I must confess that I feel like an imposter writing a blog on Discipling Millennials for Missional Living. I’m not a Millennial and so everything I know about Millennials is second-hand information. Now, having said that, I did have the privilege of serving as a children’s pastor for several years to young Millennials. Of course, having four children in the Millennial and Generation Z categories has also given me additional insights. Teaching many Millennials from a variety of cultures at ACTS Seminaries and Trinity Western University also helps. Yet, probably my biggest asset in writing on this topic is that, in many ways, I’m a Millennial at heart.
So, who are Millennials anyway? Millennials were born between 1980-2000. There are approximately 2.5 billion Millennials worldwide. In North America, they currently make up about 50% of the workforce, which will increase to 75% by 2030.
This blog is not just about discipling Millennials; it’s about helping them living missionally. How do we help Millennials run with the Gospel sandals we read about in Ephesians 6:15? How do we help them have the same attitude as Isaiah in Isaiah 6:8, “Here am I. Send me.” Missional living is really about taking Jesus wherever we go, whether that’s across the street, to school, to the workplace, or across the world. How do we help Millennials, and everyone for that matter, live with that kind of Jesus and Gospel focus?
A helpful starting point is to consider the core values of Millennials and then see how we can help Millennials maximize those values for missional living.
Geoff Kullman, in his book Engage Millennials, suggests that Millennials tend to share seven core values.
First off, they value diversity. In fact, they welcome alternative ideas. They’ve always had choices due to globalization and the Internet. Millennials are more likely to scavenge for information than go to an expert who supposedly knows everything.
Millennials also love to collaborate. They enjoy working together to make something meaningful happen. Interconnectedness is extremely important to them, which makes sense because they’ve always been connected to others virtually. This desire to collaborate lends itself well to non-hierarchical leadership structures.
Authenticity is another huge value for Millennials. They want communication and relationships to be real and transparent without them being forced. It’s highly desirable to share both the ups and downs of life and it’s totally okay to express doubts and questions. In fact, critiquing and deconstructing are an important part of the sense-making process for Millennials.
Many Millennials are entrepreneurs. They’re innovators and love to start new things. For them, having side hustles is a normal part of life.
Millennials are also big into community. Kullman describes Millennial communities as places “where people are deeply connected, authentic, and invested in one another…regardless of location or circumstance.” David Stark believes, “The world of many young people is primarily the social world they build online, augmented by face-to-face meetings.”
Millennials also value integration. This, of course, can relate to their preferred communities. However, it also points to their desire to integrate ideas – that the total is more complete or greater than the individual parts. Millennials form meaning in community as community members construct knowledge together, but you also see it in their desire to build understanding between groups and even across disciplines.
A seventh value, which is related to some of the other Millennial values like collaboration, community and integration, is open-source. Wikipedia, an open-source repository of knowledge, is a great example of how Millennials like to facilitate open projects that allow many people to contribute their insights. In fact, we could say that the Internet itself, which has been a mainstay for Millennials for all or most of their lives, is the ultimate open-source project.
To Kullman’s seven Millennial core values, I’d add an eighth: social justice. Millennials have demonstrated a huge desire to help others, particularly those on the margins of society.
Okay. So, as we think about these eight values, what are some implications for discipling Millennials for missional living?
One of the most important Canadian studies on helping Millennials and Generation Z’s stick with their faith is Hemorrhaging Faith: Why and When Canadian Young Adults are Leaving, Staying and Returning to the Church.
This pivotal study contains survey responses from over 2,000 Canadian Millennials and information gleaned from personal interviews of some of the respondents. It suggests several ways that parents, youth workers, children’s ministry staff and others in the church can help youth to continue to follow Jesus.
Help Parents Engage Spiritually
The first one is we need to help parents engage spiritually. One of the recurring themes that surfaced was that those who continue to be engaged in their local church often had parents who modelled an authentic faith. They saw their parents praying and reading the Bible. Yet, even more than that, they saw their parents living out their faith in a way that impacted their everyday lives. They were not afraid to show their children how a Christian worldview can help them navigate through the challenges and opportunities they face. The implication is that when we help parents grow in their faith (or come to faith for those who are not yet Christians), their children benefit in faith-sustaining ways.
Facilitate “God Moments”
It’s also critical to facilitate “God-moments.” One of the key differences between those who stay in the church and those who leave is the extent to which they believed that they experienced God. Those who can recall answers to prayer or who experienced God in worship, community, service or in some other way are more likely to press on with God later in life. Many of those still tracking with God experienced Him in a profound way through a week at a Bible camp or a short-term missions trip. The implication is that we need to create youth-friendly spaces (or encourage movement toward already created spaces) that help them experiment with and stretch their faith.
Invite Youth to be Vital Members of the Church Community
We also need to invite youth to be vital members of the church community. When youth feel like they truly belong, they’re much more likely to stay. In this kind of community, people care about them. Some even mentor them. Others see their gifts, encourage them, and even invite them to serve in meaningful ways. This gives youth an opportunity to make a difference – to feel like they’re an integral part of the community. These kinds of vibrant communities feature cross-generational support, authenticity and inclusivity.
What are the implications for the rest of the church? Be friendly with youth. Include them in meaningful ways. Pray for and with them. Encourage them. Empower them to live out God’s call on their lives. Believe and live out this truth: Every believer, regardless of age, is an essential member of the body of Christ.
