New Research about Gen Z and Faith

Today we're going to talk about Gen Z and some research that was done by Springtide Research Institute about how we, as student ministers, can best minister to Gen Z right now. Are you ready? Because it's time.

You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network.

Hey heroes, my name is Tom Pounder and this is the Church Digital Sidekick podcast. This is a podcast where I bring on ministry leaders and we talk about how you can do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world. And today I've got a new guest and someone I'm really excited about. Actually, he might actually be the first doctor I've ever interviewed on the podcast, but his name is Dr. Josh Packard. And again, he works for the Springtide Research Institute. And they focus primarily on Generation Z. And all the time they're doing research, they're interviewing tons of people in Generation Z, and they just came out with some new statistics about how Gen Z has responded to faith and faith leaders over the pandemic, over the past two years. And so I brought on Dr. Josh Packer to come on and share with me about what their research showed and how churches can respond. What can we do as church leaders to help minister better to Gen Z? Because let's just be honest, there are a few stats on here that I was just, my mind was blown away. So I'm really excited to have Josh on. But before we get into the interview, I do want to highlight The Church Digital. At The Church Digital, we've got tons of different blogs, podcasts, and coachings, and cohorts as well, that can encourage you in your online ministry. And so if you've never checked out thechurch.digital, go there now. And again, we've got weekly blogs, podcasts, and tons of cohorts and coaching that are happening right now that encourage you in digital ministry, digital ministry, and metaverse ministry. So check out, again, thechurch.digital. All right. So without any further ado, let's get into the conversation with Dr. Josh Packard right now. All right, with me right now is Dr. Josh Packard, and we got connected. And well, actually, Josh, why don't you just share with everyone real quick who you are, and then we can talk about your research.

Yeah, sure. I'm the executive director of Springtide, as you mentioned. And Springtide is a relatively new research institute. We're just going into the third year. our job is really to pay attention to and understand how 13 to 25 year olds make meaning engage with religion understand god who's with them in those conversations when they have them or not with them you know what do they need as we say at springtide it's uh we want to help those who care about young people to care better and and maybe the most important thing to know aside from that about the way we do our research is is that we we um all of our research is nationally representative uh i was a professor for a long time i care a lot about data but also we inform um all of our research with the voices of young people throughout so we've got an advisory board of young people interns writers and residents uh fellows that are all in that gen z age group and and we you know are constantly trying to pay attention to them so that we can do stuff that's not just interesting but actually useful

Yeah. Well, I'm excited about this because, again, my podcast focuses on young people and also focus on digital. And you guys just did a recent research about two years after the pandemic and you focus on Gen Z. So what was your research about that you focused on?

So we've actually done this now three times, right? In the opening weeks of the pandemic in March of 2020, we sent out a survey just immediately like, oh, let's try and capture something. And then we came back a year later and thought this will be the end of it. Now we'll have year one and two to compare. And it was like, oh, this year is like we had to go back. because we're still doing this yeah um and and we were mostly just interested in some very basic questions of like how how are young people's faith and religious and spiritual lives being impacted by this uh pandemic um we obviously over the course of now 30 000 surveys in the last three years uh we've asked a lot of questions about their you know their mental health and all kinds of other things um and the results have been pretty astonishing actually you know we found we've learned a lot about gen z in the pandemic just the last few years

yeah well again uh the the the head of media and public relationships public relations with springdale actually reached out to me and what really caught my eye were these findings that you came about you you shared with me five different findings and i want to focus on a few of these that i thought were really interesting and i think it's something that family ministry student ministry and children's ministry people are really still grappling with right now so what i want to do is i'm going to just highlight a few of your findings uh and then uh i want to talk about hey dig a little bit deeper into this and then maybe again what what would you recommend for uh family ministry student ministry children's ministry people to do based on this information so okay so then the last part is that they'll do whatever i say is that exactly right okay great yeah yeah you're good everybody do whatever josh says So, okay, so this was an interesting thing. These were two different stats that you showed, but that you said, or you guys found, this is what you found from your surveys, is that more young people told you all that their faith became stronger during the pandemic than weaker. It was a 30% to 18%. uh fact which i think was great that they they got grow but here was the thing that really stood out to me though that um a quarter of the young people 26 said that their relationship with faith leaders actually became weaker during the pandemic i just find that fascinating their group they grew in their faith yet their relationship with faith leaders became less talk to me a little bit about that

