For years, conversations about Gen Z and the Church have been dominated by concern. Are they disengaging? Are they disillusioned? Are they drifting away from institutions altogether? Too often, the framing assumes loss before curiosity ever enters the room.
Jo Saxton doesn’t recognize that picture.
As the executive director of a leadership institute at Bethel University and the founder of the Aza Collective, Saxton spends much of her time with emerging leaders who are already shaping how faith and leadership intersect. What she sees isn’t a generation waiting to be convinced or coaxed back. It’s a generation already leading, often in ways that expose how outdated some church leadership assumptions have become.
One difference shows up immediately.
“I don’t see an expectation that leadership should be lonely,” Saxton says. “That’s one of the biggest shifts.”
For decades, Christian leadership culture prized endurance and individual authority. Leaders were expected to absorb pressure quietly, project confidence and keep going without asking for much in return. Community was celebrated from the pulpit but treated as optional for the people standing behind it.
Gen Z isn’t interested in inheriting that model. Saxton describes students who assume collaboration as normal and who expect leadership to happen in relationship rather than at arm’s length.
“I remember being told, ‘If you’re going to lead, you’re going to lose friends,’” she says. “They don’t assume that’s the deal.”
That expectation alone challenges one of the Church’s most deeply ingrained myths: that authority requires distance. For Gen Z, leadership isn’t something you do above people. It’s something you do with them.
Saxton also notices how differently younger leaders approach responsibility. Previous generations often entered leadership cautiously, waiting for permission or affirmation before stepping forward. Titles came slowly. Confidence was filtered through humility. Ambition was often treated as a liability. Gen Z, she says, starts somewhere else.
“They don’t assume leadership belongs to someone older or more established,” Saxton says. “There’s an assumption of agency.”
That confidence doesn’t come from thinking they have everything figured out. Saxton is quick to name the reality shaping this generation. Many of her students came of age during COVID. Anxiety is present. Fatigue is real.
“The anxiety piece is serious,” she says. “That’s not something to dismiss.”
At the same time, she sees focus and discipline. The world they’re entering is unstable. The job market is uncertain. Leadership, for many of them, isn’t aspirational language. It’s a practical response to the conditions around them.
“They’re working hard because they know they have to,” Saxton says.
What stands out is what they value once they’re in leadership spaces. Saxton sees less interest in titles and more concern for whether the work actually matters. Visibility holds less appeal than impact. Influence is measured by proximity rather than platform.
That posture shows up clearly in how Gen Z engages church life. Saxton points to students who integrate faith naturally into daily rhythms and who talk about belief without the guardedness she’s seen in older generations.
“There’s less reserve,” she says. “When they’re in, they’re in.”
It’s a contrast to church cultures built around performance and polish. Where previous models centered the stage, Gen Z gravitates toward participation. They expect involvement, not management.
Saxton doesn’t frame this as rebellion. She frames it as formation.
“They’re not trying to tear the Church down,” she says. “They’re leading the way they’ve been shaped to lead.”
That instinct also reshapes how Gen Z thinks about community. Through the Aza Collective, Saxton has spent years listening to women leaders name the loneliness that often comes with leadership, especially in ministry spaces that were never designed with them in mind. What stands out now is how younger leaders approach connection without apology.
“They build relationships naturally,” she says. “They don’t treat needing people as a weakness.”
That matters because isolation remains one of the Church’s most persistent leadership failures. Burnout and disillusionment rarely happen in a vacuum. They grow when leaders are expected to carry more than they were ever meant to carry alone.
Gen Z doesn’t appear interested in repeating that cycle.
“They don’t assume leadership should cost them their relationships,” Saxton says. “That’s actually a strength.”
The changes Saxton is describing aren’t flashy. They don’t arrive with slogans or strategy decks. They show up structurally — in how leadership teams function, how authority is shared and how calling is understood. This is a generation that questions why leadership must look a certain way and why faithfulness has been tied to exhaustion.
That posture carries particular weight for women in the Church. Saxton sees younger leaders assume partnership as a baseline rather than a concession.
“They’re coming in with the expectation that men and women lead together,” she says. “That’s just normal to them.”
That assumption changes the conversation. Less energy is spent justifying presence. More energy is spent doing the work itself.
Saxton is clear that none of this means the transition will be easy. Institutions move slowly. Systems resist change. Tension is inevitable when new leadership instincts collide with old expectations.
Still, she’s blunt about the choice in front of the Church.
“We can learn from what’s already happening,” she says, “or we can resist it and keep wondering why people feel disconnected.”
The shift Gen Z is bringing isn’t theoretical. It’s already shaping leadership pipelines, classrooms and ministry teams. The Church doesn’t need another debate about young people. It needs to recognize the leaders already in its midst.
What Gen Z is rejecting isn’t the Church itself. It’s leadership built on distance, silence and burnout masquerading as faithfulness.
“The question isn’t whether Gen Z will lead,” Saxton says. “They already are.”
The real question is whether the Church is willing to be changed by the leaders it keeps saying it wants.