I remember when we started attending South Langley Church. My oldest son, Caleb, was 13 and loved technology. At the end of the service, he would hover by the sound board. The Worship Pastor noticed his interest and initiated a conversation with him. Within weeks, Caleb was part of the sound team, something he continued to do throughout High School. Caleb had discovered that he had something important to give to the church and that he was a valuable member of the body.
Make Christianity Relevant
Young adults who leave the church often say that Christianity is irrelevant. In their view, it doesn’t address their deep longings and answer their hard questions. Many of those who stay in the church share a different story. Their churches did not shy away from the difficult issues. As communities of faith, they wrestled through issues together. Teaching times were deeply biblical, but they showed how truth intersected with real life.
The Hemorrhaging Faith study has much more to say. Yet, the findings I’ve shared challenge me as a parent and leader in the church to do what I can to disciple Millennials and those who are younger so that they are more likely to stick with their faith.
Even as the Hemorrhaging Faith study gives us insights into how we can disciple children and youth, how can we help Millennials, who are already out of High School, follow Christ through emerging adulthood and beyond?
Another important study that helps us answer this question is, Renegotiating Faith: The Delay in Young Adult Identity Formation and What It Means for the Church in Canada.
Emerging adulthood, according to the authors of the Renegotiating Faith study, is “a new life stage…[which] has opened up as young adult identity formation and its accompanying shift into adulthood has been delayed by 5 to 7 years since the 1980s. Emerging adulthood is characterized by identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between and a focus on possibilities…Emerging adulthood works against young adults staying engaged in their faith and the life of the Church because it disrupts young adults’ access to Christian communities and makes it difficult for them to negotiate meaningful roles in Christian communities…[And here’s a key point for us as those who want to disciple Millennials for missional living] In some cases, young adults who do not have access to traditional differentiators of place, marriage and profession are differentiating themselves from their parents by rejecting their parents’ faith.”
The study’s authors discovered that young adults who participated in a missional kind of gap year after high school tended to navigate faith questions better later on. These kinds of gap years could feature attendance at a Bible School, participating in a discipleship adventure program, or doing a missions experience like YWAM’s Discipleship Training School.
For years, my wife and I have intuitively believed in the importance of missional gap years. Our oldest son went to Capernwray Bible School in Germany while our oldest daughter attended Capernwray in Albania. The Negotiating Faith study confirms what we’ve sensed for a long time.
For Millennials going through emerging adulthood, it’s also critical that they integrate into a vibrant, Millennial-friendly Christian community, like a church or a Christian ministry like Intervarsity. This is true whether they’re staying in the same community as their parents or moving to a completely new area. Once again, the Negotiating Faith study helps us here. Millennials do better spiritually if they join a Christian group soon after starting their postsecondary studies. What is also helpful is if a mentor maintains contact with them in the months immediately after high school, or if someone helps them get integrated quickly into a Christian group in their new location.
As we think about Millennial-friendly churches that welcome and disciple Millennials for missional living, what are the key characteristics? Let me share five based on the research I’ve read and my own experience as a pastor, parent and professor.
Millennial-friendly churches are mentoring churches where people are intentionally helping others take next steps in a highly relational way. This happens in one-on-one interactions, but also in small groups. Structured mentoring happens where two people meet for the purpose of mentoring, but most of the mentoring happens in spontaneous, unstructured ways. There’s also a strong cross-generational dynamic where older people are investing into those who are younger.
I should add that mentoring for Millennials needs to be move beyond advice-giving to coaching that features active listening, asking good open-ended questions that expand awareness, helping mentees focus on core issues, and then supporting them to take necessary next steps.
Millennial-friendly churches are also empowering communities of faith. Church leaders recognize that Millennials are vital members of the church. We need their wisdom, their innovativeness and entrepreneurial spirit. We need them to be actively involved for the church to thrive. This involves affirming them, encouraging them in the use of their gifts and passions, opening doors for meaningful service, and giving them voice so that we actually hear and consider what they have to say.
Millennial-friendly churches are connecting churches. We’ve already seen how important authentic communities are to Millennials. We need to foster deep communities characterized by:
- Open and frank discussions that welcome divergent ideas
- Deconstructive and critical thinking
- The freedom to experiment with ideas without fear of censorship or judgment
- Integrative thinking that considers multiple sources, even those that are controversial
- Communal sense-building with humility where the group as a whole seeks truth together
- Heart-to-heart ministry rooted in love and a sincere desire to see people move toward wholeness in Christ
- Continuous relational connectedness that uses technology to keep the community alive and growing 24/7
- A multigenerational environment where members can benefit from age-specific experiences and perspectives
- A concern for social justice that seeks to help those who are sometimes marginalized like the homeless, those with physical and mental challenges, racial minorities, immigrants, seniors, those who have committed crimes, and people living in poverty. Millennials will often gravitate toward groups that are playing an active role in helping those shunted by society.
I fully recognize that fostering these kinds of Millennial-friendly churches will be disruptive. Obviously, we want to be sensitive to the other generations represented in our churches. However, I’d suggest that other generational groupings like mine would welcome these kinds of disruptions, especially if it translates into better discipleship of Millennials and others for missional living.