Well, I think there's something to the old saying, there's no atheist in a foxhole. And in the last two years of being in a pandemic, it's a little bit like a foxhole. At a time when you're trying to make sense of the world, one thing that religion offers you in all of its various expressions is at least the implicit promise that the world is able to be made sense of, that it's possible even. And so we saw young people turning to faith to try and do that. Now, look, we asked this other question too. We asked them, how many of you, who reached out to you personally to check on you during a pandemic? And only 10% of young people said that a faith leader had reached out to them. This was astonishingly, yes, like way lower than we thought. And it's like, Tom, I've given dozens and dozens of talks to lots of, you know, campus ministers, youth ministers, and pastors, and we're not dealing with a deficit of care. I don't think you can read that number and come away with, or should read that number and come away with a conclusion that like pastors don't care enough. we just don't have systems that do reach out relationship-based ministry very well and so when the pandemic forced us into that as our primary or only available option in many cases there are a lot of places that just didn't know how to do it when they couldn't gather young people on site at their building or at their campus ministry or at a coffee shop they they really just didn't know how to do anything um and and young people suffered for that i think that's why you see that relationship number and that actually i'm glad you picked up on it because it's really concerning it's what we know from the social sciences and this is where springtide when we make recommendations we're trying to leverage psychology sociology you know communication studies child development stuff so that you all can bring your your best theology to that framework right yeah and what we know is that people can people can sustain an activity for a while by themselves but people can't sustain really complex things alone for very long. And institutions and the leaders in those institutions are vital for making sure that happens. And this is, I think, where we're at with religion and young people. So while I'm heartened, as you are, that lots of young people's faith got stronger, I'm concerned, though, for the future that we've eroded many of the structures that will help them carry that into the future if we don't respond in some pretty big ways.

So how do you think, this is fascinating because again, I grew up, I started doing youth ministry back in 1997 as a staffer. And I was taught very much that we have to do relational ministry. We have to go where kids are, hang with them, be there. However, what happened over time is that we became more programmatic centered ministry. And again, when you can't gather because of a pandemic, the programs go away. So again, now we're getting back. The pandemic is still here. But the reality is, I feel like the now that we can be back in person, we're going back to programs and we're not focusing much. We're telling kids, hey, come to us again, come to us again, come to us. What would you suggest for churches to do? How could they respond better now? Is it more teaching better in college when they're going through Bible school or something? Or what would you recommend?

Well, it's going to be really hard to move away from those programs. And here's why. There's been a lack of imagination and innovation about how to do relational ministry, especially at scale. And we need more of that. And it's not like the programs aren't working. If you talk to youth ministers, mostly what I hear is that It's not that nobody shows up to my program. It's not that we get zero engagement. It's that my staff has shrunk from five to three to two, that my budget has gotten cut in half because there's not as many people coming. I have to work twice as hard to get half as many people to show up. And when you put those two things together, like I can't imagine an alternative that's very successful. And also this isn't completely broken. It means that I just keep doing the thing that I at least know how to execute, even if I'm doing it with less results. And so we have to sort of get past that. What we see in all of our data, 30,000 surveys, 350 in-depth interviews with young people. There's nothing that is going to reverse this trend in the short term or even down the line towards the institutional disengagement. Trust for institutions is really low, but trust for individuals is really high when individuals show up in really important ways in young people's lives, when they're transparent, when they listen to them. you know when they accompany them for a long period of time it's not transactional you know we wrote about all this in the state of religion and young people a couple of years ago but how to do relationships well in ways that impact young people and those trust levels are just like into the 90th percentile when we can do that where they rate churches they you know young people on a scale of one to ten they rate uh religious institutions at somewhere around like a 4.7 on the trust level like not high right um they don't rank anything high by the way and neither do their parents So it's not surprising. But I think it calls for us really to lean into those and to get really innovative, really track every engagement with every kid. Where are we trying to move them? What's going on in this conversation? We're not just hanging out with kids. We're hanging out with purpose. What are we learning about them? How are we following through? And on and on. We've got to get really sophisticated about it.

