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“I feel like that’s when I had a moment of commitment,” said Yeager, a San Mateo, Calif., sophomore who was recently named Highland Baptist Church’s youngest-ever College Guys Associate. “For the first time, I understood what that meant of like, ‘Oh yeah, I want to be committed to the Lord every day, and I want to live a life for him — worthy of the Lord in every way and bearing fruit in every good work.’”

Holloway, like other Gen Z Christians, grew up in a cultural environment that sees digitization and documentation as core values. This is the “pics or it didn’t happen” generation, a mantra that has rubbed some church leaders the wrong way.

“We prayed, you know, at the beginning of FaceTime that we wanted to be part of the heartbeat of Baylor University,” Olayinka Obasanya, founder and director of FaceTime with God, said. “I think we’ve established that prayer; I think we’ve seen…God establish that prayer through us and we want to continue to be that at Baylor.”

Every year at orientation, the incoming class gets to learn its class hymn. Each class hymn is about the transformation of incoming freshmen as they become adults, allowing them to get a glimpse of what is to come as Baylor Bears. For the class of 2027, they learned “There’s More.”

With a name translating to “the reason of Christ” in Latin, Ratio Christi is aiming to educate Baylor students on apologetics. Starting this fall, the new spiritual organization is implementing guest speakers, small study groups and community worship in an effort to teach students to defend the Christian faith with philosophical, historical and scientific arguments.

“No matter what stage of life you’re in, it’s really important to look to your right and left, instead of being tunnel-focused on your bigger goals,” Hallbauer said. “That’s what we want for people to take away from this group, is that they have an ability and an obligation as believers to serve and love the least of these.”

“Baylor does a really good job of inviting seminaries that are really diverse in terms of theological dispositions,” Dean said. “In my conversations with the different representatives, realizing and getting to understand more of the heart behind each individual seminary. They all have, yes, one central mission, but also unique missions to their seminary, to their institutions.”

Throughout the 40-day period, those who observe practice serving alms and self-discipline on multiple occasions — something other Christians could learn from partaking in as well. Lent is not a “Catholics-only” season; it is a tradition people of any denomination can learn from as well.

“I think a struggle we have at Baylor is that we’ve settled for the lowest bar of being a believer in Jesus,” Bowden said. “Some people may take the step of being a disciple of Jesus and getting to know Him in full relationship and going to places where He would have gone. But very few of us step to being a disciple-maker, of where I invest in people.”

Our faith is an opportunity to transcend this world and get a glimpse of the heavenly banquet that awaits us. But to make use of this opportunity, we must quiet ourselves in peaceful contemplation. We must remember that Christians have been practicing for over 2,000 years, and that many traditional hymns are rooted in this rich, longstanding history. We must abandon contemporary frivolities that disrupt sacred celebrations.