from me entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others also. That's multiplication. Gen Z is wired for this. They evangelize directly. While the church has been wringing their hands, God has been working.

Carrie notes Pastors post sermon clips. Gen Z believers share one on one online and without filters. They don't wait for permission. But LaFever and McLeod highlight a barrier.

Many Gen Z evangelize boldly outside church walls but feel sidelined inside the church. Churches ask them to run, propresenter, manage, sound, volunteer quietly instead of equipping them to lead, preach and multiply.

This generation doesn't need control. They need discipleship. Spiritual mothers and fathers holiness with humility.

Release their gifts early because and focus on four generation reproduction. Again, I talk about this in my book that you want leadership to be three deep. Here we're talking four deep and I'm talking leadership in the book.

But the implication that I'm talking about this is really what I'm talking about is reproduction. Reproducing ourselves because one is not enough to make a difference. People who disciple. Let me repeat that. Disciples who disciple, who disciple?

Who disciple? All centered on Jesus. So what does this mean for you as a church planter? If you're planting a church right now, hear this clearly.

The goal isn't to attract Gen Z. Forget the attractional model. When Christ is the center, he is the attraction. Period. That's it.

The goal is to form Gen Z. I told my pastor Sunday afternoon one of the things I love about her preaching is she does not approach the pulpit with an agenda other than to form the people of God. That is our goal. To form Gen Z. Do not build around your personality. Do not build around hype. Do not. Do not build around vibes. Build around Jesus.

When revival becomes atmosphere instead of obedience, it burns out. When leaders become brands instead of shepherds, trust erodes. When churches grow without depth, division follows.

The church still closes faster than it multiplies in many places. Our own denomination released a report from just this in the last month and we closed many more churches. It's not even closed.

The number of churches that we closed compared to the new churches that we planted are revitalized. Is there's a drastic difference between the two. I can't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I'll place it in the show notes.

So I'm planting a church. The reality is, is. Is. Yeah, I'm. Look, I'm a. God is not done with me yet. He's made clear that fact.

But my goal is that I want to raise up other church planters within my church plant. I did that when I was pastoring in Auburn. We had four churches, five churches that were planted out of my Eagle Point church and out of.

The church I planted was not my church. It was God's church. But out of the church I planted in Auburn, there was five other churches planted.

And every one of those planters rose up from within that church there. And so that's the goal here as well.

I want young people planting churches because as much as Gen Z respects the next generation, you know, Gen X and older generations, they, they, they connect with their own. And so I love the fact that that not lefever is, Is a Gen Z and that he's got such a big platform.

Gen Z isn't the future church, they're the present church. So let's talk about a pastoral word. Let's just, you know, a pastoral word for you. Let me speak as a chaplain for a moment.

I sit with people every day who have everything and feel empty. Gen Z sees that. They're not asking for perfection. They're asking for authenticity. Is Jesus real? Does he transform? Can he hold my anxiety?

Can he anchor my identity? Can he be trusted? Those are the questions that Gen Z is asking.

And the answer is yes, but only if we keep him at the center, not the algorithm, not the platform, and not the preacher, Jesus. So here's a question I want to leave with you. How will we steward this window God has opened? Will we chase momentum or cultivate multiplication?

Will we build followers of churches or disciples of Jesus? Because what we form now will echo through eternity. A few weeks, I will be attending the Exponential Conference in Orlando.

I've been blessed with the ability to be able to attend. Attend and with other people, other leaders on our district here. I'm excited about that. But I, I will come back with some amazing insight as well.

I'm looking forward to that. I'll hear amazing sermons, attend a lot of amazing, just a lot of content there. Some more insights that I can place into context for you.

We'll talk about that in April after I, I get all that information processed. But but if this episode has stirred something, share it with a planter, a pastor or young leader in this season.

Subscribe Leave a Review it helps the echoes reach further. Until next time, keep listening. God is still speaking. His echoes never fade.

We've got the YouTube up and going, still growing, so you can share that if you will watch this in person. I still prefer the audio podcast as opposed to the video, but but a lot of the Gen Z, my daughter included, they love watching it on the tv.

So anyway, the question I leave with you, as always, is what is God echoing through your life today? Until next time, if you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe.