Everyone has been affected in one way or another by the lockdowns in response to the coronavirus.
But famed evangelical apologist and evangelist Josh McDowell warns that the resulting isolation has been particularly hard on Generation Z, young people and children born in the mid-to-late 1990s through the early 2010s.
“For such a time as this, the church must figure out how to minister to the lonely, depressed, porn addicted and the suicidal,” McDowell said in an interview with WND.
Churches that don’t respond, he said, will be marginalized and “eventually obsolete.”
McDowell, the author or co-author of 152 books, including the megahits “More Than a Carpenter” and “Evidence That Demands a Verdict,” has compiled more than 1,000 hours of research on young people.
America’s churches, if they are real churches, must prepare to respond to a much higher level of mental health concerns as well as other issues aggravated by loneliness, said McDowell, the founder of Josh McDowell Ministry.
Gen Z, some 74 million people in the United States, are growing up in the age of “transgender, transsexual, transracial, transglobal and transcommercial,” noted McDowell. The “largest and most diverse generation ever,” they’ve “never known life without the internet … have an attention span of 8 seconds … are curators of self, morality and truth, and consider religion outdated.”
Further, they are prone to suicide and are dating, drinking and partying less. They are experiencing a “great decline” in mental health, are restructuring free speech and, at record rates, are avoiding alcohol, sex and driving.
McDowell, who has been in Christian ministry more than 50 years, noted that previous cultural movements, such as the hippy generation of the 1960s, happened in a different America.
Even then, multitudes attended church on Sunday morning and paid attention to the morals taught by the Ten Commandments. Today, he said, “many people do not agree we should be following Christian principles.”
Fewer children are being raised in homes that pay heed to the Bible, fewer churches are taking strong stands on biblical standards and some even have turned cult-like, demanding allegiance to an individual, instead of God.
He cited the “men of Issachar,” who while King David ruled Israel, “understood the times in order to know what Israel should do.”
Churches should follow that model, he said.
“If ever there has been a need to apply this to the church, it is now!” said McDowell. “For such a time as this, the church must figure out how to minister to the lonely, depressed, porn addicted and the suicidal.”
His organization’s research shows clinical-level depression among Gen Z girls jumped 67%. And in 10 years, the suicide rate for boys ages 10-14 doubled.
“The rate for girls in this age range have tripled,” he said.
In 2016, 13% of youth ages 12-17 had at least one major depressive episode in the past year.
Gen Z gets their news from Facebook and YouTube, and “some 13-year-olds check their social media accounts 100 times a day and are spending about nine hours a day using media for their enjoyment.”
“More than eight out of 10 are hooked on social networks and more than half of them think that this is where their real social life takes place,” his research found.
The solution, he told WND, is to provide mentors.
“Not to disciple them,” he said. “To mentor.”
“It is very easy to get offbase,” he said, when their attention span is less than 10 seconds.
“The greatest need is mentoring.”
They need “social and emotional support” as they cope with the coronavirus pandemic, the lockdowns and the isolation.
Technology hasn’t helped, he said.
“This generation has learned to communicate with their thumbs, not their tongues,” McDowell said. “Human beings were created for relationship. Young people might be connecting online, but they are not relating in a personal way.”
