Christianity Today July 30, 2026 9 min signal 2026-07-30

A 'spiritual revival for one' is no real revival

Archived text mirror, captured for personal reading when the Signal ran. Formatting is approximate — read the original at the source.

Christianity Today

July 30, 2026

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Every semester, I give a lecture to my undergraduates about evangelicalism. Since I teach at a Catholic university in Manhattan, you might expect my students to know at least something about this topic. I always begin the lecture with a photo of Billy Graham and ask, “Who is this?” Each time, it’s the same reaction: deafening silence. (The closest I’ve gotten is “Hey, isn’t that Bobby something?”) It’s both a disheartening and a sobering moment.

However, this semester was different. I started my slideshow with Graham projected on the screen, quizzed my students, and waited for the blank stares. Instead, half the class barked out, “That’s Billy Graham!” Stunned, I asked them, “How did you know that?” They all said the same thing: “We watch him on TikTok.”

I’d skeptically heard the murmurs of a spiritual revival among Gen Z, but now I’d seen it for myself. Since that moment, I’ve only seen this trend of Gen Z’s spiritual interest grow, especially in my New York community. In June, Christian worship artist Forrest Frank sold out Madison Square Garden. I’ve witnessed congregations like Church of the City, pastored by Jon Tyson, brimming with young people praying for revival in NYC. The Wall Street Journal even claimed the best place for young singles to meet in Manhattan is Catholic Mass.

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As Gen Z becomes increasingly interested in spirituality, one focus is spiritual formation practices, such as silence, solitude, and Sabbath-keeping. Whereas the Emergent Church movement of the previous generation prized a casual and comfortable expression of faith, I find many in Gen Z value a sense of sacredness and have a strong desire for practical change. This is a wonderful trend—yet there’s something peculiar about this wave of interest in spiritual formation among the younger generation. Namely, it is not accompanied by a significant spike in church attendance.

Analyzing data about religion and Gen Z is a hot-button issue, so I’ll proceed with caution in my assessment. Some evidence suggests Gen Z churchgoers have outpaced older generations in monthly church attendance, even as other statistics show declining church attendance among all demographics. Yet declining attendance has not hindered their desire to engage in certain spiritual formation practices. The strange reality is that many members of Gen Z are increasingly keeping the Sabbath yet are uncommitted to local churches.

So what gives? Why is it that so many in a generation compelled to practice the ways of Jesus have chosen to do so without the gathered body of believers? Of course, we ought not to reduce such a complex question to a single answer. However, one likely reason is that many local churches have made discipleship an individualistic enterprise, and Gen Z’s approach is merely the natural next step.

Since I’m a pastor, people feel obliged to tell me their spiritual life isn’t up to par. It’s as if they’re at the doctor’s office, confessing their health regimen isn’t as it should be: “My quiet time hasn’t been that consistent.” “I am behind on my Bible reading plan.” When I hear this, I cringe.

Obviously, I have no gripes with Bible reading—we ought to read our Bibles every single day. Rather, it bothers me when discipleship is domesticated into a morning ritual of a fresh cup of coffee beside a chair, accompanied by ten minutes perusing a study Bible, mostly reading its notes rather than Scripture itself. It is remarkable that we place such an emphasis on private and personal devotional reading when in the New Testament, there is only one recorded instance of someone reading Scripture in isolation.

It occurs in the Book of Acts, when the Ethiopian eunuch is reading the prophet Isaiah by himself. Philip sees the eunuch’s quiet time and asks him one question: “Do you understand what you are reading?” (Acts 8:30). This is a very first-century way to say, “Why are you doing that?”

Our emphasis on personal Bible reading is more puzzling when you consider the New Testament contains an exhortation to a specific type of Scripture reading. That is, Paul tells Timothy to devote himself “to the public reading of Scripture” (1 Tim. 4:13, emphasis mine). Reading Scripture in the early church was a communal, audible experience. Literacy rates were very low, and papyrus wasn’t a cheap commodity. The mere sight of a scroll was an invitation to a communal experience of listening, responding to, agreeing with, lamenting, and celebrating the written word read aloud. In the ancient world, seeing a scroll would feel like seeing a friend bring a board game over—it’s something in which everyone partakes. But today we have the opposite: A person’s physical Bible can feel like a diary, a sacred personal journal whose interior we shouldn’t see.

