Gen Z Evangelism: Equipping the Next Generation for Digital Evangelism with NextSteps

It was January 2024, and I had just finished the Jesus Film Project Tour when I met Aaron, the Product Director here at Jesus Film Project, and he showed me NextSteps. He showed me a NextSteps digital journey on his phone, how it moved when he tapped and swiped, how it played videos, and how it could generate images. 

Aaron explained that NextSteps wasn’t an app or a social media platform. It was an interactive webpage you could view on your phone. As he showed me more of NextSteps, he explained that people would arrive at this interactive webpage after watching a film on Jesus Film Project’s YouTube channel, which has millions of subscribers. 

I tried to wrap my head around this concept. To be honest, it took me some time to grasp the importance of what Aaron and his team had built in NextSteps. 

At the time, I was a senior in college. Having participated in my church’s social media ministry, I was passionate about technology and using it and the gifts God has given me to help people meet Jesus and grow in Him. 

Fast forward to today. I work on NextSteps journeys myself. For now, I am the only Gen Z product manager on the team. But I’m sure that will change soon. It has to. 

You see, I feel strongly that you and I, the body of Christ around the world, are called to embrace digital technology and to equip our generations and younger generations with digital tools for evangelism. We need Gen Z evangelism tools like NextSteps.

Serving the Next Generation Well

Passing on the digital mantle is crucial to fulfilling the Great Commission. Digital tools like NextSteps assist the next generation of Christians, Gen Z like me, to advance the gospel and fulfill the Great Commission in our lifetimes. 

It’s my hope that after you read this post, you understand how NextSteps can help people encounter the story of Jesus and take the next steps in their faith journey. This includes Gen Z seekers and everyone, everywhere—people seeking truth from across all generations. 

Gen Z—A Fully Digital Generation

Allow me to say that I celebrate many things about my generation. I love the creativity, authenticity, humor, openness and sensitivity of Gen Z. I find that Gen Alpha is the same too. 

Growing up in a highly connected world means that you can relate to a stranger on what kind of music you listen to, or memes you’ve been laughing about. You can explore a range of ideas and learn about anything easily. But with that heavy exposure to constant information and a limited mental and emotional capacity to navigate that information, it’s no wonder we’re so anxious, depressed, and lonely. 

We are the first people in all of human history to navigate a world like this. 

Approximately 96% of teens use the internet daily, and 46% of teens are online almost constantly. And if we conceptually consider the rate of content that is pushed to these platforms, we can safely assume that very little of that content is Biblical, hopeful, or tells them more about who Jesus is and how they can respond to Him. 

That’s a missional gap. The world may say that there is no hope for the next generation––but we don’t think so. We believe that Jesus is drawing all people to Himself, and we, as His hands and feet, can carry the good news to everyone, everywhere. And there is a part we can play in providing content and tools for people to do that digitally. 

Why Choose Digital Tools for Ministry

So, why am I talking about digital tools and even a “product” like NextSteps when I talk about the gospel and ministry? Because digital tools and products can actually help us meet today’s most pressing ministry needs, regardless of our age or where we are in the world! 

Because I help create products here at Jesus Film Project, I think about this a lot. And bear with me as I explain.

Here’s the thing: All great products are built around our needs as humans. 

Think about the products you use most during the day––from the water bottle that fits perfectly in your cupholder, to your favorite brand of shoes. Those shoes meet a need—they provide you comfort as you walk and support your mobility. Now look more closely at tools that you use to support your spiritual life, like Scripture journals or Bible apps. All of these products exist and you use them because they support a need in your life. 

That’s because each one of us exists in a living dialogue with products. Products fill gaps for us, culture changes to create more gaps in our lives, which causes companies to evolve products, and so on. 

Here at Jesus Film Project, our digital teams choose to provide products to respond to ministry needs and missional gaps around the world. We also forecast needs and innovate solutions to bridge them. Specifically, my team and I have traced an avenue of discovery within the digital world. One of those discoveries was NextSteps.

What is NextSteps, Exactly?

NextSteps began as a tool to help Christian believers follow up with people who had watched Jesus Film Project videos. After being impacted by a film or a clip, anyone from anywhere in the world could discover more about following Jesus. 

Since then, the NextSteps platform has empowered over 4,400 creators (Christian ministry leaders), garnering 770K views from people who are curious about Jesus as a result of  25K journeys that were created. A majority of these views are from some of the most unreached countries in the world, as we engineered NextSteps to be a safe place to encounter Jesus. 

So, what is NextSteps? Technically speaking, it is a micro-website that runs through your browser, like any other webpage. It houses a series of screens that have text, images, videos, polls, etc. These screens can adapt based on what the user chooses to do, making it heavily interactive. Further, you can link users to other websites with customizable buttons. Meaning, at the end of a journey, someone can discover more about your church, gathering, ministry, or even get in contact with someone who can talk about faith. 

This journey about NextSteps is helpful to understand the user experience. You tap and swipe. I like to think about it like the “stories” feature on your social media platform of choice. 

Conceptually speaking, NextSteps is a vehicle. It is a means of transport from one place to another. For example, imagine you’re a partner ministry in East Asia. At the end of a broadcast screening of JESUS on local television, a QR code would appear on the screen. This QR code takes you to a NextSteps journey. 

