God is calling us to equip the next generation, says Josh Green, co-founder of Gen Zeal. If only we’re brave enough to take Him at his word and believe He can do more than we can imagine
When you sense Jesus asking you to step out of the boat and walk on the waves it can be a little daunting. OK – very daunting! Will I sink? Will He catch me? Is it actually Jesus calling me?
This is how I felt when, in 2024, the Lord asked me to step out and live by faith to start Gen Zeal, a ministry contending for revival. We want to awaken the next generation to holy passion, fervent prayer and bold proclamation.
One year on, and it’s been a wild ride. In the past 12 months, we’ve seen more than 1,000 young people make first time decisions for Jesus. We’ve trained hundreds of young adults in prayer and mission, and we’ve visited nine different nations, preaching the gospel.
Where Gen Z Is Finding Jesus
Two weeks after the school year started last September, I got an email from the vice president for academic affairs at Dordt University. Her name is Leah Zuidema, and she told me that faculty and staff were reporting their students were more highly engaged than normal—more responsive in class, better about doing their homework, and more interested in learning. In short, they were doing unexpectedly well.
Leah and I wondered if more of them had been in high schools that were implementing stricter cell phone policies, or if they’d had more time to bounce back from COVID-19 restrictions. I called up one of her professors—Mark Christians, who teaches psychology.
“Class attendance, especially from two or three years ago to now, has improved,” he said. “Even the consistency of completing assignments is at a much better level than it was a few years ago. And simple things like asking questions, engaging in conversation before class, after class— I think those are a little bit better.”
I asked him what he thought was going on.“To be brutally honest, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m only comparing some of the classroom behaviors—coming to class, consistently completing assignments, the number of academic alerts that may happen in a semester. And I think this semester I’ve only sent out one. Other semesters, I may have already had six or seven out.”
I asked if it was something about the freshman class, but his upperclassmen are doing well too. I asked if it was a change in technology, but we couldn’t think of anything that would make such a difference between the spring and fall semesters. And then Mark said this:
Sorry for my random speculation, but chapel attendance has been up. Until the last five years, it was good, strong. But [now it’s] standing room only. It’s a voluntary, optional faith development activity, so that’s wonderful.
And there it was—only I didn’t fully see it, even then. I knew Dordt had a new dean of chapel, and it was the beginning of the school year, so maybe kids were simply piling in to see what was different over there.
To double check, I started emailing campus pastors I knew from around the country: “Hey, I’m hearing from Dordt University that students are more spiritually and academically engaged right now. Are you seeing anything like that?”
Here’s what they wrote back:
From Chicago: “100% it’s crazy!”
From Oregon: “Yep, we had 587 students at our college kickoff last week. We packed out the largest auditorium on campus. People sitting in the aisles.”
From Iowa: “Literally every Salt Company across the country would say it is uniquely fervent and open. Anecdotally, the Salt Attendance at Iowa State in September 2023 was around 1,400; 2024 was nearly 1,700; this past fall is just over 2,000. We’ve done Salt for nearly 40 years and NEVER seen increases like that in percent or numbers—all of this while the university enrollment is flat.”
Whoa. What’s going on here? Is it possible that Gen Z is having something of a revival?
Unlikely Converts
I’ll be honest: Gen Z isn’t the generation I expected to see in anything like a revival. Surveys show us they’re the most secular generation on record—the least likely to believe in God, go to church, or have a religious affiliation. One major reason for that is the shrinking faith of their parents—Gen Z is also the generation least likely to have grown up in church, attended Sunday school, or prayed over a meal with their family.
On top of that, they spend, on average, more than seven hours a day on screens and are famously anxious, depressed, and isolated. As a group, they’re much more likely to be playing games or streaming videos on their phones than showing up at youth group.
No, Gen Z isn’t the place you’d look for a renewed increase in spiritual engagement.
“I actually did not grow up in faith at all,” 19-year-old Kya Hardy said. “Nobody in my family was religious.”
Kya was raised on the south side of Chicago.
“In high school, I was a hot tamale,” she said. “I was captain of the volleyball team. I was on the cheer team. I was a pretty good student, but my time also consisted of partying, drugs, and drinking. I was really worldly—gossiping, dating. I was going all nine yards.