Well, and I would imagine that if, again, you're talking to different church leaders and whatnot, I bet you church leaders are tired too. I mean, like you said, their staff has gone from five to three to one. And with every staff that leaves, there's more responsibility that goes on the people that remained. but i love your your thought of listen relationships work i mean these kids are not interested in institutions they're they're weary of it i mean listen i've got children of my own and i i see that i see that with them and their friends but it's the relationships that matter but i also know that too like they've probably seen a lot of turnover lately too with those relational leaders that they do trust those youth leaders who ended up quitting because they couldn't and they you know the great resignation happened so is there anything else that churches can do to maybe recruit differently or to approach this differently so they can be more relational

Yeah, I think because of this lack of innovation that I mentioned, we've often defaulted into the only way to do relational ministry is that you, Tom, hold the entirety of a relationship with a young person with you, Tom, in your head, right? Like, and that's it. And so if you leave, that relationship is broken. and we have to get out of that right like we have to start capturing and systematizing those relationships in ways that it can extend and live beyond you and young people actually really respect that when i was a professor i used to take notes when we do advising time um and then i would pull the notes out i would ask my students they were 19 20 years old to be like what do you want to be when you grow up just as a way to start that conversation and i would i would write it down and i would follow up and i would ask them And I thought it was going to be, it was really just a safety mechanism for me because I couldn't keep track of that many students, you know, in my head, along with all, you know, I'd see them twice a semester in my office, but that was it. And then, you know, had a million other things to do. And what I found was like, at first I would try and like hide it that I was taking notes or try and do it real quick right after, because I thought they would see it as artificial, right? And actually what I found out later is that they saw me as taking so much time and care to... track those things and when sometimes they would transfer to another advisor because that you know another professor they would you know transfer majors or another professor would have more in line with their interests and so i would send all those notes over and what i realized what the students would come back and say to me is like i can't believe that you took all those notes about me and it's so like you cared enough to then follow through with that So when we think about doing relationships that way, yes, there's going to be turnover. I mean, youth ministry jobs, look, they're often entry level, let's be real. And they don't pay that much typically. And there's often not a lot of advancement. So yeah, there's going to be turnover. Any job structure that way is going to have it. But we can't let relationships with young people be the sort of casualty of that kind of job. And so we've got to, you know, when I say we have to track these things, I mean, literally, we should be tracking these things so that it doesn't just walk away when Tom walks out the door, that other people can step in or that we can mobilize volunteers. You know, think about this. If you're a volunteer, somebody said this to me the other day, I bet you would rather show up if I told you, hey, so-and-so's got a school concert next Thursday. They're really worried about their solo. Can you go and offer encouragement? Like, I'm there for that all day, right? As opposed to the normal volunteer thing, which is like... you shepherd this young person forever thank you like yeah yeah right you know what i mean but we can't do that if we're not like if we're not just like really really keeping track of their lives

Yeah, I think that's right on. You're definitely speaking my language. I remember this was a positive and a negative all at the same time. But I remember at a young age, when I was first starting out in middle school ministry, there was a girl who I said, hey, her name was Tiffany. And I was like, hey, Tiffany, how are you? And she's like, wait, you remember my name?

Yeah, it's huge.

And I'm like, yeah, who can't remember Tiffany? And then I got her last name wrong. But the reality was I remember her first name and she was just so impressed that I remembered it. I should have just left it at that. But the simple fact is that these kids do pay attention to that kind of stuff. They do. And they want to see that you care and that you show up. um and i what i like to tell uh the leaders that were working together with me is that consistency matters you don't have to be at everything but the more consistent you are the more that they're going to say i can trust this person and i can share my life with them and then again you can speak biblical truth the the reality is that you're going to have a bigger impact in those relational times than you ever would in a programmatic time yeah so that's why what we've tried to encourage is really smaller groups we do home groups now because of the pandemic we've kind of decentralized our student ministry so it's not just one centered thing so that if another pandemic happens that shuts everything down we're not going to be completely incapable of doing ministry so yeah it's there's a really interesting thing that happens you know

cognitively about the ways that we close gaps in information. When we don't understand something and there's a gap between what we know and what we're seeing actually play out in the world, we don't know how to get from here to there, we tend to fill in that gap by using the most approximate thing that we've ever experienced. If you're driving around St. Louis and you're from, say, Dallas, you're going to use your experience of driving around Dallas to help you try and drive around St. Louis. Usually, this stuff works pretty well. what happens in these weird places where like your youth minister and because you are so on fire uh you know the christian context for god and the gospel and all these things and so you then use your context of like i remember what it was like when i was a youth to try and understand and engage with today's young people but we forget that the very fact that you went to become a youth minister means that you're a weirdo right and the whole like in the whole realm of like young people your experience and how like how hungry you were for learning about god is just not representative if it were you know if you were normal you wouldn't have become a youth minister you'd have done something else it's the same in my i'm a sociologist it's hard to get graduate students that you're training to understand that like no undergraduate cares as much about sociology as you cared about sociology that's why you're here in graduate school right and so when when we what largely what we've done in youth ministry is we've taken this like knowledge transfer approach this idea that like knowledge about god and the gospel and the bible and jesus is in short supply i have it i'm going to give it to you but what we found at springtime is that when you start asking and digging in with young people generally they'll tell you like i either know or have access to everything i want to know about god um now the you know and they will say even i know everything i need to know about god they're not they're not right probably like they probably do need to know more about but they feel that way but when you ask them about experiences of the divine when you're like what about grace and forgiveness like where you felt awe and wonder these things are incredibly in short supply and so fostering more of those kinds of experiences where they get to like you know they actually get to be in touch with what it means to be loved unconditionally and all of that for them happens through relationships more like that's never going to happen programmatically for gen z yeah

