Faith and Gen Z: Sarah Potts

Statistics on Gen Z paint a pessimistic picture.  Hope is far down the list of emotions this young generation is feeling, as the recent American Opportunity Survey revealed.

But some Gen Z graduates of Texas Baptist colleges tell a more optimistic story. Take Sarah Potts, 2022 graduate of University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, for example.

Potts was all set to attend Texas Tech University, where her parents went, when she graduated high school.

When her mom insisted she needed to tour some other schools to see what else was out there, Potts said she’d never even heard of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor University.

But a family friend’s daughter went to UMHB and loved it. So, Sarah’s mom wanted her to go check it out.

Reluctance becomes joy

Potts said she had a bad attitude about it on the way on the trip to Belton from Dallas.

“I was saying: ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want to do this. I’m going to Tech,’” she recalled.

But when she arrived at UMHB, she felt such a peace from the Lord. She and her mom had a great tour of the campus.

When they left, she said she “was giving her mom the silent treatment. …You know how kids never want to admit their parents are right?”

Her mom was concerned and asked her if she was OK. The only response she could give was: “Mom, I loved it. I hate that you told me to do this and then this is where I want to go.”

But they had a good laugh, and Potts said she filled out the application immediately after the visit in the car as they were leaving.

“It was totally the Lord and just my mom listening to the Lord—telling me to go other places and experience other things.”

“It was the literal best three years of my life,” she said, when it hadn’t even been on her radar.

Potts graduated in May of 2022, a year early, with a bachelor’s degree in health sciences with a pre-occupational therapy track.

She came to this career path her senior year in high school when she was able to participate in a health practicum program to explore various health care opportunities. Prior to this program, she thought she was interested in becoming a nurse.

But in shadowing a nurse, she discovered, “Man, this takes a special kind of person, and I do not think that that is for me.”

Her cousin is an occupational therapist, though. In talking with her and researching the field, Potts began to see how “cool” it would be to help people who had lost some type of function be able to regain independence and quality of life.

“I think there’s a lot of ways that I can incorporate my faith into that,” she said, “just pouring into them how loved they are and how much they matter.

“Coming back from diseases is hard. And people sometimes have a hard time coping with the fact that their life might look different, but it doesn’t change the worth of their life.”

Occupational therapy a perfect fit

Potts saw occupational therapy as being perfect for her to be able to love on people—help them realize both who they are in Christ and who they are as a person being able to regain function and independence in life.

She is now at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, where she is two years into a three-year graduate program to complete a Doctor of Occupational Therapy degree.

“The Lord has really been funny these past few years,” Potts said. At UMHB she had so many opportunities to talk about and learn about service. Service is at the heart of what Christians do, Potts believes.

She understood the importance of finding where the Lord is working and joining in that work several years ago. But she didn’t really think it was for her vocationally. The last couple of years, though, God has been impressing upon her a strong desire to serve overseas.

When she completes her degrees, she plans to work stateside for a little bit, but she’s in the process of working with a company with the aim of serving overseas.

If so, Potts said she hopes to use her degree and share medical skills with people who need occupational therapy but might not be able to afford it or have those resources where they live.

God has helped her to see she is at UT Medical Branch for a reason, but he has more for her when she’s done.

Her faith has been so important to her, Potts said, not just now, but also when she was an undergraduate. It was “very, very hard,” she said, when she always had been close to her family to adjust to being away.

“But the Lord was so gracious in allowing me to just feel his presence and the peace of knowing that even when I felt alone, in those first few months at school, I was never really alone,” she continued.

“That’s just been true every step of the way—even moving to Galveston and being five hours away from my family.”

Potts described how God answered her prayer for friends at UMHB in a big way, as she developed great friendships and relationships with peers and faculty there.

Clinging to the Lord

UT Medical Branch is very secular, she explained. There’s not a lot of resources there for getting involved with Christian ministries. In contrast, professors at UMHB were Christian, so Christianity bled into everything students were learning.

It was a bit of a shock when she first started her graduate classes, going from a conservative Baptist school to a not-so-conservative school. Having the ability to know the Lord placed her there, and it’s a great mission field right now has been a help, Potts said.

And she’s able to lean on those solid Christian friendships she built at UMHB, counting on those friends to support her in the medical school environment she’s now in.

Potts stated, in the Lord’s kindness, she’d never had to worry about the financial concerns of many others of her generation. Her college was paid for through an inheritance from her grandparents—though some concerns have cropped up in graduate school.

Through mild worries about how she’s going to pay back medical school loans, she trusts the Lord will continue to provide as he always has and “that’s what I cling to,” she said.

She thanks God for people at UMHB like Jason Palmer, dean of spiritual life and university chaplain, and Tiffany Horton, director of global outreach, who made a huge impact on her spiritual growth while she was there.

They and her college minister at Temple Bible Church, Shannon Sword, all helped her wrestle with her faith and ask hard questions while providing her with truth from Scripture.

She’s active in Coastal Community Church on the island, and she’s excited about how God is using her now in graduate school and how he will continue to use her after she graduates.