A pastor I know was struggling with the fact that his church, like many others today, was getting older and smaller. There were more funerals than baptisms, more grandparents than teenagers.
His heart for God and his commitment to evangelism remained intact, but his frustration level ran high. He wanted to see the service full of energetic youth on fire for the Lord, but after 22 years at the church he had faithfully pastored, discouragement was setting in.
He had hired bright, passionate youth pastors, but youth group attendance was floundering. He had hosted many outreaches oriented toward younger audiences—from concerts to comedians, and even a Christian magician—but they weren’t attracting new people.
In a moment of authentic despair, he told me, “I just don’t know how to reach young people anymore. They don’t want to come to church.”
“That’s true,” I responded. “But you need to remember you can’t get them to put down their phones.”
My friend was confused. What did one have to do with the other?
He didn’t have a good understanding of who Gen Z and Gen Alpha students are, and that the way to their hearts is often through their phones. He didn’t appreciate what efforts would—and wouldn’t—attract and hold their attention. He didn’t know how best to connect with them, to inspire, teach, encourage and even start relationships with them. And most importantly, he didn’t see that to share Jesus and the eternal hope found in the gospel message, he would have to change his approach.
Go Where They Are.
I also had to learn this lesson. It was 2002, and I was serving as an evangelist and speaker at youth conferences. I began to realize that most of the people I was speaking to already agreed with me. They knew that God should be a focal point of their life, or at the very least, they had a biblical background. But those who were lost and spiritually disinterested weren’t attending Christian conferences.
After months of seeking the Lord in prayer, I went to my board and asked a question that changed the direction and impact of our ministry: “Why do we keep asking them to come where they don’t want to be when we know where they spend all of their time?”
We determined to keep our eyes focused on culture in order to see where we should take the amazing message of Jesus. Back then, the media obsession was aimed at traditional outlets, so we started placing ads on radio and TV stations.
Today that obsession is online and on the smartphone. The addiction to the small screen across our nation provides an exciting chance to interrupt the feeds of people who are lost, hurting and faith-less—including those who may not know you or want to attend your church. We have to go where they already are.
Meet Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2009) and Gen Alpha (born between 2010 and 2024) are different from previous generations in notable ways: The pain that some of them express is intense and loneliness is widespread, their relationships can be dysfunctional and heavily mediated by social media platforms, and their spiritual beliefs commonly are pieced together from various influencers and philosophies.
Things aren’t hopeless, however. I believe the more we understand them, the more God can use those insights to give us strategies, messages and tools to impact them for Christ.
Experts in marketing say that it is important that you know both your message and your audience. In the same way, when it comes to the gospel, I am convinced that the church knows our message, but we have been ignoring our audience.
If you want to make a difference with the young people who are in your community, don’t just study the outliers (the ones who actually come to your church)—pay attention to those you want to reach, but who aren’t walking through your doors. The more you understand them, the more effectively you will be able to connect them with the life-saving message of Jesus Christ.
To be successful in reaching Gen Z and Gen Alpha, you have to build a foundation of understanding surrounding these three questions:
1. Where Do They Spend Their Time?
We know young people are addicted to their phones. But did you know:
• The average person in the U.S. has 6.83 social media accounts.
• Gen Z youth spend six hours and 27 minutes staring at their phones every day.
• The average user opens their TikTok app 20 times every day. Assuming that they sleep eight hours a day, they are opening that app about 1.25 times every hour.
• In 2024, TikTok was the most downloaded app globally with 773 million downloads. As of February 2025, in the U.S., people ages 18–24 accounted for 30.7% of TikTok’s active users.
Other social media platforms also are popular, including Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat.
2. How Do Their Emotions Impact Them?
A study tracked 8th, 10th and 12th graders’ journeys from 1991 to 2023. It asked students how much they agreed with three quality-of-life questions: “I can’t do anything right,” “My life is not useful” and “I do not enjoy life.” In 1991, the negative responses ranged between 12% and 16%; however, in 2023, the negative responses were between 20% and 24%.
The younger generations are more overwhelmed than we even realize. They are dominated by negative emotions, which has them stuck in survival mode. Rather than thinking about eternity, they are just trying to figure out how to get by. As much as they enjoy spending time online, younger generations feel very lonely and long for genuine interaction.
However, the way they process their emotions is different. When older generations struggled with loss, grief or depression, they would go to pastors, counselors or other trusted adults for help. According to studies, today’s younger generations go to TikTok. Rather than talk to someone who can look them in the eye, give them a hug, and speak truth to them, they go to an app to either be distracted by entertainment or to find someone to encourage them in their journey. They relish the anonymity and the ability to avoid judgment.
Times have changed so much that young people are even turning to AI to counsel them. Recently, one of my daughters said that her friends are going to ChatGPT and telling it their problems in order to get advice.
3. What Are Their Spiritual Beliefs?
Between 2013 and 2023 the percentage of 18- to 29-year-olds who identify as religiously unaffiliated jumped from 32% to 36%, while around 60% of Gen Z people say they believe in a higher power. According to Barna Group’s Gen Z: Vol. 3, regardless of their religious beliefs, members of Gen Z participate in various faith practices, including prayer. Nearly 2 in 3 (64%) reported having prayed within the last seven days.
