Something unexpected is happening right now. The generation that pollsters call “the least religious in American history” is also the most spiritually hungry. Gen Z is walking away from church buildings — but they are not walking away from God. And if we’re honest, the question that should keep every pastor, every small group leader, every disciple-maker up at night is this: Are we offering them something worth staying for?
A recent piece from Relevant Magazine put it bluntly: Gen Z is “spiritual but not religious.” They’re meditating, they’re asking the big questions, they’re hungry for meaning — but they’re looking everywhere except the local church. Meanwhile, on Reddit, a thread about a 20-year atheist getting baptized pulled 2,400 upvotes and hundreds of comments from people sharing their own stories of coming to faith later in life.
So which is it? Are people leaving the faith or finding it?
The answer is both. And the difference is discipleship.
The Problem Isn’t Doubt — It’s Shallow Soil
Here’s what we’ve learned doing ministry at Sunlight Community Church and through The Disciple Standard Podcast: most people don’t leave the faith because they had too many hard questions. They leave because nobody walked with them through those questions.
We built churches that are great at attracting crowds but terrible at making disciples. We optimized for Sunday morning production value and forgot that Jesus never said “Go and put on a great show.” He said, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
When a young person walks into a church and experiences a concert, a TED talk, and a coffee bar — but never gets invited into a real relationship where someone opens the Bible with them and says “let me show you what I’ve learned, and then you go show someone else” — we shouldn’t be surprised when they leave. We gave them an event, not a family.
Rick Warren said it well: “The church is not a building you go to. The church is a family you belong to. Stop attending church and start being the church.”
What the Underground Church Can Teach Us
Here’s what’s wild. While American churches are wringing their hands about declining attendance, Christianity Today reports that 365 million Christians worldwide face high levels of persecution — and yet church growth in Iran, China, and North Africa is at historic levels.
Read that again. The places where it costs you everything to follow Jesus are the places where the church is growing the fastest.
Why? Because persecution strips away everything that isn’t real. There are no smoke machines in a house church in Tehran. There are no Instagram-worthy lobbies in an underground gathering in Beijing. What’s left is the raw, uncut, life-changing power of the Gospel being passed from one person to the next. One life at a time. That’s 2 Timothy 2:2 in action: “The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”
That’s the Multiply Method. Know Jesus. Make Jesus known. Live a Jesus life. And then watch it spread.
Revival Is Already Here — But It Doesn’t Look Like What You’d Expect
The Asbury revival sent shockwaves through the American church, and those ripple effects haven’t stopped. Baptism numbers are surging. Stories of radical conversion are everywhere. John Piper recently wrote: “The greatest need of the hour is not more clever strategies. It is the power of the Holy Spirit poured out on broken, praying people.”
He’s right. But here’s what we need to add to that: revival without discipleship is a firework. Bright, beautiful, and gone in seconds.
If someone encounters the Holy Spirit on a Tuesday night at a college worship service, and then nobody follows up — nobody opens the Word with them, nobody invites them into a community of believers who will walk with them through their first year of faith — we lose them. Not because God’s power wasn’t real, but because we didn’t do our part.
The harvest is plentiful. Jesus said that. But the workers are few. That’s the bottleneck. It’s not that people aren’t open — it’s that we don’t have enough disciple-makers to meet them where they are.
What This Means for You (Yes, You)
If you’re reading this, here’s the question I want to leave you with: Who are you discipling?
Not who are you preaching to. Not who’s watching your content. Not how many people showed up last Sunday. Who are you walking with, face to face, week after week, opening the Scripture together, being honest about your struggles, and teaching them to do the same thing with someone else?
That’s the standard. Not attendance. Not production. Not platform. Multiplication.
Here are three things you can do this week:
- Identify one person. Who in your life is spiritually hungry but not yet connected to a discipleship relationship? A coworker, a neighbor, a family member, someone at your gym. You don’t need a curriculum. You need a coffee and a Bible.
- Open the Word together. Don’t overthink it. Pick a Gospel — Mark is short and punchy — and start reading it together. Ask two questions: “What does this say about God?” and “What does this mean for how I live?” That’s enough.
- Make it reproducible. From day one, tell the person you’re meeting with: “The goal isn’t for me to teach you everything. The goal is for you to learn enough to turn around and do this with someone else.” That’s how multiplication works. That’s how the early church exploded. That’s how 12 became billions.
The Standard Has to Be Raised
Gen Z doesn’t need a cooler church. They need a real church. A church that looks less like a performance and more like a family. A church where people actually know each other’s names, carry each other’s burdens, and open the Bible like it’s the most important book in the room — because it is.
The underground church in Iran gets this. The early church in Acts got this. And it’s time we got this too.
The harvest is right in front of us. The question is whether we’ll meet it with programs and production — or with the kind of relational, reproducible, Spirit-empowered discipleship that actually changes lives.
We know which one works. Let’s go do it.
For more on raising the standard of discipleship and multiplying the church, listen to The Disciple Standard Podcast — available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.