This insular nature isn’t limited to our Bible reading.

In the 1980s and ’90s, many churches became overprogrammed with a litany of activities—softball leagues, coffee connections, and motorcycle clubs—all operating under the banner of ministry. Largely in response to this, in the 2000s, the “simple church” model became a two-trick pony: sermons and community groups. Sundays are for preaching, Wednesdays for discussing said preaching.

While this model seems communal on the surface, its emphasis on spiritual growth is nonetheless internal. For instance, Sunday services end the same way weeknight community groups begin: with someone asking, “What did you think of the sermon?” Many of our churches have created a culture in which we see someone’s insular thoughts and experiences as a form of discipleship or Christian maturity. As my friend Chris Nye once told me, “Our opinion of the sermon has become more important than our obedience to it.” Even in our community-based, simple-church model, we are creating a simplistic vision of discipleship that is thoroughly insular, where we prize our thoughts more than our transformation.

Since our discipleship playbook for the past several decades has been to read the Bible privately and reflect internally on the sermon, it is no wonder that when Gen Z and younger generations encounter the spiritual disciplines, many prefer to practice them in isolation, apart from the gathered body. It is likely the only way they have seen discipleship modeled.

But what’s the difference? If Gen Zers are genuinely becoming more like Jesus through their current, individualistic model of spiritual formation, why should they practice the disciplines in community?

Well, because spiritual practices apart from a community are not spiritual formation—at least not according to Jesus.

The spiritual practices in Jesus’ life consistently had a communal aim. For instance, during his ministry, Jesus frequently withdrew to be with his heavenly Father. And yet in almost every instance, it’s in response to, not at the expense of, being with others (Mark 1:35; John 6:15). That is, after Jesus spent time with a crowd or extended time with his disciples, he often retreated to pray (Matt. 14:23). And after a while, he returned to his people (Luke 6:12–13).

Or take Jesus’ practice of the Sabbath. Today, for many young people, keeping the Sabbath has essentially been reduced to disconnecting from the outside world.But this model would be foreign to Jesus and his disciples. When they kept the Sabbath—and notice that they practiced it in community—they did so by ceasing from work, not the world. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day tried every which way to implicate him for behaving improperly on the Sabbath (Matt. 12:2; Mark 2:24), but spending extended time with others wasn’t one of the charges. That was expected.

Throughout the New Testament, the spiritual disciplines—silence, solitude, prayer, fasting, Sabbath, and so on—are all practiced, discussed, or prescribed in the context of community. Therefore, it’s not a stretch to say that spiritual formation apart from community, at least in New Testament terms, is no spiritual formation at all. It is self-help.

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I say this not as a takedown of the younger generation. If anything, it’s just as much a challenge to the older generations who offered them a watered-down, domesticated, individualistic version of spiritual growth. We all need to grow beyond the individualism we’ve clung to under the guise of discipleship and learn the practice of spiritual formation together. If we are going to exhort Gen Z to join a community, we must give them one worth joining.

Of course, the next question is, how do we actually do this?

The unsatisfactory answer is that every church and community is different, so I can only speak for what’s worked in my church. The Practicing the Way video courses, led by John Mark Comer, have been a hit with our community groups. They’re a great way for people of all ages to learn how to participate in spiritual formation together. We also fast weekly during the season of Lent, breaking each fast with a meal in each other’s homes. And recently, a group of men in our church, both young and old, started meeting to look at every command from Jesus in the Gospels and then simply do them together.

These are small steps we’ve made toward spiritual formation in community, and they’ve worked for us. Hopefully these ideas will help you too. And if all else fails, maybe a faithful compromise between the generations is to watch Billy Graham videos on TikTok … together.

Daniel Kunkel is a pastor in New York, as well as a teaching fellow and PhD candidate in New Testament at Fordham University.

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