Last year, a Christian organization saw more than 190,000 young people chose Christ as their Lord and Savior, and that number is only expected to rise.
Sean Dunn, head of the Christian group Groundwire, attributes the success to their ministry's ability to target audience.
"We're not going after the atheists," Dunn said in an interview with Faithwire. "The media would want us to believe that everybody's an atheist, but, truthfully, 71% of Millennials [and] Gen Z believe that God's a real being."
Groundwire, an organization dedicated to helping young people develop personal relationships with Christ, reaches out to Millennials and Gen Zs using popular media outlets.
Dunn explains that people don't need to be persuaded to believe in God.
"We don't need to convince them that [God's] real," he said. "We need to remind them that he's relevant and he becomes relevant when he intersects [at] that point of need in their life."
Groundwire reportedly maximizes social media channels to connect with today's youth. Because most young people check their phones more than 100 times a day, interacting with them in their natural environment has reportedly shown to be quite beneficial.
"We can't get them to go to church, but we can't get them to put down their phones," Dunn said. "So, what we do is we use Hollywood-produced content."
Dunn said that young people have short attention spans, so his group uses short videos to get their attention. And once they've had their attention, Groundwire has personnel available to talk to them 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
All these efforts paid off as they claim that they have witnessed over 116,000 faith professions in 2020 and 192,000 in 2021. Before that, the organization also saw 162,861 professions of faith between 2016 and 2019 as per their website.
More about Groundwire
Groundwire's strategy for reaching Gen Zs and Millennials, in particular, is not to guilt-trip them, but rather to "interrupt" them in their social media binges.
"We place well-produced, relevant video content on the most popular media channels that share authentic hope with many who might not be ready to walk into a church," reads a statement on their webpage.
There are several reasons for this, but the data they've gathered on Millennials and Gen Z in their website's about section shows that 71% believe in the existence of God and 68% believe in heaven. They also show that while 65% claim to be Christian, 65% rarely or never attend church and 39% have no religious affiliation. They also show that the suicide rate increased by 30% between 2000 and 2016.
Groundwire does not directly extend an invitation to attend church; rather, they reach young people directly on their smart phones. Their mission is to communicate the Gospel with as many people as possible through high-quality videos with relevant content, their website, and round-the-clock counseling.
They do, however, try to connect young believers with a local group of believers so that they may continue in their pursuit for spiritual growth.
