About David Anes

David Anes is the founder of 212 Generation and the creator of 212: Knowing Jesus for Real, a ten-week discipleship curriculum for middle school and high school students. He is also the author of One Degree From Nowhere: Surrounded and Unknown.

He is a husband and the father of three sons, and he lives in Boise, Idaho.

Where 212 came from

212 started in the car. For years David used the drive to school with his boys for the conversations most people put off: faith, identity, purpose, what they were seeing online and what they were wrestling with at school. Those conversations filled notebooks, sticky notes and the margins of whatever was nearby.

Somewhere in those drives he noticed something he didn't want to see. His sons had the vocabulary of Christianity, the right words and the right answers, and he wasn't sure there was a real connection to Jesus underneath. Then he started seeing the same gap everywhere, in schools and in churches, student after student.

By the time his twins crossed the stage at graduation, the notes had become 212.

The rooms behind it

David spent years in live event production, traveling to 63 countries alongside churches and ministries of every size. He has worked in rooms of 50,000 people and rooms of fifteen, often from behind the last speaker cabinet. That vantage point taught him what actually moves people and what fades by Wednesday.

What kept coming back to him through all of it was Romans 12:2: God changes people by changing the way they think. Not their behavior first. Their thinking.

What he believes about students

David builds for students who have heard the right things and still feel the gap. He believes they are capable of real faith and real theology if someone takes them seriously enough to try. 212 isn't designed to get students to act better. It's built on the conviction that when thinking changes, everything else follows.

His question for every pastor, teacher and parent is a simple one: Are they owning it?

Read more from David

• Are They Owning It?
• Mind Renewal, Not Behavior Management
• One Degree From Nowhere, his book for adults

212 Generation is a ministry of The Refining Co., based in Boise, Idaho. You can reach David at david@212generation.com.