“[During] COVID-19, I was like, OK, I’m in school, but I’m also bored. I didn’t have anything to do. I wasn’t getting those social interactions with people. That’s when TikTok became big. So I got spiritual. I started believing in rocks and the universe. I started doing tarot card readings.”
Over in Iowa, college junior Ryan Goodman didn’t feel like anything was missing from his nonreligious home life. It was the opposite—Christianity felt like something his family didn’t have the time or desire to add to an already busy schedule.
“There was a consensus: We didn’t necessarily need God at the moment,” he said. “That was how we viewed it. It was just something that we didn’t do. High school was a very busy time. I thought, I already got so much stuff going on. I was in high school football. I was joining all these clubs. I had a lot of friends who went to church regularly and who had asked me to join various Bible studies and stuff. Back then, I was like, Well, I don’t really see the need for it.”He still didn’t see the need for it when he got to college, joined a fraternity, and started going to class. Neither did Mike Chavez, who grew up Catholic in Chicago. He went to mass with his family, but that was about it.
“I really didn’t know a lot,” he said. “I was brought up on good morals and the Ten Commandments, but I couldn’t even name one commandment.”
He knew Jesus died on the cross but had no idea why. So he wasn’t looking for a faith community when he arrived at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC).
“I walked in and was like, You know what? I’m gonna get all my work done. I’m gonna be that dude that just is on top of all his stuff,” he said. “And that’s how it went for me for the first six weeks of freshman year. I was getting my work done on time and even early, and it was beautiful. But then I got drained out so fast. I was tired. I didn’t want to do the schoolwork anymore. And I was like, Man, this college life is gonna be hard for the next four years.
“I was struggling through that when one of my advisors was like, ‘Hey, you need to join a group or a club or something, so that you can get back into it, have more fun, and have a balance in your life. Because right now your whole life is school, and it’s getting unhealthy.’”
Mike’s attempt to work himself into an identity—the dude that is on top of all his stuff—was failing. His predicament is typical for Gen Z.
“A lot of times people pick a lane, and they don’t deviate from it,” Ryan said. “You have guys that are so into schoolwork, to the point where they don’t have many friends because they’re so focused on trying to stick to their grades. Or you have guys that are going to parties, probably three to four times a week.
“A lot of guys feel like they have to pick their identity super fast. They have to find their lane. And then once they find their lane, they get comfortable in it. And then they don’t feel like they need to deviate.”
That sounds familiar to me, because I’ve done research on girls using social media, and they tell me the same thing. Social media—which Gen Z starts younger and uses more often than any other generation—is framed around creating your own identity, or brand, and then filling your life with content that matches it. Kya’s identity was a popular party girl. Ryan’s was a busy overachiever. And Mike’s, for a while, was a single-minded academic.
Firstfruit: Mike
After Mike’s advisor told him to join a club, he started looking around.
“My friend said, ‘I joined this group called CODE, maybe you should be a part of it.’ And I was like, ‘OK, let’s go. I’m down,’” he said. “That’s how I ended up getting plugged into CODE and Campus Outreach ministry. And I didn’t think anything of it. They told me it was a leadership program, and they said it was faith-based. But that just went over my head.”
Perhaps Mike missed the faith angle because so few university programs in Chicago are faith-based. Though the city has half a million college students, even its largest institutions have only a handful of Christian campus ministries. Some of the city colleges don’t have any.
CODE is the leadership program of Campus Outreach, a student ministry largely based in the South. The only reason there’s a chapter in Chicago is that, eight years ago, the wife of Campus Outreach staffer Tony Dentman got a job in Chicago. He started a chapter at UIC, then started CODE to better serve and connect with students.
Mike’s CODE mentor was Andrew Martinez, who is on staff with both Campus Outreach and Holy Trinity Church. Andrew kicked off the relationship by asking Mike about his life, his experiences, and his personality.
“And then he starts slowly mentioning Jesus and the gospel,” Mike said. “And I’m like, What is this? Like, what are you talking about? I was like, I’m gonna shrug it off. Maybe it’s something that he brought up by accident.
