Collaborative project focuses on listening, empowering Episcopal Church’s Gen Z leaders
[Episcopal News Service] In 2023, Robert Garris, managing director for leadership development at Trinity Church Wall Street, reached out to The Episcopal Church’s Department of Faith Formation to ask about the status of young adult leadership within The Episcopal Church and how the parish in lower Manhattan can help support programs that will raise up leaders from this age group.
The conversation between Garris and leaders led to a churchwide initiative that was launched in June.
“The Episcopal Church Leadership Project: Toward a New Generation of Leaders” is a three-phase, three-year project meant to identify the gifts and challenges of ministry with and by Generation Z within the church. It also will evaluate, revise and test resources and practices to help clergy reach and support this generation of leaders, according to a press release. It is partly funded by a $100,000 grant from Trinity Church Wall Street, which has a well-established ministry for young adults.
The initiative is led by The Episcopal Church’s Department of Faith Formation in partnership with Youth, Young Adult and Campus Ministries and the Episcopal Service Corps.
“We all know that every generation is different. We know Gen Z is very different,” the Rev. Shannon Kelly, director of the Department of Faith Formation and officer for Young Adult and Campus Ministries, told Episcopal News Service. Kelly said the project has been seeking input from young adults on how the church can best support them in their formation and ministry.
“Where are they feeling like they want to lead in the church? How might we support them and mentor them into that? And what does that look like?” Kelly said, describing the kind of questions they’re asking.
The project’s first phase is focused on data gathering – surveying youth, young adults and the church leaders who work with them. The second phase will involve developing, testing and evaluating models of change. Phase 3 will involve a wider church roll-out and training on those models.
“Young people have been aware of challenges of acceptance and belonging in the church since Gen X and on and have been leaving the church because of the church’s inflexibility on this,” Bronwyn Clark Skov, manager for Safe Church and Young Adult and Campus Ministries special projects, told ENS. Gen X includes people born between 1965 and 1980.
Young adult leaders who had wanted to offer their interests and gifts and take on leadership roles in the church, Skov said, told her they were often told they were too young, not ready or that there wasn’t room for them.
“And that can be very confusing and disheartening, especially when one is engaged in faithful discernment,” Skov said.
Skov works with Kelly and coordinates with ministries and partners involved in the project, including Sacred Playgrounds, an outside research firm. In a follow-up email to ENS, she said that the survey outcome sent to ordained and lay leaders before the 81st General Convention, as part of the project’s first phase, will be submitted to the Executive Council and Trinity Church Wall Street in November.
Born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Z represents a marked shift in America’s racial and religious makeup, according to studies. For instance, the Public Religion Research Institute noted they are more racially diverse and more likely to be religiously unaffiliated than earlier generations, with an estimated 1 in 3 saying that religion is not at all important or not as important as other things. The group comprises around 20% of the U.S. population and is part of a new wave of “inclusive consumers.” Researchers and marketers described them as socially progressive dreamers known for their idealism.
“The church is changing and they’re going to lead the way in some of the measures that the church needs to go toward,” said Kelly. She alluded to Presiding Bishop-elect Sean Rowe’s message that the church will do things differently and said young adults will play a significant role in the future of the church.
Kelly noted that there’s a lot of data available about millennials and Gen Z but none that is specifically about The Episcopal Church — the kind of data that the project hopes to provide.
Kelly and her team will release another survey in November specifically targeting parishioners and leaders age 18 to 32. A survey for this age group of people who worked in Episcopal camps and conference centers as summer staff is also ongoing.
Several leaders expressed optimism about the church’s ability to reach and work with Gen Z.
Summerlee Walter, a millennial who grew up Lutheran, joined The Episcopal Church while in college. As a communications coordinator in the Diocese of North Carolina, she advises staff and other leaders on how to craft their message to appeal across generations. She told ENS that the church is in a strategic position to engage the youth because “so much of what we do aligns so well with things that are important to Gen Z.”
Kate DiTullio, a middle school teacher and lay leader at St. Bart’s in midtown Manhattan, said that the intellectual honesty she encountered in the church, where you can be “a person with doubts and intellect and deep thinking” and still come to church without being “shunned or shamed or told that you’re doing something wrong,” is attractive to Gen Z.
Skov and Kelly, both with extensive careers in Christian formation, emphasized that the project is a proactive effort to understand younger generations’ perspectives on faith and ministry,
“There are some young adults and youth who are like, it’s about time you asked us,” said Skov.
–Caleb Galaraga is a freelance journalist based in New York City. His work has appeared in Christianity Today, Broadview Magazine, the Times of Israel and Rappler.
