UU Youth Ministry for the Anxious Generation

UU Youth Ministry for the Anxious Generation

By Rev. Dayna Edwards

Let me tell you about Sophie. 

I met Sophie last week at a roadside vegetable stand in Delaware. When I walked up, she was battling bees while culling the rotten and over-ripe cantaloupe. Petite, she looked young enough to remind me of my own 18 year old daughter. She was wearing cut off jeans and a green University of Delaware t-shirt, and she was throwing those cantaloupe over the fence into the woods like she was the boss of this place. I smiled and said hello.

She told me she was running a special. Cantaloupe was only a dollar today. So I put three in the car and continued to browse. Sophie continued her work on the cantaloupe for a while and then she started sharing with me about the various produce she sells and where she gets it from. She was saying things like, “I only buy from local growers. I get the corn from Dover, and the peaches are fresh from a farm in Milford.” I listened politely, trying to understand how this very young person was running this produce stand - by herself. She told me, “I can’t always be here, but my stand is always open, so if you stop by and I’m not here, remember to bring cash and you can put it right in this box.” 

In my head, I was thinking, “my stand,” how is it possible this is her stand?!? I just smiled and nodded.

Sophie, is part of Gen Z, people who were born between 1997 and 2012 (give or take). While it is impossible to generalize any vast group of people, there are some experiences that this group has shared that has shaped them in various ways. 

The authors of Faith Beyond Youth Group state that “ministry that yields a consequential faith - starts by understanding the realities of today’s young people. We’ve distilled what we’ve learned into an empathetic summary: Gen Z is anxious, adaptive, and diverse.” (Bradbury et. al, 2023, p. 34)

In order to understand GenZ, I’m going to have to talk about some hard things like global pandemics and gun violence. If, as Connie Goodbread says, faith formation is all we do, and if the congregation is the curriculum, now is a moment for us to embody the best of what comes from being in a faith community together. And you can also take care of yourself, feel free to stop reading for a moment. We are here for each other. We can talk about hard things together. We can move through this conversation together and lean on each other to get to the otherside. 

Gen Z’s parents are GenXer or “Elder Millennials”. Their parents grew up skeptical of institutions and have passed on that skepticism. Their parents grew up with less adult supervision than was maybe healthy, and so maybe their parents over compensated by making sure their kids were always monitored and scheduled. (Haidt, 2024)

Here come the hard parts:

Lockdown drills, and actual lockdowns, are a normal part of a GenZ’s life. The children who were massacred at Sandy Hook would have been graduating from high school this year. As a generation they have watched their peers be victimized by mass shootings and gun violence, and they have watched as politicians have done nothing tangible to actually keep them safe. That feeling of helplessness and the political ambivalence for their lives and safety are a part of their collective memory. 

To that collective memory we add the pandemic. As the authors of Faith Beyond Youth Group point out, “For the next decade, every student in your ministry will be a pandemic impacted kid.” (Bradbury, 2023, p. 42) My own, now 7 year old, completed pre-k 3 via zoom. I call him my feral pandemic kid. The first time I brought him back to our faith community, and our senior minister, Abhi said, “Hello, Teddy,” in his usual pleasant and attentive way. My kid looked down - avoiding eye contact, and literally growled at him. I realized then, Teddy had missed some basic social skills that neurotypical people, like Teddy, usually pick up with practice in daily interactions. The authors of Faith Beyond youth group, go on to point out that “it’s hard to tell how the kids who missed kindergarten in 2020 will still be affected when they hit your high school youth group in 2029.” (ibid, 42) And maybe more importantly, in those intervening years, let’s give them some grace as they navigate coffee hour, in person worship and Sunday school classes. 

Gen Z is the first generation to grow up with smartphones as an integral part of their childhood formation. In some ways the development of unmonitored use of smartphones is problematic. According to social scientist, Jonathan Haidt, depression has increased in girls 145% since 2010 and in boys 161%. There has also been a 135% increase in clinical anxiety among 18-25 year olds since 2010. (Haidt, 2024, p. 24) These are more than statistics, these are stories of people sitting next to each other in worship and in line with you at the grocery store. 

As a youth pastor and a parent, I have been on the front lines of this mental health crisis. Parents share stories about how their kids can’t have an in person conversation without melting into a ball of tears. Other parents share that their kid freezes up if they have to place an order at the counter of a fast food restaurant instead of ordering online. 

As I tried to figure out how to effectively run a youth program post pandemic, I had an epiphany of sorts. These over scheduled, over stressed teens didn’t need a youth program, they needed a youth minister. More importantly they needed a faith community that was invested in *MINISTRY* to and with youth. The shift we made at Cedar Lane was subtle but noticeable. 

Cedar Laners bought into that shift: 

• by volunteering to engage with youth; we went from having one youth coordinator who planned and was present at all events, to having 4 regular Sunday morning volunteers for our high school group and other volunteers who help with trips, 

• by pledging so that some ministerial and staff time could be spent ministering to and with youth, 

• by opening up new ways for youth to participate in our community, like the Youth Democracy Summit initiated by a Cedar Lane member who has no youth in the program but who cares about the future of our democracy. This event reached 20 youth in the community.  

