Breaking Down the Walls Between Age Groups
For years, churches have been built on a well-meaning strategy: dividing the community into specific age groups to meet their unique needs. It’s the norm in most churches — separate ministries for children, youth, young adults, seniors. It seemed logical and even beneficial at the time. After all, who better to relate to a teenager than another teenager? And wouldn’t seniors rather be with people who understand their stage of life? But over time, these well-intentioned efforts to focus on particular age groups have built something unintended: age silos.
Voices on Gen-Z and the Church
Recently, we completed our second Capstone project with some students who attend a Christian University. Their project was to assess the spiritual needs of Gen Z (those born between 1996 and 2010). We specifically asked these Gen Z students to do this work because they often don’t get a chance to research (speak for) themselves but lots of research is done on this particular generation.