When we opened the century-old church doors on the corner of Whaley Street and Wayne Street, we figured we’d have about 50 folks step through them that night.
It was a Bible class for Gen Z, after all. How many Gen Zers actually want to learn about the Bible?
Apparently, more than 50. We had to scramble for more chairs.
It quickly became obvious that this generation—my generation—is hungry for the Bible, and we’ll starve if we don’t get fed.
How are you feeding the hungry young adults in your context? My church has learned key lessons about feeding college students and young adults. These aren’t novel, but I hope they can help your people as much as they’ve helped ours.
1. Food (Like, Actual Food)
I was sitting across from a leader at a major university recently and asked him how we could influence the students on that campus. He looked at me and said the plainest thing: “Food wins.”
To win the heart of a man, you go through the stomach. If you want to feed people the gospel, consider first feeding them a sandwich.
This is why my brother (“Chef Chunk” as they call him) has been serving an incredible amount of pancake batter out of a four-foot plastic storage container, complete with chocolate chips, blueberries, and a few other cheap toppings. We start pancake-flipping before 7 p.m. and don’t stop until we start class at 8:03 p.m., to keep up with the demand. Apparently breakfast for dinner is a fan favorite.
Eating meals with others is one of the greatest indicators of personal well-being—the more we eat with our families (whether spiritual or biological), the more likely we are to be satisfied with our lives and filled with love, joy, and peace. Yet we’re eating fewer meals together than ever. What if the church was one of the great combatants of this damaging trend?
2. Friends (Like, Actual Friends)
Speaking of loneliness, our culture is increasingly lacking “third spaces” where lonely people can find and build community. Robert Putnam described and predicted this decades ago in Bowling Alone—but these days we don’t just bowl alone. We shop alone, eat alone, entertain alone. We even tend to date or do friendship “alone,” as in virtually rather than in person.
What few third spaces remain—the gym, sports environments, coffee shops—aren’t ideal for making meaningful connections. In gyms, we have our headphones on; at sports games, the music is so loud you get hoarse when you speak; and coffee shops are great but usually filled with headphones-on, screened-off people (and $7 lattes).
Fresh-out-of-college Jimmy has nowhere to meet potential-best-friend Johnny or potential-love-of-his-life Jessica. That leaves Jimmy feeling hopeless in one of the most foundational needs of life: relationships.
Our culture is increasingly lacking ‘third spaces’ where lonely people can find and build community.
Yet this is a hole best filled by the new humanity God created called the church. Amid a growing cultural hunger for embodied friendships, maybe one of the major ways our church can “seek the welfare” of our cities (Jer. 29:7) is to build environments where a wide variety of folks can congregate. Maybe that looks like creating spaces for line-dancing, pick-up basketball, or weekly pickleball nights.
But I have a hunch that one of the most interesting third spaces we can create might not need to be about entertainment.
3. Knowledge (Like, Spiritual Knowledge)
“Do you know what Christmas is about?”
“Um—not sure. What do you mean?”
“Like, do you know the story behind it?”
“Hmm. I feel like it’s about a guy . . .”
“YES! Do you know his name?”
“Mmm. Nah man.”
“Jesus. His name is Jesus.”
This is a real conversation I had with an average high school student in the South, the heart of the so-called Bible Belt. I could tell you of dozens of other conversations just like it.
Here’s the truth: The Bible is the most interesting story in the world, and no one knows it anymore. Christians have a tragic habit of making this story far less interesting than it should be, just as film adaptations have an uncanny ability to make some of the best stories ever written feel like spoonfuls of sawdust. But the truth remains: No story has ever been (or ever will be) better, truer, and more powerful than the Bible.
No story has ever been (or ever will be) better, truer, and more powerful than the Bible.
The marvelous thing about our age is that the Bible is interesting again—partly because it’s utterly novel. Do you want to know why Jordan Peterson could lecture on obscure stories from Genesis to sold-out crowds? Do you want to know why major streaming services are pumping out Bible films and TV series? Do you want to know why Bible sales are through the roof in the last few years? Because our generation has never heard these stories before.
Maybe one of the most captivating things the church can do is bring the Greatest Story Ever Told into the present moment.
We certainly aren’t doing this perfectly in our church’s Gen-Z Bible class. Every time I teach, I feel as if I’ve failed miserably. J.T.—you blew it. You weren’t even close to explaining that right. I mean, how could you forget to include the Table of Nations before you reach Abram!?
But though our sound systems have been off, our mics have gone in and out, our recording equipment hasn’t worked, our Spotify playlist has interrupted in the middle of sessions, our whiteboards have been too small, and our powerpoint slides have gotten jacked up—the Word of God is life.
Students and young adults are flocking to understand how this magnificent writing we called the Book all fits together. These guys and gals don’t read much, but they long to read this book. They just feel intimidated. Wouldn’t you? Don’t you? The Bible is a complex book, and we’re past the days of assuming people understand it. Yet we’re also past the days of assuming we should simplify truth to satisfy the questions of curious new believers.
If you listen closely, you can hear from young adults the same whisper of hunger, thirst, panting—perhaps even desperation—that we see on the lips of the Ethiopian eunuch when asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” (Acts 8:30).
“How can I, unless someone guides me?” (v. 31).
In today’s age of Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude, we may be tempted to assume anyone can teach themselves. But I wonder if the ubiquity of all-knowing machines actually makes the candor, emotion, and particularity of human knowledge and teaching that much more significant. The excess of knowledge brings more questions, not fewer.
The excess of knowledge brings more questions, not fewer.
Christian, be ready for a resurgence in questions—not just questions about dating, relationships, technology, and sexuality (all important) but questions about the Scriptures. This is a call for all of us to better ourselves in engaging with the Word of the Living God and to believe that this Word is even more valuable than fine gold (Ps. 19:10).
It all reminds me of Amos’s famous prophecy: “‘Behold, the days are coming,’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD’” (8:11).
This prophecy fits our times. Though we’re in a “famine” of biblical literacy as a generation and as a nation, the hunger for food, people, and the Word gives the church a magnificent opportunity in this moment.
The Gospel Coalition