Faith and Gen Z: Lauren Beal

Gen Z continues to present as a generation touched by hopelessness and limited opportunity as they launch into adulthood. However, some graduates of Texas Baptist universities offer a different take.

Lauren Beal graduated from Hardin-Simmons University in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in nursing.

Beal grew up in Midland, where she attended First Baptist Church and came to faith in Christ at a young age. Beal knew all the Bible stories, and when she was around 8 or 9 and all her friends and her sister were making commitments, she did, too.

“It was a real, sweet, childlike faith,” Beal said.

But in high school Beal felt challenged by a teacher who questioned students about why they went to church. She wasn’t happy with her answer that she went because her family did and it was expected of her. So, she determined to change it.

She made it her goal to work on making her faith more uniquely her own, wrestling through the rest of high school with making sure her faith was for her, not for anyone else. Her faith became about wanting to know and love God more.

Beal said she never really considered any other colleges other than Hardin-Simmons. Her sister attended HSU and had a great experience. So, she convinced her younger sister to go there, too.

Called to be a nurse

Beal currently works as a labor and delivery nurse at Hendrick Hospital in Abilene. She learned about this job while she was in nursing school doing clinical study at Hendrick Medical Center, when she was able to spend a couple of clinical days with labor and delivery.

“Your last semester of nursing school, you do something called a preceptorship, where like a month, you follow a nurse around. And I got paired with a nurse on my [current] unit,” Beal explained. She loved it. So, she applied, and they accepted her, she said.

She said she always wanted to do something in the medical field, viewing it as her calling.

“If I had to change my major, I think I would have been a little lost, because that was the only thing that really made sense for me,” Beal said.

Her faith has helped her face uncertainty, because she has total reliance that God is good, and “God’s will is going to play out no matter what happens.”

“I feel like that was kind of a hard lesson for me to learn. And over the last several years, I’ve learned that in uncertainty, the only thing I can do is just lean on God,” Beal explained.

Beal feels blessed she hasn’t experienced a lot of anxiety or depression, as many of her generation have, but she acknowledged nursing school was hard. At times, she experienced self-doubt about passing and grades.

But, she learned to rely on “the joy we have in the Lord, and just kind of leaning into that, even though you may be anxious about where you’re going,” or if she was going to pass nursing school or not. In those times, she relied on God as her greatest comforter.

At Hardin-Simmons, Beal said she learned about the importance of community in growing faith. She learned the value of being discipled and discipling others.

“That is just where I’ve seen my faith being challenged, people holding me accountable, and also getting to pour into others,” Beal said.

Her church in college emphasized community and growing together. They “poured into discipleship, home groups, and not doing faith alone,” Beal continued, saying: “I think that is the biggest way that I can nurture my faith, help it grow, is just to not do it alone.”

Being able to rely on people she trusts and looks to for wisdom to help her faith grow also is important, Beal said.

Hardin-Simmons isn’t an exceptionally large campus, Beal explained, but coming from a small private school in Midland, it was still eye-opening to encounter so many new ideas at college, having been quite sheltered where she came from.

Growing together in faith

She said finding a church home she trusted to preach truth was pivotal her freshman year in making the adjustment.

She feels lucky to be employed by a Baptist hospital where she can feel comfortable openly talking about faith at work.

“With labor and delivery, I feel like it’s most of the time happy, good, smiles and birthday parties,” Beal said. “But there’s some really hard, hard times on labor and delivery.”

So, “getting to sit and pray with my patients [provides support], because there’s only so much you can say.

“So, finding that the next thing you should say is to sit down and pray with them has been a great tool for me, as a nurse,” Beal said.

Beal was involved in Baptist Student Ministry at Hardin-Simmons, but she feels her biggest growth in college took place through her home group at the church she attended. She was introduced to the church through a church fair on campus, she said.

For Beal, the best thing about HSU was the people. She said she met so many great people who are lifelong friends. She joined a social club, “which is kind of like a sorority.” And she met all her current best friends in college.

“There’s just good people there,” she continued.

One person she is especially thankful to have met there is her husband Daniel. They love HSU and find it “really sweet and special” that they met there, she said.

He is a youth pastor at Beltway Baptist Church, at its north campus. She acknowledged youth ministers tend to move around a little bit, but it is their hope to stay in Abilene for as long as they are able.

For more on Texas Baptist Gen Zs, check out Cynthia Montalvo and Sarah Potts’ stories.