Part 1 of a series, “Five Disruptive Church Trends in 2025”

March 27, 2025

By Rev. Rick King

Carey Nieuwhof is the Canadian pastor and trend-spotter I read who annually publishes a list of “disruptive church trends” that he believes will affect churches of all types, even though he writes with a primarily evangelical audience in mind. I’m interested in how we can view this year’s five disruptive trends through the lens of our merger process. Each week, we’ll look at a different trend and see how it applies to us as we try to plant a new church out of a merger of two existing churches facing challenges. Source of the content is Nieuwhof’s blog, but the take on it is my own.

This week we’re looking at a trend that’s two years old, and began on the campus of Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. It’s been called the “Asbury Outpouring,” but it’s a renewal, a religious revival, pure and simple. But since then, it’s been pointed to as the start of a resurgence of faith among Generation Z, who are current or just-graduated college students.

Barna Group research data shows a general spiritual openness among people my kids’ ages, those born between 1997 and 2012. And while it’s tempting to take a general description of the characteristics of a demographic group and draw conclusions from it, we need to be careful of what spiritual openness describes, and what it might mean.

Nieuwhof has three caveats:

–Spiritual openness doesn’t always lead people to Christianity; there are lots of options.
–Even if people’s spiritual openness does lead them to Christianity, that doesn’t automatically lead to church attendance.
–There’s a drop-off in spiritual openness between Gen Z teenagers and Gen Z adults. An 18-point drop.

The third point corresponds to a drop in Gen Z church attendance between 2020 and 2023, when the survey was taken, for those who actually did start attending church: 22 percent attended weekly in 2020, but only 16 percent three years later. And the number of Gen Z who never go to church grew from 28 percent in 2020 to 37 percent in 2023.

There is real spiritual curiosity and openness among Gen Z; I experience it in the kinds of conversations I have with my kids, about ethics, current events, decisions they’ve made about how they’re going to live their lives. But none of them attend church any more.

Why should this matter to us?

You might ask, because Gen Z is so underrepresented in our congregations, New Life and Falcon Heights churches. Even though our combined youth group is active, it’s still relatively small compared to other generational groups in our congregations.

As I’ve said before, we could think of our task in this merger as combining our resources and people to sustain us into the future. But that alone will not be enough for us to thrive.

Studies have shown that most mergers without a specific, compelling mission in the community and a plan for reaching out to people in that community don’t grow. The initial attendance and activity numbers drop off in five years, with the total worship attendance, for example, dropping to approximately the attendance figure of the larger of the two churches prior to the merger.

But who is out there in the wider community that surrounds our two church buildings? Who might we find? What do the spiritual curiosity trends in Gen Z suggest about younger children? What should we be doing now to create spaces in our ministry that welcome youth and elementary-age children and their parents, and provide opportunities to become engaged in a life with God and community?

Moreover, what does that mean about how we should FUND and STAFF for ministry specifically directed toward these next generations?

We’ll have some decisions about priorities over the next couple of years, if the merger takes place. What are YOUR thoughts?