Thanks to the work of an IFES Task Force called “Discipling a New Generation of Students”, you’ll hear more in 2026 about how you can listen to and engage with this distinctive cohort. “We want to see a generation of staff who are aware, sensitive, and able to reach out and disciple a new generation of students that are encountering and following Jesus in their contextual reality,” says the Task Force in their vision statement. For, even though campus staff are meeting Gen Z every day, many feel the need to deepen their understanding of this younger demographic and their situation. 

In this Conexión blog, we talk to the co-chairs of the Task Force – Alejandra Ortiz (AO) and Lisman Komaladi (LK). They tell us what’s been achieved and what we can look forward to in the coming year. 

LK: Back in early 2024, Annette Arulrajah approached us. Part of her mandate as IFES Associate General Secretary is to help the Fellowship disciple a new generation of students.  

I’d been talking to her about how our national movements had responded in IFES surveys over recent years. I’d noticed that a top five priority for many was reaching and discipling the new student generation. And that was true for movements in East Asia [where Lisman is Regional Secretary].  

At that time, I think I spoke to Annette and said, “What’s IFES planning to do about it?”. And then – maybe because of that! – she asked me to help co-lead the Task Force. 

AO: When Annette invited me, I thought, “yes, this is definitely something I want to participate in!”. 

That’s because I noticed something at the student gathering at the last IFES World Assembly. As it was basically student-led, a lot of what they brought, and what they wanted to discuss came into play.  

Some of them were saying, “I can’t bring this stuff up with staff in my movement.” They felt their staff workers lacked good responses or the capacity to respond. But, at that gathering, the students were hearing each other out, sharing their experiences of following Jesus in their contexts.  

They’re wanting to love their friends. They’re wanting to connect. They were refining their questions and then bringing them to others, to older senior staff. And I thought, there’s a huge gap here!”  

LK: We reached out to key people in all 11 IFES regions and ended up with a Task Force of 11 people from eight regions.  

AO: Most are staff or general secretaries who work directly with Gen Z and a couple of them are actually Gen Zers. 

LK: From May 2024 to July 2025, we met online every two or three months. 

AO: One of the first things we did together was develop a process so that we’d make the most out of the meetings – especially because we were a group with so many different people from different contexts. 

LK: We came up with three phases of a process – a listening journey, a learning journey, and a dreaming journey. 

AO: Something key about the listening journey was that we encouraged each person to bring a question. Once they’d presented their context and how discipleship was working, they presented their question – something out of curiosity that would help us further understand their observations.  

LK: So, we had two or three research questions for each track which we explored in each of those three groups.  

And the third phase is the dreaming journey. We summarised and presented all our findings and learnings and started generating ideas for how to respond. Right now, Alejandra and I are finalising a five-page executive summary with recommendations which we’ll soon present to the IFES core leadership team.  

AO: One of our early discoveries confirmed what I’d felt at World Assembly – and it came from everyone who was sharing. It was the need to pay attention to staff workers. We’d set out to discuss the students and this new generation in the gap, but we soon realised that we needed to focus more on those who are actually working with the students to support their formation.  

That said, we did try to give an overall panorama of what we’d heard – and we noticed that there were very similar issues across our different regions. Things such as seismic changes in the way university education is done. Or the growing fragmentation and polarisation in culture and society. Or Gen Z’s digital hyper-connectivity, which is often accompanied by loneliness and fatigue. Or the shifting expectations of this generation around things like authority, mental health, and authenticity.   

LK: But we should stress that we also saw how a lot of this is so contextual – it needs to be figured out in the local setting. Of course, there are global trends. And we could develop some resources around those, but our strongest call is for IFES movements to spend time in observation and self-reflection – to take their own listening journeys. 

In fact, we’ve tried to make sure that the Task Force worked throughout with a posture of honouring the different voices we were listening to. So, rather than us saying “here’s what we suggest”, with a one-size-fits-all approach, we want to encourage movements to consider how they can pay attention to staff formation. We can offer tools and resources to help them assess how their approach to discipleship might need to shift to better connect with their Gen Z students. 

AO: We were thinking about what it means to do incarnational ministry in a way that’s committed to witnessing to Christ in the context of the university. And something that’s not new to IFES: whole-life discipleship. We wondered how we can thicken that concept.   

LK: Yeah, a discipleship that’s not only about imparting knowledge but also about addressing every aspect of life. And to involve all the senses! Of course, we are a ministry of the mind, but actually it’s about all of life, especially for the current generation of students.  

AO: And as we were thinking about hyper-connected students around the world, we thought about what I think John Stott calls “globally minded disciples” – those who follow Jesus with an understanding of the global church. 

So, it’s also about how our interactions with Gen Z challenge our own journeys so that we’re more able to accompany them. And I think that’s something about the discipleship relationship that hasn’t really been highlighted previously. In this generation, that kind of openness and vulnerability is one of the first things they’re looking for – they want to know what you’re made of! 

LK: We’re in the process of writing up all our findings into a five-page summary, which includes some recommendations. That will be reviewed by the IFES leadership. 

AO: We’re hopeful that the recommendations will stir more dialogue about the best next steps to serving the new generation. Of course, our journey has given us ideas for ways forward. But we realize that we’re inviting a process of reflection and communal work, not developing a new program. 

LK: But, for example, one practical outcome could be to appoint ambassadors to communicate the Task Force’s recommendations. It may also be appropriate to publish monographs and resources connected with the Task Force’s journey – that might be podcasts, video clips, training modules or even board games – anything that can help national movements start their own journeys. 

AO: For those of us who’ve been through the process, I think we’d say its strength was in how we’ve been shaped. Listening to the different realities of our colleagues around the world – the challenges and the things that were unique and the things we held in common – that conversation has shaped how we now think about discipleship or student events. For me, even World Assembly 2027 planning is being informed by what we’ve learned [Alejandra is Program Director for IFES World Assembly 2027]. 

Ultimately, it’s setting up these kinds of conversations that will be one of the main things we can offer.