Meet Gen Z's Christian entrepreneurs

A research briefing in the House of Commons Library records that between February and April this year, “there were 735,000 young people aged 16 to 24 who were unemployed, 109,000 more than the previous year.”

Do not think, however, that all of Gen Z has become passive and lost determination. According to the business support platform, Enterprise Nation, in 2025 62% of Gen Z were “thinking about starting a business or side hustle”, 11% higher than Millennials.

Included in these statistics are many Christians, and I spoke to three of them.

Poppy Leanne - author of It’s a Rendez-Vous

Poppy Leanne tells me writing was initially just an escape. But then, one day in her classroom in Staffordshire, she tells me, “God just popped a thought into my head”, which was to write a Christian romance novel. Resistant at first, she says she “eventually came around to it”, seeing a gap in the Young Adult (YA) market for non-spicy (i.e. no explicitly sexual content) Christian romance.

The end result was It’s a Rendez-Vous, which follows Zoé, a university student “navigating”, in the words of its synopsis, “the tricky line between faith, friendship, and desire” with her famous friend Everett, who is not a Christian and lives a carnal lifestyle in the media spotlight.

“The plan was always to publish traditionally”, Poppy says, but after months of contacting agents with no responses, bar one rejection, “I prayed to God and I felt led towards independently publishing”, adding, “I know I didn’t hear wrong with that”. There have been several advantages to this publishing route, she informs me: “With self-publishing a book you really retain… full control, and you can dive into all of the things that some authors would be scared of, like cover design… and teaching yourself how to line edit a book.”

I asked her then whether she would recommend this route to others, to which she said yes – “if you feel led toward it” – with her advice being to “try and keep an open mind accepting counsel from friends that want to read your work”, though ultimately “you have to figure out what’s going to work for your novel”.

Joel Barwick - co-founder of Nave Prints

Joel Barwick says it was whilst chatting and praying with friends Luke and Isaac Porter in Tyne and Wear that all three realised we “want art for our homes that looks good, but a lot of the Christian art online doesn’t look good” and is often “very cringey or outdated”. This led to the thought that “it [would] be cool if there was some contemporary art that people could find in one place, and maybe we could provide that”.

And so the trio this year launched Nave Prints, an online marketplace stocking artwork from a growing number of Christian creatives. Joel explains these collaborations usually start by reaching out to artists over Instagram, before discussing “ideas back and forth until they send some art over that they’re happy with and we’re happy with”. He says this business model has been rewarding “by connecting with people [he] wouldn’t normally connect with”, but challenging because “learning how to advertise and market… probably required more learning and attention than we first thought”.

I ask then whether he regrets starting Nave Prints, to which he emphatically states, “No, I do not regret it; it’s been fantastic”. Unsurprisingly then, he recommends the independent route to others, though he warns not to “start by yourself”, citing how he “couldn’t do this without Luke and Isaac” and their complementing skillsets. He also keenly stresses that “it’s not wrong to generate revenue” as it “creates resources for other people and it builds ecosystems that are beneficial to communities and individuals”.

Ruth Taviansky - founder of Tavz Clothing

Ruth Taviansky tells me that after studying fashion at university, neither she nor her course mates “could get jobs in the industry”, with she herself estimating to having applied “to probably about a thousand jobs”. Such circumstances led to her friends and family in Berkshire starting to encourage her to start her own clothing brand, something she ignored at first, concerned about the workload it might involve. But subsequently, she tells me, she asked God to give her one design to confirm if it was His will, and shortly after “a clear picture of this one design came into [her] head… and built from there”.

Tavz Clothing – the name inspired both by her surname and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet – is launching in August. Through the business, she hopes not only to offer women an alternative to the “super frumpy clothes” she’s seen in the workplace, but also to address the “lack of bringing men out of their comfort zone” she perceives. Ruth tells me to get to this point “it has involved a lot of learning social media… the law and accountancy, and handling relationships with international buyers and shipping”, which “has actually been a lot more than” she thought she’d have to do. “But at the same time”, she continues, “when I trusted it to the Lord it’s actually been really smooth”.

She does then recommend this pathway for other Christians passionate for fashion, but emphasises the need “to be resilient” and “have a spirit of ‘I’m not going to give up’”, as well as trying “not to have too much outside investment if possible”. But she concludes by keenly stressing that it is “the best thing in the world”.