The church needs to embrace the anxious generation’s spiritual interest, anticipate the mess, and do the work to make disciples. The Anxious Generation Goes to Church accessibly presents a mountain of research to remind Christians that cultural conditions never alter the church’s mission, though the methods to accomplish it may change.

Pew Research Center began tracking America’s religious landscape in 2007. Since then, they’ve reported Christianity’s steady decline. In 2024, pollster George Barna told the Christian Post that the Western church had “reached a time of Christian invisibility.” Things have looked bleak for Christianity’s influence for decades.

Yet there are rumblings of revival among Gen Z, those born from about 1997 to 2010. That’s the generation Jonathan Haidt writes about in The Anxious Generation, as he reflects on the mental health effects of a digital childhood. Amid the challenges, that generation seems to be turning to God.

In The Anxious Generation Goes to Church: What the Research Says About What Younger Generations Need (and Want) from Your Church, Thom S. Rainer, CEO of Church Answers, argues that the church has a phenomenal opportunity to reach a generation with the gospel. The church has the social and spiritual remedies to the challenges Gen Z is facing.

Power of Technology

Much of Rainer’s analysis relies on findings published by Jim Davis and Michael Graham, Ryan Burge, Jean Twenge, and Jonathan Haidt. For example, Rainer shows that generations are shaped by many factors: cultural events, economic influences, and technological advances. Echoing Twenge, he argues, “Of those factors, technology has emerged as the primary driver of generational differences” (12).

As the first generation to grow up with no memory of life before high-speed internet, smartphones, or social media, Gen Z has been profoundly marked by recent technological innovations. People often don’t fully understand the effects of new technologies until years later. As philosopher Antón Barba-Kay notes, “We have never been prone to notice how deeply we are shaped by and identified with our tools.” This may be most evident with Gen Z.

“In simple terms, the younger you are, the greater the likelihood you will have anxiety,” Rainer states (34). The pervasive toxicity of the internet, smartphones, social media, and political polarization is taking a toll. Young people sleep less, scroll more, and feel lonelier than ever before.

The anxious generation needs what the church has to offer—hope, embodied connection, and stability in a tumultuous time. Thankfully, it also appears to be what they want. It’s in discussing the church’s opportunity with Gen Z that Rainer explores new ground.

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