“And one day, he ends up having a Bible study at his house. And I really liked Andrew. He’s really, really cool. I was like, I want to go check it out. What is this Bible study thing like? Because I just really like hanging out with him.”
Mike went to the Bible study, and there it dawned on him: These CODE guys are serious about their faith. I asked if that turned him off.
“It actually fascinated me, because I’ve always been a curious person,” he said. “It opened my mind—I wanted to know who this Jesus guy was, because I heard about him in church here and there. But I never really knew who he was or what this gospel thing was. And I’d been going to church my whole life. I wanted to know. I was very curious.
“One thing that fascinated me was the way Andrew was able to pick out verses. I’m like, Whoa. What are you doing here? I didn’t even know what a verse was. So when he started connecting dots and showing me diagrams—that’s when I felt like my eyes were beginning to open.
“He showed me Romans 6:23 and the bridge diagram. That really caught my eye. I was like, Dang, I’m really separated from God, and this Jesus dude is my way to him. That’s when my eyes were opening, and I was like, Man, I’ve been learning about Bible stories, but I didn’t know they were actually real. I thought they were just like stories, like fairy tales.”
Mike had, by his own estimation, about a million questions: How do you know the Bible is reliable? If God is so good, why is there so much sin in the world? Do kids who die go to heaven? Do all people get to hear the gospel, or only people in church? Does everybody get a fair chance?
These are hard questions, but Mike wasn’t looking for perfect answers.
“What I loved about Andrew was he would tell me, ‘Look, I don’t know all the answers. But the Bible has the answers, and maybe God will speak to you and comfort you,’” Mike said. “Andrew told me he wasn’t the main source. The Bible was. And that gave me a lot of comfort.”
Mike kept asking questions, and Andrew kept directing him to Bible verses.
“I was like, ‘This guy really knows his stuff. Wow,’” Mike said. “It started to make sense to me. I was like, ‘This is crazy.’”
All of this was happening in Mike’s freshman year. But it wasn’t until his sophomore year—about a year ago—that he gave his life to Christ.
“My first year, Andrew had been telling me all about the gospel, and it was cool, but I was still in a worldly relationship,” he said. “I was still doing my thing, I was still living my life, doing what I wanted to do. It wasn’t until sophomore year, when everything started spiraling down and I was confused, that I started speaking to God like, ‘Lord, what’s going on? I thought we were cool.’”
Nothing major happened. But Mike was increasingly uncomfortable about a lot of things—his identity in high school had been athletics, but in college he wasn’t playing a sport. He thought he wanted to be a teacher, but now he wasn’t sure. He was arguing more and more with his girlfriend.
“Andrew kept teaching me about God, and I felt like I was lying to him, like living a double life,” he said. “When we’d meet, I’d be like, ‘Oh yeah. I love God. And you’ve been teaching me all these things, and I’m learning.’ And then behind the scenes, I’m doing whatever I want, not letting God intervene, and staying in control. That’s when I came to the realization: I cannot continue to live this double life, because it’s not harming God, it’s just harming me. And it just didn’t feel healthy at all.”
Mike prayed, for real this time: Lord, take this relationship away from me. Let me start living for you. Let me start truly abiding in you.
“And he started transforming my life and letting me live for him, and answering me,” he said. “I was like, ‘This is crazy. I need to start really living for God.’”
Mike loved getting his identity and purpose from the Lord. His story of salvation is beautiful. But at first glance, it doesn’t seem to fit our timeline. He already came to faith last year, and the revival we’re talking about seems to have primarily started this past fall.
Hang with me a minute, because here’s what Mike’s Campus Outreach director, Tony Dentman, said about the timing of increased spiritual engagement.
“People have been saying this for the last three years: ‘I just feel like a revival is happening. Revival is happening,’” he said. “Even this summer, I was at a church planting network event, and they gave the numbers from Barna. They were like, ‘Man, look at this. The men are starting to turn to Jesus.’ And I’m like, ‘I have no clue what y’all talking about. I guess that it hasn’t made it to the north.’
“But starting in August—I think it made it to Chicago! The spiritual hunger, the spiritual desire, is higher than we have ever seen before.”