Pew Research says only 45% of Gen Z people in the U.S. identify as Christian, a 10% decline from a previous 2014 survey. Compare that to more than half of millennials and a little over 70% of Gen X respondents identified as Christian.
On the other hand, Springtide Research Institute reports that a majority of 13-year-olds identify as Christian. When asked, “Which of the following religions, traditions or worldviews do you most identify with?” 66% of respondents chose “Christian.” Twenty-two percent identify as nonreligious (“nothing in particular,” “agnostic,” “spiritual but not religious” or “atheist”). Of the 66% of 13-year-olds who identify as “Christian,” half identify as “just Christian” while the remainder identify as Catholic (28%), Protestant (20%), Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (2%) and “Orthodox” (0.4%).
And yet, as it pertains to Jesus, many would echo what a young woman recently told me: “I believe in God. I just don’t think he can help me with my fear, and he can’t heal my broken heart. I have to do that on my own.” She, like many others, doesn’t believe that God is either powerful enough or caring enough to help. He is either impotent or unloving.
We need to remind young people that God is relevant. And, he becomes relevant the moment he connects with their struggle, their pain and their priorities.
Craft a Strategy.
God has allowed some churches to be successful in reaching Gen Z and Gen Alpha. There are pockets where hundreds and even thousands of young people gather because they sense God calling, drawing them in and even sending them out.
Movements that are seeing success do not love God any more than those churches that are struggling to attract young people. Ministers who are experiencing greater numbers are not more passionate, more focused or more gifted than those who are having a hard time pulling in a crowd. They just happen to be in the right place, at the right time, and God has smiled on them in this particular season. If you are serving in a church that has developed effective ways to reach the next generation, be grateful, remain humble and keep your heart even more in tune with God.
However, if you find yourself, like my pastor friend, upset that your efforts aren’t having the impact that you are praying for, you should consider different ways to communicate with these generations that are significantly different than the ones that have come before.
Once you understand who Gen Z and Gen Alpha are and where they spend their time, you can craft a strategy for reaching them online. Here are a few questions I would encourage you to ask yourself and your team as you develop and strengthen your church’s digital outreach plans.
Does our mission and our execution line up?
Sometimes what people say is not necessarily what they do. If you say that you want to rescue the younger generations with the gospel message but are content to sit back and talk only to churchgoers, then your mission and your execution are not in sync.
“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5). I am convinced that God will give us the strategies we need, and if we ask, he will lead. Spend time in prayer concerning your mission and how you are to go about it.
How can we find young people when they are not looking for us?
As a young youth pastor, I could go to the mall or the arcade to have conversations with youth. While you can still find some teens in physical locations, if you want to reach the masses, you need to think digitally.
On what platforms are youth spending their time? Discord, an app started by gamers, is a new community platform that older people may be unaware of but hundreds of millions of young people worldwide are using daily. Churches need to pay attention to emerging platform trends and figure out how to have a presence. Does someone on your team or a volunteer have the pulse of what is new and coming next for social media?
How can we deal with young people’s short attention span?
While a 2015 article claimed Gen Z only had an attention span of eight seconds, experts have proven this data as faulty. However, it is true Gen Z and Gen Alpha have shorter attention spans than older generations. They are digital natives used to being on multiple screens at one time. How can the church get—and keep—their attention as they scroll through their feeds?
The words and images we choose to use will take some thought and planning. Learning to communicate what we want to say in better and quicker ways is difficult, but it can have an impact. Here are some ideas to try:
• Short-form videos. “7 Top Tips for Making TikTok Videos,” created by TikTok, recommends that in-feed advertising videos only be 21–34 seconds long. Make your messaging shorter rather than longer.
• Authenticity. Because younger generations look for and value honesty, create messaging that is open and authentic.
• Unpolished content. You don’t need a big budget and a glossy finish to your communications. Lo-fi content is often more effective with youth because it looks more real.
• Storytelling. Having someone share a personal, honest story can be a useful tool to reach this audience.
As you come up with different options, show them to some young people to get their reactions and input. After all, they are your target audience.
How can we create dialogue opportunities with youth?
I grew up thinking that I just needed to say what I wanted to say about the gospel, and listeners would be receptive. I have since learned that young people are more likely to listen to me if I take the time to listen to them. They are tired of the monologue they perceive coming from the church, but they are open to having a conversation. Look into ways you can create a safe environment for them to ask questions and express doubts without fearing judgment.
Who can we learn from?
This may sound strange, but our team determined that we were going to learn from anyone who was effectively communicating a message with our audience—even if it was the wrong message. So, we researched who was doing it well, and learned to take those principles and apply them to the gospel message. You can study what influencers on which platforms have large followings and learn how they are going about it.
Send Workers Into the Harvest.
In the Gospel of Matthew, it is clear that the harvest is ripe. “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his field’” (Matt. 9:36–38).
The young people in your community may not want to go to church, but they need the hope and answers Jesus offers. We need to take the captivating story of his love, sacrifice and gospel plan to them. Because Gen Z and Gen Alpha are struggling to find firm footing, they are open to considering and responding to the claims of Christ, but we must pursue them. And because they won’t put down their phones, we have access to them if we allow God to direct us along the way.
We cannot wait for them to come to us; they need us to come to them.