We could go really far down the rabbit hole on this about online relationships. Because again, these kids center most of their lives on their smartphones and online stuff. We won't do that. I might have to bring you back just to talk about online relationships and how that developed. But you did have actually another point in your research finding. And I think this is something a lot of student ministers experience. But just the percentage really just shocked me and wowed me. And I want to talk to you a little bit about this, but one of your other findings was that virtual religious gatherings are what young people least want to keep after pandemic. 6% said this. So talk to me a little bit about that because, again, when we first started the pandemic, we were forced to do online not only. Everything shut down. You couldn't meet in person. And that's what happened to do. But what I experienced was that the more we did it, the less kids came. And this in particularly within the high school age, we were able to keep some of the middle school kids around a little bit longer. But talk to me about that and, again, what churches can do with that.

Well, the one caveat I'll make before we even start here is that there's a difference between doing online and doing online well. And I do think we can see a lot of success in places that are doing online well. However, I'm not sure that we've really fully cracked that code yet. So I think most of what young people are responding to here is like, do you want to carry forward the online experiences you've had so far, most of which have not been very good or very smart? very nuanced or sophisticated it you know it's no blame i mean everybody's scrambling to try and you know just to get something And you're right. Not only is it the thing that they least want to carry forward, because there are a whole bunch of stuff that came out of the pandemic that they do want to carry forward. Online worship just wasn't one of them. We also asked a host of questions about whether they ever think that a fully online religious experience could meet their needs. And a surprising amount of them say no. Like over 60% say no, 70% or something crazy.

Wow.

There is room for online. I don't think that there's a fully analog world that's going to exist for religious expression for young folks. We have to be thinking about creative ways to engage digitally. But we shouldn't get carried away by thinking about just because they're on social all the time. They're on their phones all the time. that they either A, that that's their preferred state of being, because it is not, it's often just what they perceive as the only option for engagement, or B, that they can do spiritual and religious things there, because right now they're finding that it can scratch some of that itch, but they are not convinced that it can be the whole thing.

That's really interesting. I'm glad you pointed that out because, again, I look at this and say, wow, these kids will spend hours watching a guy play video games online, and yet they can't sit for 30 minutes and have a Bible study together or something like that. But again, I like what you just said. I just don't think we've cracked the code of how to do it well. And again, the way that we have tried it, Well, for many of us, this was our first go at virtual. And so version 1.0 can look a lot different than version 5.0 down the road.

And better.

Yeah, that's right. Or that number's going to go from six to even less than that.

Well, you know what's weird is that they won't spend hours watching a person play video games. Because if you watch a young person doing that thing, I have a 12-year-old. He does this. He will sit on YouTube. He'll sit there and watch somebody play Minecraft. It's the most mind-boggling thing to me ever. but he's not just doing that he's also playing minecraft while he's watching that he's he's like participating and consuming and it's all being done in community because he's on discord with three other friends who are doing the exact same thing or versions of it and you know it's there's a lot more going on there than just making a choice to do this instead of a bible study and when you think like well what's the what's the most uh what is the thing that is most like what i just described my son doing in the religious world like i can't think of anything that's like that like i guess like live streaming a sermon while you're making food with your friends and like having i don't even know you know like it's i can't even get there

I wonder if that's one of the values of a platform like Twitch, because a lot of Twitch, a lot of people recognize it as a gaming platform. There's a lot of people on there just chatting and just doing stuff.

That is mostly what my son is doing on Discord. Watching somebody do a run through a Minecraft level is the ostensible reason for getting together. But what is actually happening is the... And when he's screwed up or done something he shouldn't do and we take his video games away, he still wants to be on Discord with his friends chatting and talking.

Okay, say that again, that the Minecraft is the reason for them to get together.