When I asked Tony and other campus ministers if it was this year’s freshmen who were driving the change, they said no. While there’s a high level of freshman engagement, the interest is no lower in the older grades. In fact, they said it’s the juniors and seniors leading the Bible studies that are bringing so many of the underclassmen to faith.
“I’ve been leading Bible study this year with a ton of freshmen, even sophomores as well,” Mike said. “And it’s been really fulfilling and really fun to do—talking about God and leading them into Scriptures and seeing those moments of realization that ‘I need to start surrendering this to God. And wow, God is so good, and God is so merciful.’ And I am like, ‘Yes, he is.’ Being able to see those moments really does bring me joy.”
Firstfruit: Kya
If Mike is a firstfruit of this increase in spiritual engagement, Kya is another. Like Mike, she’s studying at UIC.
“I did a lot of stupid stuff before Christ, but one thing I knew was I did not want to follow down the path of my mother or stay in the path of poverty,” she said. “So I was like, OK, I’m going to get higher education. I’m going to do something. So I decided to go to college.”
I asked if her party lifestyle shifted at all.
“Oh, it got worse when I was in college, because now I had all this freedom,” she said. “I had nobody watching me. I definitely did more partying, drinking, and smoking. It definitely hit an all-time high. And the boys—it wasn’t like boys, I was just indulging myself in one boy, but overindulging unhelpfully. That got worse because I could be at his dorm. Nobody’s expecting me home.”One of Kya’s friends invited her to CODE. And since Kya had a crush on a boy in CODE, she agreed to go. Kya’s CODE mentor was Liza, who is married to Andrew and, like him, on staff with both Campus Outreach and Holy Trinity.
“She was asking questions: ‘What’s your spiritual life—your religious life—like? Have you ever heard of Jesus? How do you feel about the Bible?’” Kya said. “And I’m like, ‘No, girl, no. Keep that Bible away from me.’ I started running away from her.”
I asked why.
“I did not know the gospel,” she said. “I did not know the importance of it. I also had misleading information. You know how the Israelites were brought out of a bad situation? In my community, that is always thrown around—why didn’t God bring black people out of slavery?
“And they think Christianity kept people enslaved, when really it was not Christianity. It was how people portrayed Christianity. So that really pushed me away from it. I thought it was a white person’s religion.”
Kya quit going to CODE. But later, when her friend invited her to a Campus Outreach New Year’s conference, Kya said yes.
“I was thinking, It’s a conference. I’m going to meet friends, I’m going to experience college on a different level,” she said. “[Then] I get there, and it clicks, because everybody starts talking about Jesus, and their relationship with him, and how good he is. And I’m like, Hold up . . . What am I doing here?”
Kya was surprised and confused. How was it all these people, hundreds of them, were talking about the goodness of a God she didn’t know?
“We met this preacher, and he was saying, ‘You only call on God when you need something,’” she said. “I was like, Oh. I’d never felt something in my heart hurt so bad. I literally felt something grab at my heart, like my heart skipped a beat. I was like, You’re not lying. Actually, I do call on him when I need something.
“It was always, ‘Hey, God, can you fix this?’ Or when my grandmother passed away, I was like, ‘God, why?’ But that was the norm in society.”
Kya kept listening. She listened to the speakers, her leaders, and Liza. When she heard the gospel story—that Jesus, the Son of God, came to die for her sins and make her right with her Creator—Kya thought it sounded like a Disney story.
“I was honestly shocked, because you’re telling me this man who did not know me died on the cross for my future sins,” she said. “He paid the price before I was even alive. It was very shocking. I was really amazed. . . . I was like, You know what? You all sound like you’re living a beautiful life, and actually, I want to try it.
“I had a friend—the friend I went to the conference with. She knew something about religion—she wasn’t full-blown religious, but she knew something about Christ. So she kind of led me in prayer to giving my life to Christ. Because we came to an agreement—‘Yeah, let’s give our life to Christ.’ So that night we prayed together and gave our life to Christ.”
Maybe you’re wondering, like I was, if two basically non-Christian girls can lead each other to the Savior. Is that even legit?
Here’s what happened when Kya got back from the conference and one of her other friends called her up.
