Don’t settle for an impact smaller than you’re called to make. It's time to unlock your potential and lead confidently into a future filled with growth — for yourself, your church, and your mission. Get access to some of my best leadership content, only published in my newsletters.
On The Rise: Gen alpha youth groups, bad AI and retro internet
Published about 13 hours ago • 4 min read
Welcome to the On The Rise newsletter, where I feature fascinating, helpful, and sometimes curious content that caught my attention this week.
Today, fresh Barna data on what youth groups today look like, and teen boys are attending more than teen girls, just like Gen Z. Plus bad actors are loving AI, an under $10 fire starter I love, and the internet c. 1996. Retro is in, right?
Who’s Going to Youth Group These Days?
More Gen Alpha Boys Than Girls, It Seems
New Barna research shows that a majority of self-identifying Christians are going to Youth Group, but paralleling Gen Z church attendance, more teen boys are showing up than girls.
Also paralleling Gen Z trends, older teens are less likely to go than younger teens. Check out the findings for yourself here.
AI Can't Copy Your Church's Greatest Strength
Real community, real presence, and truth that doesn't change.
AI can't replicate real community, real presence, unchanging truth, or deep integrity. That's exactly what the church was designed to offer. But it won't happen by accident. It takes leaders who are paying attention and preparing.
Understanding what AI means for the church is one thing, but knowing what to do about it is another.
AI and the Future Churchreleased just a few weeks ago, along with the free AI Hubcompanion with tools, research, and practical ways to help you see where your church stands, what you can do first, and how to lead your team through it.
AI Is Becoming a Playground for Evil and Bad Actors
Just In Case You’d Been Sleeping Well At Night.
If you’re looking to double down on your insomnia, I have some great reading for you.
In my new book AI and the Future Church, I argue that the development of AI will allow evil to scale at to unprecedented levels. Less than a month after its release, we get this.
Anthropic recently released a report that got buried in the headlines, on how accessible AI has made evil at scale for bad actors.
“The cybersecurity skills of AI models mean that AI has collapsed the labor and tooling gap that used to separate well-resourced, state-sponsored operations from individual operators.”
In other words, lone actors are empowered like never before, and they’re using it to do damage.
Hackers used AI to run attacks that used to require entire teams and state-level resources: a lone French hacktivist breached 14+ organizations solo.
A criminal group went from one stolen password to full cloud access in about three hours.
Chinese exploit researchers used AI to find over a dozen new security vulnerabilities in a single month.
Other groups used AI to run large-scale scams, fake news operations, and election-manipulation campaigns.
And then there’s the reference to Anthropic blocking some efforts at bio-hacking, including attempts to engineer a deadly virus.
This means it’s more important than ever to pray, talk to your local politicians about public policy on AI, and to safeguard your data and make sure you’re the church that can be trusted with people’s lives, data, and information. Using your birthday or favorite food as your password has to go.
Equal Dignity Doesn’t Mean Equal Engagement
What if treating every giver exactly the same is actually limiting generosity in your church?
This article explores why a single giving strategy can miss both the heart and the potential of your people, and how pastors can lead with greater wisdom.
Read the full article here and share it with your team.
My Favorite Lighter for BBQ, Camp Fires, Candles Etc.
Once in a while I find a deal I can’t wait to share. Unlike most lighters, this under $10 lighter is refillable, durable and last for years. You refill them with Butane you can get at any hardware store. I discovered these maybe five years ago after going through way too many fire starting devices. Better for the planet, and they’re almost flamethrower level when you refill them, living up to its Jet Flame thrower name. 🙂
I’m giving out my personal email address (from 1996)
80s and 90s nostalgia is having a moment, and in the very real-likelihood you don’t rememberr what it was like to get online in 1996,this simple website takes you back to dial-up and desktop heaven. I got the internet in 1996, and my first email address was carey@planeteer.com (Planeteer was a local ISP that, like almost all of them, quickly went out of business).
It was an exciting day when you got a connection (after telling whoever was making a call to get off the phone because you needed to use the internet), and to connect at 28.8 Kbps, well, it hardly got better than that.
Cheering for you,
P.S. Weekend Watching
Sean Morgan & Warren Bird
Everything You Know About Multisite Church is Wrong! What the Largest Multisite Study Ever Done Actually Found with Warren Bird and Sean Morgan
Carey Nieuwhof Communications, PO Box 160, Oro Medonte, Ontario L0L 2X0
Carey Nieuwhof
Where 100,000+ leaders get top insights to thrive in life and leadership.
Don’t settle for an impact smaller than you’re called to make. It's time to unlock your potential and lead confidently into a future filled with growth — for yourself, your church, and your mission. Get access to some of my best leadership content, only published in my newsletters.