Yeah, it's like what gives them, they're like, oh, we're going to get together and watch this. But really the thing that they deeply care is the community and the relationships. In that case, it's peers, but I'll tell you, it's not always. We're lucky enough to have friends who have invested in our kid's life, and it's the same. He'll dig into those conversations too.

Okay. You just had an aha moment for me. And I think that's awesome because I've been thinking for my ministry, because I do online ministry and student ministry is what, what is it? How can I utilize Twitch? How can I utilize discord? And I I'm, I'm a 47 year old guy. I mean, So it's like, I don't quite get this. I get it, but I don't get it. But you just gave me an aha moment. And I'm completely fascinated now as I'm trying to figure out what can we do? Because again, it's the one thing that gets them together, but they want the community and the chatting back and forth. I think that's really powerful.

Can I get, let me tell, let me give you one really cool example I heard of people during the pandemic. So obviously mission trips canceled, right? But, but the doing of the mission trip is only part of the value there it's also that you're instilling the value of service and you're communicating and in this case a Christian value of like we need to be loving other people and serving them. and so i heard of a ministry that was playing they they they're they're ministers instead of going on a mission trip they were already playing video games often with their kids headsets you know chatting the whole time or playing fortnite and what they would do is they would organize these missions to help somebody with you know really low scores in fortnite win and get all these resources and that was their like mission that was the way they would instill the value of service like they would just find this person who was playing alone and then they would get what you can't really win it's hard to win fortnite if you're playing alone so they would just get together and you know give everything to that random stranger and as just a random act of kindness and you know is it changing the world no it's not it's not digging a well in africa like let's be clear yeah um but you're still getting across that same point and you're doing it together and you're doing it with a trusted adult and you know

Again, that's what I love about online is it provides us with opportunities, but we have to figure out is how can you utilize that best where again, like Gen Z is going to do it. It's so funny. We spent so long on millennials and now we're focused all on Gen Z and it's come up quick.

Yeah, it is right here. And at Springtide, we'll always research those 13 to 25 year olds. And right now that is Gen Z as they age, though, we'll stay here because after this, there's another one coming.

there is there's definitely another one coming well josh this has been awesome i could talk to you for hours on this and which means i have to kind of bring you back for another podcast happy to do it and we can talk about this but again just to reiterate you're with springtide research institute uh where how can people can connect with you if they got questions they want to follow up with you what what would you say yeah we'd love to hear from people we're at springtideresearch.org

We have our entire mental health series that's going on right now. You can see it really easily from our shop page or from the menu or wherever you're clicking in. You can see all of our research there. A lot of it's free. We try and raise as much money as we can to make those things as free as possible. But if you were interested in connecting with me directly, I'm on Twitter, Dr. Josh Packard on Twitter.

Wait, please tell me Twitter is your favorite social platform.

Oh yeah, because I'm 44 years old. So yes.

i'm right in the demographic i love it twitter's my favorite i i mean i've made so many so i'm going to start following you today so that's great um fantastic um but uh yeah this is this has been awesome and i'm glad you mentioned the mental health because that was some other research that you found and i think we really need to talk about that a little bit more too with gen z it'll be the focus of our every fall we do the state of religion and young people and this year's focus the state of religion young people will be all about mental health and what religious leaders need to know Oh, great. Then we're definitely talking about that then. So that would be great to unpack that with you. Well, Josh, it was great having you, meeting you and having you on the podcast. So I look forward to more conversations. So thanks.

Yeah, wonderful. Thanks so much.

OK, so what did you think? Again, I just highlighted basically three stats in the interview, but I would really encourage you to go to their website, get more research. and get their findings and see how you can grow as a student ministry or actually as a church as you try to reach Generation Z. Generation Z is open to spiritual conversations. It's how are we doing it? How are we best ministering to them? And seeing the research that someone like Spring Tide Research Institute does and what Josh does is so important. It's valuable for us as we get to know this new generation and minister to them successfully. So I would love to encourage you to check them out, but also share what stood out to you and how you are adapting to Generation Z. Definitely put in the comment section below or you can email me or hit me up on Twitter at TAPounder is my Twitter handle. I would love to connect with you there and continue this conversation today. All right, heroes, well, thanks so much for being with me today. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, go and subscribe to it. This is on YouTube. This is on thechurch.digital. This is on iTunes and Spotify. So definitely go there and subscribe to it. We've got podcasts coming out all the time. And also go to thechurch.digital. There we've got a ton of content about how you can do online ministry more effectively. All right, heroes, well, I hope you have a great rest of your day. Until next time, have a great one.