The journey may go through a series of screens that share the gospel, and at the end, there is a link to connect with a local partner. In this scenario, the partner authored this journey to connect offline seekers to in-person communities. 

The Great Commission is Your Job, Too.

The next generation, which is my generation, needs a tool like NextSteps—a digital tool for a digital world. It’s a great Gen Z evangelism tool.

Now, I say “the digital world” here as if your life and mine weren’t deeply entrenched in digital already. Consider your appliances, your tablet, your car. These days it’s almost impossible to mark a clear difference between what’s digital and physical in our lives. 

Like a thread woven through fabric, digital tools and interfaces have integrated themselves into almost every aspect of society for most of us. They determine how we communicate, how we consume our entertainment and how we engage socially (Instagram, Facebook, etc.) 

I don’t write this with a negative tone. I do believe that the digital world is a large opportunity for Christians and the Kingdom of God to spearhead redeeming digital tools for our spiritual walk and the gospel. 

I believe that we as Jesus proclaimers and followers have an opportunity to communicate the gospel at scale in digital spaces. In fact, we have a responsibility to do so. We have a responsibility to redeem digital tools for the gospel.

The Lausanne Movement frames this biblically: 

The life of an evangelist is to constantly be attempting to catch up to God’s passion for reaching the world. God is on a mission to redeem the whole of creation, and we are joining Him in that work. And to do so holistically, it’s important to embrace digital mediums as an accelerator for gospel proclamation. I believe that’s what Gen Z evangelism has to be about.

God’s work has been historically multimodal; leveraging letters, spoken words, tablets, and even donkeys! Jesus Film Project shares in that heart, as our very mission began with the use of a modern medium to express an ancient message. 

Stories of Redemption with NextSteps

Here are some stories about what the Lord did through the World Cup this summer. 

• In South Asia, ministry partners created printed flyers featuring popular football players and World Cup game schedules—something people would naturally want to pick up and keep. 
  
  In the center of each flyer was a large QR code. When someone scanned it, they were taken to a customized version of the Where You Belong NextSteps journey, where they could engage with content about Jesus and His love for them. Over just one weekend, the QR codes helped connect thousands of people with the journey. The team saw more than 3,000 scans and over indicated 100 decisions for Christ.

• In Zimbabwe, our partners with Athletes in Action found another creative way to connect the physical and digital worlds. A team member recently sent us an update from Athletes in Action’s digital strategies leaders in Zimbabwe. In the video, World Cup outreach materials included bags printed with QR codes that linked directly to a NextSteps journey. Even the soccer balls being used as part of the outreach carried the same connection.

It is a simple idea, but it demonstrates something important about digital ministry: a digital journey does not have to begin in a digital space. A soccer ball, bag, flyer or other physical object can become an invitation. Someone can encounter it at a football event, scan a code with the phone already in their pocket and immediately have access to an experience that help  them explore Jesus.

Rather than separating digital ministry from face-to-face ministry, tools like these can help connect the two. A physical interaction can lead to a digital experience, which can then create an opportunity for another conversation.

• Finally, in Southeast Asia, the story is not simply about people engaging with a NextSteps journey. It is about local ministry leaders learning how to create and customize journeys themselves.
  
  One partner shared: “Praise the Lord for a successful NextSteps training! I had the opportunity to train our team and staff, with 19 people participating. The training went very well, and everyone was excited to learn about NextSteps. They are eager to use it as a tool for World Cup outreach during this special season.”

Local leaders know their language. They know their culture. They know the questions people are asking, the relationships that already exist, and they create NextSteps opportunities around that. 

How Can I Get Involved?

So, how can you get started with NextSteps? 

The beginning is simple, think about your community. You may be a church leader, missionary, or a lay believer. All are necessary and beautiful roles in the Kingdom, and we’re not exclusive to serving professionals or leaders only. 

• If you’re reading this and want to get better at sharing your faith, try making a journey that shares your testimony, with an opportunity to connect or visit your community. I have made a journey for friends of mine who want a basic gospel explainer. Make your journey feel “at home” with colors, fonts, and images that are special to you. 
• If you’re a church leader, you can use NextSteps to support your print or social media efforts, linking people to ministry and community opportunities that are a best fit for them. You can also gather prayer requests and contact information by adding a text box to your journey, and connecting it automatically through Google Sheets, which helps you never miss someone who needs support.
• And if you’re a missionary, NextSteps supports over 44 languages with automatic translation, and you can seamlessly integrate any of our films in 2K+ languages into a journey. We also offer robust data management that helps you see how many people visited your journey, and how they responded to it. 

NextSteps is free forever, funded by our generous donors who want to help you in accelerating the Great Commission. 

And finally, if you’re reading this and you’re daunted by the thought of creating something digitally, we’re on your team. We have templates to help inspire you, tutorial videos to guide you, and even coaches to come alongside you and cheer you on. 

The Great Commission is too broad to do it alone. The harvest is plenty, but the workers are few. I don’t know about you, but I want to see this mission completed in my lifetime. And I believe we can do it. And it’s not contingent on a tool or a strategy, it’s contingent on hearts that are willing and ready to do whatever it takes to share the gospel. 

And this mission is not just for the ministry professionals; it’s for the college student, the 9-5 employee, the stay-at-home parent. NextSteps’s vision is more expansive than just providing a tool, it’s about embracing our individual evangelistic call, and trusting the Great Commission to whom it belongs: everyone, everywhere.