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Summary:

In this episode, Michael Easley and sociologist Dr. Josh Packard explore one of the most pressing ministry challenges of our time: how caring adults can meaningfully engage a generation growing up in an online world we ourselves don’t fully understand. Packard argues that we often overcomplicate things—believing we must master every digital platform before we can help young people navigate it. Instead, he invites parents, pastors, and mentors to adopt a posture of curiosity. Ministry throughout history, he notes, has always required entering unfamiliar contexts with humility, asking questions, and learning the culture before offering influence.

Packard illustrates how today’s teenagers live with a strange tension: they feel highly competent in digital spaces where adults often fall behind, yet inadequate in basic interpersonal areas where adults excel. This creates cognitive dissonance, amplifying their uncertainty and making trust more difficult to form. The solution? Lead with time, presence, and listening. Packard explains that traditional “truth → trust → time” ministry models must flip for this generation. Today, trust grows out of consistent presence, relational investment, and genuine interest.

Through examples, insights, and honest dialogue, this episode encourages adults to engage teens not by becoming tech experts, but by becoming better listeners—because, as David Augsburger wrote, “being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.”

Takeaways:

• You don’t need to understand every platform to meaningfully guide teens—you need curiosity and presence.
• Ministry influence today grows primarily through consistent time, not programs or preaching alone.
• Teens live in tension: digitally competent yet relationally insecure, creating constant cognitive dissonance.
• Adults must approach teen culture like missionaries—listening first, speaking later.
• Trust forms when young people feel known, not when we offer the most information.
• In a world overflowing with noise, listening is one of the most powerful forms of love.

ABOUT DR. JOSH PACKARD

Dr. Josh Packard is an accomplished researcher and speaker on young people in America, specializing in their spirituality and their relationship with religious groups and faith leaders. He was the founding ED of Springtide Research Institute, and is the well-published author of numerous academic articles, reviews, and the books Church Refugees: Sociologists reveal why people are DONE with church but not their faith, Stuck: Why Clergy Are Alienated from Their Calling, Congregation, and Career … and What to Do about It, Meaning Making: 8 Values That Drive America’s Newest Generations and The Emerging Church: Religion at the Margins.

Links Mentioned

Faithful Futures by Dr. Josh Packard

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