• by welcoming both youth who grew up in this congregation and youth who might be encountering us for the first time, 

• by talking to youth who might choose to stay in the service and sit next to them,

• by curating and donating to a youth focused banned book library, 

• by purchasing a donut from the youth on a Sunday after worship,

• And many other small and un-noticed actions.

Together, by ministering to and with Gen Z, we grew our youth group from three youth, in 2021 to 20 youth registered and over 50 youth from our larger community engaging with us through social justice service projects in the last year. 

This deep and meaningful ministry has helped me affirm what they say in Faith Beyond Youth Group. Yes, Gen Z is anxious, AND they are incredibly adaptable, and diverse. I would add creativity to their list of attributes. 

I had the honor and privilege of ministering to and with the young people at the George Washington University encampment last spring. These Gen Zers amazed, inspired, and humbled me. They came of age on social media watching previous generations organize the #metoo movement and #blacklivesmatter and they used what they learned and amplified it earnestly. You will never see this in the mainstream media, but these young people were having teach-ins and reading scholarly articles about the history of Israel and Palestine while sitting on the grass under a tree in the middle of the day - this was not required reading for class, but reading they required of themselves. They were incredibly diverse too, with Jewish and Muslim and Christian and Hindu and Buddhist students learning, protesting, and praying together. They were clear with non-students how we could support them and exactly what they needed and what they didn’t need and when. They spoke with a clarity of conviction I never saw in my generation. And they continue to speak truth to power as the new semester begins. 

Last spring I took 10 youth to Boston with two other adult chaperones, and I learned so much from them as we traversed Boston and Salem. The main thing that was confirmed for me is that Gen Z is not a monolithic group. In my experience on that trip, they used their phones as resources for knowledge and connection, the way other generations would use an encyclopedia, a road map, and a phone book. But they were not glued to their phones. They were eager to learn and engage with “in real life” experiences and brought joy and laughter to the playful experiences and somber respect to the more solemn experiences. Their insight and interest in the various people and movements we studied was contagious. 

Then there are young people like Sophie, our friend from the produce stand in Delaware. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit I was a bit flummoxed by the way she moved around the produce stand with a level of care and responsibility that went beyond what I expected from a young person finishing up their summer job, which is what I had wrongly assumed she was. But I was nosy and she was talkative, so after she listed off all the local places she buys produce, I shyly asked. “Is this a family owned business?” “Nope,” she responded. “I own this. I started when I was 18, 4 years ago to help pay for school. I want to be a doctor of physical therapy. So I have two more years.” Then she matter of factly threw another rotten cantaloupe into the woods. I had made assumptions about Sophie based on my expectations of what young people “should” be doing. Which is embarrassing for me as someone who spends so much time working with young people. What Gen Z has taught me, is there is no “should” for their generation. They are going to take whatever late-stage capitalism throws at them and they are going to make it work for them in ways previous generations have never even considered. 

So where does faith fit into the lives of Gen Z. Gen Z, I’m going to speak directly to you for a second. You, need faith communities more than you know. Even atheist author Jonathan Haidt sees religious community as the antidote for Gen Z’s anxiety and depression. He says, “we could create healthier environments for ourselves and our children if we could reconnect with the rhythms of the calendar and our communities. This might include taking part in regular religious services or joining other groups organized for a moral, charitable, or spiritual purpose.”(The Anxious Generation, 204) So, Gen Z, don’t reject religion and faith institutions out of hand. Do what you do best, adapt the best of what faith institutions have to offer to fit what you and your peers need. 

For the rest of us, let’s consider as a denomination how we might move from a youth program model to a youth ministry model. How can we keep the best of what youth groups have to offer and also minister beyond youth groups. Your congregation doesn’t need a fancy dedicated youth room. In fact we know from research that those slick youth rooms did not create adults who value the institutions of religion. (Sticky Faith,Powell, et. al) We need to make space for youth to be a part of the everyday life of our congregation, and especially on Sunday mornings. The Faith Beyond Youth Group authors offer a compass to guide youth ministry. On this compass are five directions: “cultivate trust, model faith, teach for transformation, practice together, and make meaning.” Embracing a youth ministry that embodies these five directions can bring Gen Z and other generations into healthy relationships with each other that will be mutually transformative. What this compass looks like “on the ground” is going to be different congregation to congregation and year to year. That is the messy, complex, and fun work we get to do together. 

Imagine increasing the moments we get a glimpse of Beloved Community that is both multi-cultural and multi-generational. What a wonderful world THAT would be. 

Bibliography

Bradbury, J., Powell, K., & Griffin, B. M. (2023). Faith Beyond Youth Group (1st ed.). Baker Books.

Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin Press.

Powell, K. E., & Clark, C. (2011). Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith In Your Kids (1st ed.). Zondervant.