First off I want to set the record straight.
I am a Millennial.
I often run into people who are astonished when they find out my age and even more shocked when I refer to myself as a Millennial.
I have worked full time for the local church for the last nine years in many different roles.
College Pastor, Gap Year Discipleship Internship Director, School of Ministry Director, Student Ministry Pastor, Generations Pastor, Senior Associate Pastor, Executive Pastor, and probably a few others, I forgot.
I have spent a good portion of my life working alongside people around my age endeavoring to journey with them into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ.
I have come face to face with the reality that has been extensively studied by David Kinnaman and BARNA in regards to Millennials and their faith. These findings have been published in their series of works: Good Faith, You Lost Me and unChristian.
Because of this journey, I was more than ecstatic to hear that Barna, David Kinnaman, and Mark Matlock have released another book in the series of exploring the faith journey of Millennials. The most recent entitled, Faith for Exiles; 5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital Babylon.
“The 2011 book You Lost Me argues that the church has a dropout problem. At the time we collected data for that project, 59 percent of young adults with a Christian background told us that they had dropped out of church involvement- some for an extended period of time, some for good. In less than a decade, the proportion of eighteen to twenty-nine-year-old dropouts has increased. Today, nearly two-thirds of all young adults who were once regular church-goers have dropped out at one time or another (64 percent).”
The stats are heartbreaking and exhilarating at the same time.
They leave me broken-hearted that as the local church we have missed it in some areas.
They leave me intoxicated with optimism at the fact that an entire generation is poised and longing for an encounter with Jesus.
I have watched young adults walk out the truth of these stats time and time again.
I share the optimism expressed by Kinnaman and Matlock in their new work when they say:
"We believe this generation wants and needs more. And we believe the abundant way of Jesus, the family of God called the church, and the ancient call of Christian mission can answer the stifled longings of this anxious age."
Faith for Exiles is the no-nonsense, practical approach to helping Millennials and others understand what is needed to help Millennials return to and begin a life-changing audacious journey of faith.
The world that Millennials are trying to navigate is vastly different than any landscape seen by previous generations. Therefore our approach to this generation must be changed, and it must be unique. Faith for Exiles compares these two worlds to Jerusalem and Digital Babylon.
Kinnaman defines Digital Babylon as, " a phrase to describe our accelerated, complex culture that is marked by phenomenal access, profound alienation, and a crisis of authority...' He goes on to say "Digital Babylon is not a physical place. It is the pagan-but-spiritual, hyperstimulated, multicultural, imperial crossroads that is the virtual home of every person with Wi-Fi, a data plan, or- for most of us- both."
Kinnaman and Matlock propose that the solution to the issues leading to Millennials walking away from their faith is by creating resilient disciples. They define the goal of discipleship as being "...to develop Jesus followers who are resiliently faithful in the face of cultural coercion and who live a vibrant life in the Spirit."
Faith for Exiles lays out five practices to develop these sorts of disciples:
To form a resilient identity, experience intimacy with Jesus.
In a complex and anxious age, develop the muscles of cultural discernment.
When isolation and mistrust are the norm, forge meaningful intergenerational relationships.
To ground and motivate an ambitious generation, train for vocational discipleship
Curb entitlement and self-centered tendencies by engaging in countercultural mission.
In my journey, I can attest to my sustained love for Jesus, the local church, and the Kingdom of God being cultivated and forged by these five practices.
To engage a different generation we must be willing to put aside what our preferences may be, we must put aside our systematic approach to disciple-making, we must put away our intoxication with numbers, and we must get busy with the hard work of discipleship.
I cannot say enough about the incredible resource that Faith for Exiles is for anyone who is looking to engage in the hard work of discipleship. Kinnaman and Matlock lay out tons of data as well as an equal amount of practical ways to do something with the data.
Get this resource, read it, then study it, then implement it. Get a team together from your church or nonprofit, gather around a lunch table with an intergenerational group, and discuss the chapters.
Go to faithforexiles.com for all kinds of extra resources, pre-order your copy, and discover all the ways you can help engage a generation in a conversation.
