Conversations with church leaders these days often turn to Gen Z (those aged 13-28) and the inevitable question, How do we get them engaged in our church? Sometimes we get to hear what their congregations have already tried, including the use of screens, innovations in music, a greater emphasis on social justice, and more social media outreach.
Really?
According to a recent Harris Study, church leaders and church boards still have much to learn about the younger generation.
60 percent of Gen Z adults (aged 18-28) say they wish they could return to a time before everyone was plugged in.
58 percent of Gen Z agree with the statement, “new technologies are more likely to drive people apart.”
Gen Z retains a basic optimism about the future, fueled in part by the promise of technological progress. Yet they also want to be very careful about technology. They recognize the need to navigate – cautiously – around and through social media and emerging technology.
Then there is this data point: Gen Z has discovered paper journals and diaries. In fact, there is a general resurgence of “analogue technologies,” otherwise known as pen and paper. People are ditching phone apps in favor of paper planners—and, in an era of email, buying more fancy stationary. As Kate Hardcastle notes in an article for Forbes:
Once seen as a practical necessity, writing instruments, notebooks, and planners are now coveted lifestyle objects, celebrated not just for function but for their beauty, craftsmanship, and the sense of mindfulness they bring. This isn’t just a nostalgic return to old-school tools—it’s a cultural shift toward analogue in an era of digital overload.
As Ted Gioia observed recently, “young people are expressing a nostalgia for a past they never experienced.”
And finally, we hear that Gen Z is embracing knitting, crocheting, gardening, doing jigsaw puzzles, etc. A majority of those between ages 18 and 28 report engaging in at least one “retro hobby.”
Just when we think we know what questions to ask and what changes to make in order to meet the needs of young people, things shift. And shift again. It is crucial that faith communities continually probe the true needs and spiritual yearnings of those they are trying to reach – and that we do so by talking with people about their needs, which is always better than talking about them.
As we ask questions, what assumptions are built into our questions? And who is being nostalgic here?
Billy Collins takes a sly look at nostalgia in the following poem, published in the good old days of 1991.
Nostalgia
By Billy Collins
Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.
Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent, a badly broken code.
The 1790s will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.
I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.
Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.
As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.
What is Collins teasing out in this poem, stanza by stanza?
What do you make of his line that “even this morning would be an improvement over the present”?
Have you recently started doing something that you would describe as “retro”? If so, what attracts you to it?
What is your picture of young people today? What has shaped that picture?
What is your congregation’s picture of young people today? What has shaped that picture?
What might your church board read together this year to help it understand young people better? Who might you talk with … and what questions might you ask?
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