Gen Z and the Bible
I’ve always loved the Bible. Big fan. Huge. Growing up, I would “read my Bible and pray every day, so I could grow, grow, grow.” So it was a treat this week to speak at The Bible Society’s staff meeting on this question:
What is the place of the Bible in reaching an emerging generation?
All of my cards are on the table; I believe that the Bible has a place in reaching the emerging generation. I believe that Scripture still matters, carries weight, changes lives, breaks hard hearts, heals broken hearts. So I spoke to this group of engaged, passionate leaders with a few of these ideas in mind and share them here in hopes they can be helpful.
First of all; what is the emerging generation?
This is defined in many ways, but I’ve found the following framework most helpful.
The Silent Generation: Born 1928-1945 (78-95 years old)
Baby Boomers: Born 1946-1964 (59-77 years old)
Gen X: Born 1965-1980 (43-58 years old)
Millennials: Born 1981-1996 (27-42 years old)
Gen Z: Born 1997-2012 (11-26 years old)
Gen Alpha: Born early 2010s-2025 (0-about 10 years old)
Much of my focus is on Gen Z, primarily because it’s the one in which I’ve invested the most time, love, conversation, and resources. An excellent piece of work was just produced from friends at Barna in collaboration with World Vision and Alpha:
46 percent of teens in the United Kingdom— including 78 percent of Christian teens—say their household owns a Christian Bible. Three in five UK teens (59%) never use a Bible (defined as reading, listening, watching, praying with or using Bible text or content in any form), and 30 percent of Christian teens interact with scripture weekly.
BIBLE-ENGAGED teens (3%) hold a ‘high’ view of the Bible and read the Bibleseveral times a week. (A high view of the Bible refers to believing the Bible is ‘the word of God,’ ‘the inspired word of God with no errors’ or ‘the inspired word of God but with some errors.’)
BIBLE-OPEN teens (60%) either (1) hold a high view of the Bible and read the Bible less often than Bible-engaged teens (but more than three or four times a year) or (2) have a neutral view toward the Bible, meaning they don’t have a high or negative view of the Bible.
BIBLE UNENGAGED—All other teens (36%) In the United Kingdom, more than one in four Bible-open teens and one in three Bible-unengaged teens say ‘no one’ has taught them how to read the Bible.
This research is stellar, thorough, and will introduce you to some of the international trends of Bible engagement. It’s worth reading and sitting with the full report, and using it as a tool for listening. But what I find most striking is the compelling need for those who will sit with young people to read the Bible with them. It reminds me yet again of that moment in Acts 8:29-31 where:
The Holy Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and walk along beside the carriage.” Philip ran over and heard the man reading from the prophet Isaiah. Philip asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The man replied, “How can I, unless someone instructs me?”
-Acts 8:29-31 NLT
This lack of teaching often leads to a set of stigmas and stereotypes. “How can I understand or engage with the Bible unless a guide walks with me?” is still the question of many of our generation. In some ways, one of the greatest invitations for Bible engagement is simply to raise, develop, and train the leaders who are willing to go to each generation, ready to very simply sit and help them find life in the story of God. So what are some of the specific challenges to this?
I find helpful the way Carey Nieuwhof introduces 7 trends of this generation that our churches tend to ignore:
1. I watch who I want, when I want.
2. If you want me to follow you for a long time, I need to get to know you.
3. I’ve been trained to view myself as a brand.
4. Gen Z would prefer to avoid our parent’s generation on social media.
5. Diversity isn’t optional.
6. My mental health issues aren’t going away.
7. When I talk to my non-Christian friends about church, I usually need to lead with an apology.
So….
What is the place of the Bible in reaching an emerging generation?
Let’s flip the script on Carey’s 7 observations and look at these as 7 opportunities for Scripture to speak life over our generation.
The Bible is a place of true spiritual authority.
The Bible is the story of God’s intimate love and desire for relationship.
The Bible invites us to a brand / narrative that is wider than our own self-image.
The Bible welcomes us into the family of God.
The Bible is the message of wide diversity.
The Bible speaks to body, mind, and soul.
The Bible opens our hearts to generous love.
Not all of these messages are easy to receive, but I believe all of them are true.My good friend Isaac McNish says it more simply in the way Scripture accomplishes three things:
The Bible gives us a world to enter.
The Bible forms our identity.
The Bible gives us a language for our faith.
The longing of this generation’s heart is to find places of home. Scripture is still the bridge, the language, the vocabulary by which we find the message of Jesus. It carries the authority, life, hope, and truth of a God who loves us and gave us His Word as great gift. I still believe:
The word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.
-Hebrews 4:12, NLT
The Bible carries life. I celebrate the big projects (Bible Project, The Chosen, etc, that create a new onramp for engaging with the old story) and also the faithfulness of youth workers, pastors, and preachers to do this.
So let’s get deeply practical. I could mention a whole host of other problems: the lack of effective youth workers, the weariness of our cultural moment, moral failures in key leaders, climate change, Sudan, and will there be pieces from the cross of Jesus in the coronation ceremony? We could, but that would take us off topic. If Bible engagement does still matter as the place to bring life to this generation, why don’t we do it more boldly, freely, easily?
I’ve discovered several key challenges in Bible engagement:
Challenges to Bible Engagement with Gen-Z
Words in the Bible sound strange to the emerging generation.
Stories in the Bible feel foreign to the emerging generation.
Out of context Scriptures feel harmful to the emerging generation.
Most of the Bible feels challenging to the emerging generation.
These things mean that it can feel easier to just discard the awkward, messy, confusing passages and abandon Scripture and using the Bible altogether. They’ve seen the memes, the TikToks, the deconstruction, and they’re kind of done with it.
And yet. I could also tell the stories of hundreds of teenagers meeting every night of the week during lockdown for 4 hours of Zoom….to study the Bible. Their lives have been eternally changed. I can tell you the stories of the strange, unusual, beautiful ways that the Bible captured the heart of the national fencing champion at Creation Fest, teenagers in Cornwall, young adults in London, musicians in Brighton. Which leads me to:
Opportunities for Bible engagement with Gen-Z
Use the most ordinary translation / language possible.
Pray for prophetic parables with daily life. Why does this passage of Scripture matter?
Look for the wider narrative arc rather than the complexity of a story.
Recognise that this generation lacks the framework or building blocks of contextual Biblical understanding.
All of these ideas can only bring life when they are anchored in prayer and led by the Spirit. I’m always praying that friends in my life of every generation will open God’s Word and in it, find life.
Resources to Go Deeper
The Bible, Social Media, and Digital Culture by Pete Phillips
The Bible Reading of Young Evangelicals by Ruth Perrin
Bible Driven Youth Ministry by Tim Gough
The Connected Generation from The Barna Group
The Generation Myth by Bobby Duffy
Meet Generation Z by James Emery White
Listen to the conversation:
Wherever you are at in your own journey with Scripture, I pray that these ideas help you consider this question: does the Bible carry life? And if it does, how can I let it speak life to my story and my community>