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Every now and then when I get the opportunity to preach I use that opportunity to talk about why investing in the next generation matters, what the bible has to say about investing in younger generations and what we should be doing about it as a church and individually. A couple of months ago I took that opportunity and I wanted to just follow up with some really cool things that have happened since then and some really big struggles as well.

I’m naturally a pessimistic person so I have to work really hard to be as optimistic as I can and see the good in everything. So, it’s tempting to jump out of the gate with the struggles, but I’ll start and end on high notes if that is alright.

VBS was GREAT! We learned a lot and will tweak some things for next year, but it was a big win.

Here’s my 3 big wins for the week:

  1. Patrick has shared this a couple of times, but we had about 40 people volunteer their time or donate something like snacks for us to use that week. That’s a third of our average attendance this year.  I can’t tell you how encouraging that is for me, for Sarah, our volunteers and our parents to see the church support those kids in that kind of way. So thank you, thank you to every single one of you for helping to make a difference in a kid's life that week!
  2. Half of the kids who were there every single night were kids we had never met before. AND more importantly we made some amazing connections with each of their families.  I don’t know if we will ever see any of those kids or families again, but I am confident that we made a big positive impact on each of those kids and their families because of our amazing volunteers.
  3. We were able to give our kids an opportunity to experience God in a different and unique way. One of my goals since I started working with the students at Bridges, was to provide different and unique opportunities for them to experience God because they are all different kids and God shows up in big rooms with the flashing lights and loud worship, but He also shows up when you are pulling old nasty carpet out of a basement and throwing it in the landfill. To create the same opportunity week after week deprives them the opportunity to see God show up in some pretty unique and sometimes surprising ways. I’ve wanted to do the same thing for our kids, but this was really the first chance we had to do that.

Now for the struggle. It’s not a new struggle by any means, some of it is newer, but the struggle has largely been the same for this generation for a while now. Gen Z (born between 1997 and approx 2015) continues to struggle with anxiety and other mental health illnesses at a much higher rate than any generation before. Some of that can and should be chalked up to a greater awareness of mental health issues in general which leads to the stigma surrounding it to be chipped away and more teens seeking professionals to get help.  

However, the problem has more to do with pressures of school, extracurriculars, parents and primarily social media and other online platforms than the actual number of teens diagnosed with anxiety or some other mental health illness. Most of us had some level of expectation for how we ought to behave, how well we did in school ect, but this generation has a whole new slew of expectations for how they look and present themselves online, whose posts they comment on and like, and when and how often they post. I’ve seen teens spend an incredible amount of time taking and editing pictures for instagram. It doesn’t make sense to me, but that isn’t the point. The pressure they feel to look a certain way or even be a certain way on their social media accounts affects them more than I think I could ever fully understand.  

The pandemic certainly didn’t help anyones mental health, and I think we are just scratching the surface of the long term mental health effects of lockdowns and life in general being turned upside down. It is easy to say this doesn’t affect me if you don’t live with someone who is in Gen Z, but Gen Z will change the world.

Let me say that again, Gen Z will change the world.  Every generation has helped shape the world from technological advances to pushing for social change like the Civil Rights movement in the 60s. We have the opportunity now to invest in and help shape a generation that will change the world in 20 years time. Whether you have a kid in Gen Z or not, you can invest in the generation.  

That kind of leads me into my last Win to wrap this thing up. There have been so many cool examples of folks investing in the next generation that I have seen over the last couple of months, some of them probably didn’t even know what they were doing! We had a D-Group of a few moms start up about a month ago. I’ve had a handful of really good conversations with parents, or someone with a lot of influence in a kid’s life, who cared so much about that kid and their future that they wanted help navigating something going on in their life. I saw grandparents, parents and guys so young they are in Gen Z themselves come together to help serve at VBS so that kids could connect with God.  

Investing in the next generation has to always stay at the forefront of our minds as a church and as individuals because they will shape the world. For now we have the opportunity to influence how they might do that, but that window of opportunity we have to leave a lasting impact on the next generation while they are in their formative years is rapidly closing.  It is encouraging to be a parent surrounded by folks at a church who care so much about my kids and make them feel so loved and so important. I pray we continue to have that kind of influence on all of our kids and parents at Bridges and in our community.