Last week I shared the first of three questions that framed our recent meeting of the Winebrenner Seminary Board of Trustees:
- What are we entrusted with?
- What is God doing?
- In order to participate, who are we becoming?
During our meeting, board members, faculty, staff, and administration participated together. Everyone was in the room, hearing the same information and participating in the same conversations. We created space not simply to carry out the business of the Seminary, but to listen, learn, and discern together. The second question, What is God doing?, requires exactly that kind of posture.
Our time together began with a presentation focused on Gen Z and the rapidly changing world young adults are navigating. The presentation was led by Pastor Nancy Hiser, a member of Winebrenner’s Board of Trustees and Pastor of Student & Young Adult Ministries at College First Church of God. Nancy was joined by several young adults who added their own perspectives as we considered the cultural forces shaping their generation and the role older generations can play in their lives. The presentation explored both the challenges facing Gen Z and the opportunities for meaningful relationships across generations. [You can click here to access the notes from that presentation.]
What if we stop and ask what God is doing in the middle of all this change?
That question connects directly with something we’ve been learning through our conversations with young adults. Earlier this summer, 25 young adults gathered at Camp Sonrise Mountain for the inaugural Young Adult Weekend. In reflecting on that experience, I wrote about the desire for relationship and belonging that repeatedly surfaced throughout the weekend.
An ongoing commitment at Winebrenner is to become a better listening organization. Meaningful innovation can emerge through careful listening. If we assume we already understand people, we can begin developing answers before we truly understand their questions.
Our Board presentation reinforced that conviction. Among the recommendations relating to Gen Z was something remarkably simple: “Listen and Care.” The presentation highlighted the tension between young adults fearing judgment or rejection from older adults while also longing for listening and relationship. There is something important in that tension.
Asking What is God doing? changes the conversation. It moves us away from viewing Gen Z primarily as a demographic to understand, a recruitment challenge to solve, or a problem for the Church to address. Instead, we can begin looking for evidence that God is already at work.
The Board presentation echoed something we observed at Camp Sonrise Mountain. In discussing salvation conversations with Gen Z, it identified themes of a broken world, our participation in that brokenness, Jesus as the Prince of Peace, and God’s work of restoration as possible points of connection.
That isn’t about changing the Gospel to make it more attractive. It is about learning to recognize the questions through which a generation may be encountering the Gospel. Perhaps the longing for belonging creates opportunities to rediscover Christian community. Perhaps anxiety about a constantly changing future opens conversations about hope. Perhaps questions about identity create a deeper hunger to understand who we are in Christ. Perhaps dissatisfaction with superficial digital connections makes embodied relationships even more significant.
And perhaps the questions young adults are asking can help the rest of us rediscover dimensions of the Christian story we have too easily taken for granted.
One phrase from the presentation continues to resonate: “Be a Pillar in the Storm.” The invitation was for older adults to become a stable presence amid the instability young adults experience, representing a Gospel, truth, and love that do not change. I appreciate the image because it doesn’t call us to control the storm or simply criticize the culture that produced it. It asks what it might mean to be present and faithful in the middle of it.
The presentation also challenged us to offer young adults a “toolbar” rather than an “instruction manual”: sharing wisdom and rationale while creating room for emerging leaders to experiment, learn, and sometimes fail. That requires trust. More importantly, it requires relationship.
That brings us back to our question: What is God doing?
We shouldn’t assume that we can fully answer it after a Board presentation, a weekend retreat, or a series of conversations. Perhaps part of faithful leadership is recognizing that discernment begins before certainty.
What we are seeing gives us reasons for hope. Young adults are asking significant questions about purpose, identity, community, faith, brokenness, and hope. Our presentation also described Gen Z as adaptive and teachable, reminding us to recognize not simply the challenges facing this generation, but also its possibilities.
Our responsibility isn’t to manufacture what God is doing. It is to pay attention. To listen. To create space. To form relationships. To remain rooted in the Gospel. And then to have the humility and courage to participate when we recognize God at work.
Which leads naturally to the final question from our Board gathering. If God is at work in the middle of enormous cultural and generational change, perhaps our most important question isn’t what new program we should create or what strategy we should follow.
The deeper question is: In order to participate, who are we becoming?
- Brent C. Sleasman, President