USA (MNN) —Reaching, discipling, and mobilizing Gen Z for Jesus. This is the mission of the HowtoLife Movement.
Founded by Jordan Whitmer in 2015 while he was still a high school student, the HowtoLife Movement spread quickly across the country and is now reaching young adults globally through youth-led evangelism events, social media outreach, and national and global conferences.
“One of the themes that we’ve had, and even put on some of our t-shirts for our HowtoLife Movement youth work, is just, straight up, ‘Jesus is the hope for Gen Z,’” Whitmer says. “And they like to rally behind that, and knowing that in such a hopeless world and hopeless generation with so many…problems, there is hope. And that hope comes through Jesus, and turning our lives over to Him completely, and serving Him, and walking with Him.”
HowtoLife remains committed to helping older teenagers and young adults, ages 16 to 22, since they are an often overlooked demographic, especially in mobilizing for missions.
This movement explores the answer to a question often asked by young people: How do I do life?
“‘How to life’ is the gospel,” Whitmer says. “It’s Jesus, living life with Him. And it’s a great conversation starter because people know where you’re going with that…And we want to help people learn how to do life, ‘how to life’.”
Typically, young people hear about this movement through social media or through friends. HowtoLife leadership then engages with those people and provides them leadership manuals and training to lead events in their areas.
These local youth event directors are encouraged to come to a training retreat so they can engage with other leaders and be inspired and discipled before leading their own events.
“There’s a process, but within that, though, there’s a lot of creativity,” Whitmer says. “These leaders can pick their speakers and their concepts and their worship songs. And there’s a lot of freedom to plan a really unique program, but also some things we want consistent, especially with sharing the gospel message. And we train people on how to do that.”
Globally, HowtoLife has engaged with dozens of different countries. Their first digital conference in 2020 saw attendance from 47 U.S. states and close to 40 countries.
Though globally, in non-western countries, evangelism might look a little differently due to social media restrictions or local laws surrounding freedom of religion, HowtoLife is still equipping local leaders in these places to lead people to Jesus.
“I want to invite anyone who’s listening to consider praying for using this unique movement of mobilizing Gen Z, reaching, discipling, and mobilizing Gen Z around the world for Christ,” Whitmer says. “We have a lot of young people who have interests and are wanting to organize things, but they need people praying for them.”
He encourages people to pray for the Lord to send Gen Z workers into the world to raise up more Gen Z and Gen Alpha young people for Christ.
“My prayer is that the Lord would send more workers into his harvest field and raise up more people in Gen Z and eventually Gen Alpha and really every generation we need more laborers,” Whitmer says. “But specifically with the nature of our work to raising up laborers in the next generation is definitely a massive prayer request that I’d want to encourage.”
Learn more about the HowtoLife Movement at www.howtolifemovement.com or through the GenZ Today podcast.
Header image courtesy of Brooke Cagle via Unsplash
