Gen Z Faith Through Social Media
Barni is a 16-year-old from the Netherlands who represents the new wave of Gen Z Christians discovering faith through unconventional paths. His journey to deeper faith began not in a traditional church setting, but through social media.
"When I try to learn new things about Christianity, I could read the Bible, but where else should I look?" Barni explains. "Then I went on social media and saw a lot of people preaching or talking about faith and how it changed their lives. So, that really was a motivation to look further into the religion."
Discovering the Opwekking Festival
Barni attended Opwekking (which means "Revival" in Dutch), a massive four-day Christian festival held annually in the Netherlands. In recent years, the event has drawn 60,000 people in-person and over 300,000 more online - remarkable numbers for one of the world's most secular countries.
Revival in Secular Netherlands
The Netherlands saw dramatic decline in religiosity after WWII, but recent research called "God in the Netherlands" found that more members of Gen Z identify as Christian compared to millennials - a reversal of the secularization trend that has defined Western Europe for decades.
Digital Missionaries Reach Youth
For Barni and his peers, social media influencers like Zara Goedemans (a 22-year-old Pentecostal with over a million TikTok followers) have become digital missionaries, making Christianity accessible and relatable to a generation that may never have stepped inside a church.