Why Discerning Vocation Can Be Hard for Gen Z, Part 1

JOHN D. BASIE

Flourishing. Dignity. Vocation. It is fair to claim that most faculties at yesteryear’s institutions across the United States were more thoughtful about these concepts, especially before the Civil War. Granted, that was a long time ago, but that doesn’t change the fact that the keepers of the soul of the American college really understood these concepts. Most of them would have agreed with theologian Cornelius Plantinga’s biblical understanding of shalom—the reality of “universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight.”[1] Shalom, as Plantinga says, is “the way things are supposed to be.” Faculty at colleges around the United States, at least until the fundamentalist-modernist controversy in the early 20th century, would have nearly universally agreed with him that one of higher education’s core purposes was to cultivate students in such a holistic way that these young adults experience this kind of flourishing in their various vocations. There was an assumption that living in shalom entailed using one’s gifts through various vocations to work towards redemption in a fallen world. Furthermore, many students would have come to learn the meaning of these terms at least at a rudimentary level, although most would not have been as articulate as faculty in defining them.

Saying that it is difficult for many 18-year-olds to discern their various vocations is the understatement of the century. I suspect this has always been the case, and yet it is likely that, due to a few challenges that are peculiar to this cultural moment, it is even more difficult for many members of Generation Z than for members of older generations. In part one of this two-part series, I will address three common obstacles that members of Generation Z experience in the college years as they seek to discern their various vocations. These three challenges are 1) the proliferation of career options in the new millennium, 2) the decline of resilience in young adults, and 3) collapsing plausibility structures. In part two of this series, I will attempt to unpack the third obstacle at length, as its understanding is essential for Christian faculty and administrators at high schools and universities worldwide.

Mine is a modest claim, as I am merely seeking to demonstrate that difficulty in discerning vocation is true for some members of Gen Z, and more specifically, that some of the factors associated with this difficulty are fairly recent developments.  I use the plural—vocations—because all Christ- followers have more than one vocation at any given time. This includes the vocations of being a family member (spouse, sibling, child), a student, and a worker—and often holding all of those vocations together at once. For the sake of focus, in this post I will limit my use of the term to that of being a worker.

First, career options have only increased, both in number as well as in complexity. Let me be clear, lest I be misunderstood. It doesn’t follow from the fact that career options have increased in number that discerning wise options for one’s career path is easier than in the past. For young people who want to “get it right” and not make a huge career mistake from the get-go, it is often quite the opposite. The numbers of industries, nonprofits, and small businesses have multiplied. Even if a college senior is able to say confidently “Here is who I am, these are the God-given gifts I bring to the table, and here is what I’m aiming for by the five-year mark,” she still has the daunting task of figuring out how many and what kinds of organizations to apply for. Having options can be helpful for sure. Too many options, however, is overwhelming and can lead to analysis-paralysis in the discernment process.

Second, today’s students who go straight into college from high school are more thin-skinned in general than they were not so long ago. Feedback from college and university leaders as well as formal research is showing that student resilience has been in decline.  This means they are less able to cope with stressful situations that really shouldn’t be so stressful. Damage to resilience is further compounded by the fact that members of Gen Z place a high priority on preparing for career success (and all of the self-imposed stress that comes with attaining that priority) at the expense of becoming spiritually mature and understanding their own God-given design.[2]

In my own experience this ever-thinning resilience is linked to a fear-based desire to make everyone around them happy while ignoring who they are designed to be and what unique things God might be preparing them to do. More than in the past, they tend to define themselves by the chorus of voices (e.g., peers, parents) around them telling who they are and what they should do with their lives rather than listening to those voices through the filter of authentic Christian community as well as their own biblically-informed perspective that is ultimately grounded in the One whose view of them matters most.

Finally, the plausibility structures in our culture have shifted drastically in a very short amount of time. For the sake of this post, this is where I want us to think most critically. Coined decades ago by sociologist Peter Berger, the term "plausibility structures" refer to the societal conditions that make certain beliefs and truth claims credible and reasonable. Berger states the following in his groundbreaking work, The Sacred Canopy (1967),“The reality of the Christian world depends upon the presence of social structures within which this reality is taken for granted and within which successive generations of individuals are socialized in such a way that this world will be real to them.”

What Berger means is not that the actual metaphysical reality of God’s world depends upon any social structure. Rather, his claim is an epistemological one. That is, how we as Christians through the generations continue to have knowledge of and confidence in the reality God created depends, to a large degree on these plausibility structures. To be clear, this is a sociological explanation only. As one who believes in God’s sovereignty over all spheres, I am not claiming that we as Christ followers should place our hope and trust in this concept. Our ultimate hope is in Christ only and we can have and do have knowledge of him through his revealed Word. That said, it makes sense that our society’s plausibility structures will support Christian ways of thinking and living to a greater or lesser degree.

So, what happens when these structures are no longer just assumed by the culture? Berger says this: “when this plausibility structure loses its intactness or continuity, the Christian world begins to totter and its reality ceases to impose itself as self-evident truth.” The evangelical plausibility structures in America that were put in place by our forebears are coming apart at the seams, as evidenced by both cultural and legal changes in the United States in the last few years. This matters greatly for Gen Z. I will unpack this claim further in part two.

John D. Basie is director of Masters Experience at the Impact 360 Institute.

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[1] Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002)

[2] See Gen Z: The Culture, Beliefs, and Motivations Shaping the Next Generation (Barna Group & Impact 360 Institute, 2018): 38-39.