26th February 2025

As if we didn’t all have enough to worry about, there was a flurry of newspaper articles earlier this month about the attitudes of “gen Z” who are those people amongst us born between 1997 and 2012. I don’t see many gen Z people these days and so I found this interesting reading, the article I spent most time on was by Kate McCusker in The Guardian and her article can be found here. It is always dangerous to generalise about a group of people based on age, gender, race or anything else, of course. But it seems fair to say that there is a general mood of disaffection amongst young people in our society. As McCusker puts it:

it feels like the social contract has been torn up, put in an envelope and mailed back to us alongside a statement from the Student Loans Company. The labour market’s a dud, starting salaries are risibly paltry, owning so much as a parking space is a pipe dream and the great, terrible truth is that we’re heading for an uninhabitable planet.

Do we have anything to say to the gen Z folk in our locality? We probably feel along with them that they might feel differently if

going to work resulted in a decent standard of living, if they knew that they could get a hospital appointment, if they had confidence in the areas they were living, if they felt a sense of community and solidarity among people, if they knew their neighbours.

Perhaps we start with helping to bring a sense of confidence and community to our locality.

A third quote, this time from the prayer Debbie led us in last week:

Father, you never promised that a life with you would be easy, but you did promise to be with us in it all, and there is no pain or difficulty we face that you have not experienced through your beloved Son, our Immanuel. We ask that you fill us with confidence in your unfailing, abundant love – that rooted and grounded in it, we will bear fruit: fruit that will last. And that together, we may be faithful witnesses to your Kingdom here and now, on Whiteladies Road.

Nick Parsons