Readers, I am ceding this space today to my Gen Z daughter, Julia Windley-Daoust. I have had the honor of hearing her opinions for 19 years, and she is passionate on how the Church can improve its outreach and inclusion, especially to Gen Z. It’s true that those of us who are not of that generation don’t stop and make space to listen their take, so I told her to write it down and I would publish it. She took me up on it–and I am grateful to share it with you. Julia is a first year student at St. Catherine University in Saint Paul, MN, involved in FOCUS (at home) and Saint Paul Outreach (at school), passionate about traveling and refugee support, and majoring in ASL Interpreting.

What if you were defined, categorized, and called out to only by your worst traits? The traits that you are ashamed of, wish you didn’t have, and can’t seem to escape?

The anxious generation. The depressed generation. “Screenagers.” For Gen Z, this is all that we are called out by. It makes one wonder if they are only worth the curiosity of a university researcher, like rats in a lab. Never once have I seen a book for sale, or an article come out that calls out to Gen Z by their positive traits, despite having many.

Though humans fail in seeing Gen Z in its whole, God does not. God does not call out to Gen Z by these titles–depressed, isolated, addicted–God calls out to us by name. Gen Z is most beloved to God, and dear to His ever giving heart. We are His beautiful children, with more positive defining traits than can be counted because we were made in God’s image and likeness. 

So why is Generation Z not in the house of the Lord if He is the only one who truly sees them for their whole selves, the bad but especially the so very good? It’s because of this; in this time and age there is one singular thing that puts a harsh divide against Gen Z and the Catholic Church. Brace yourself–sometimes the most important things for us to hear are the hardest. One of the most important qualities to Generation Z as a culture is welcoming. The Catholic Church has something valuable to learn from Gen Z when it comes to welcoming. It is something that this generation leads the way and excels in. And it is something many Catholic churches need to learn.

You have a choice whether or not to believe that this is true–that one of the most important things in Gen Z culture is welcoming and that we are actually good at it. You have a choice: you could continue to think of Gen Z in all our infamy, and tsk at our inability to stop scrolling, and tell us once more what we already know. To put down the phones. To stop vaping. To just not. Again, to tell us what we already know. 

Or, you could become like Gen Z, and open your arms. Open the doors of the church, and celebrate the world’s youth, for they are precious, and it is of these that the kingdom of heaven belongs to. Instead of focusing on solutions as priority, such as how to fix what you call our extreme brokenness, consider starting with joy. Why are you constantly talking about Gen Z’s loneliness and depression? Why are you letting Gen Z wallow in what you are now predestining for us? To fight sadness you must have joy. To fight loneliness you must have community. You do not need statistics, or another book, or another well meaning retired person writing a so-so article about a generation that they simply never took the time to get to know. You do not need any of these things–Jesus didn’t need them at least, when He reached out to His young adult and teenaged generation. He did things very differently.

He saw all of the best parts in His young friends and lifted them up and encouraged them, and they went on in greatness in the house of the Lord. Those young adults, some only teenagers at the time, that Jesus reached out to and applauded and encouraged and radically welcomed went on to write the most influential book in the history of the world. He never doubted them. He never tsked at their flaws. He saw them, all of them, and He knew in His core that they were good, because they were His. In fact, He saw so much good in that young generation, that He appointed them as leaders. He called them, He welcomed them, and He loved them, and they excelled and they loved Him to the point of death.

Don’t overcomplicate it. Be like Jesus. Welcome us in and lift us up. And if you do all this and it still is not enough–you can at least try to learn how to use TikTok.