It is widely accepted that different generations hear and respond differently to the same invitation to participate in the Christian faith. Most church leaders and those involved in making decisions about reaching out to those not yet a part of the faith community are well beyond their twenties. For those over 30, myself included, Scot McKnight’s recent article The Gospel for iGens (Leadership, Summer 2009) is an important read. If you are not familiar with McKnight, he is a forward thinking New Testament scholar and prolific blogger. His award-winning blog, Jesus Creed, has been rated by Technorati.com as the #1 site for Emerging Church.
McKnight writes this article to help increase understanding about what he terms emerging adults: those between eighteen and thirty years of age. This group is “largely insensitive to the potency of God’s holiness, and are therefore insensitive to the magnificence of grace, the shocking nature of his love, and that gratitude forms the core of the Christian life.” These emerging adults were raised in a culture that focused on self-esteem and made them immune to feeling guilt. Put another way, iGens are me-centered and have built impenetrable walls to protect the most valuable asset: the self. McKnight, “My own experience teaching iGens, listening to iGens, and reading the papers and journals of iGens have confirmed that most iGens reside behind nothing short of a castle wall.”
So What?
The traditional approaches to evangelism, gospeling, invitation, inclusion or whatever term you may prefer will not work with iGens.
“iGens. . . have a robust enough self-image to think Jesus is just like them. . . . Jesus is the place to begin with iGens. In fact, we can make this more precise: Jesus as lived out by a credible witness or through a community that makes Jesus real. . . We sometimes forget that some of the earliest Christian gospeling was telling the story of Israel’s history (Peter on Pentecost) or acknowledging God’s presence in the world (Paul in Athens) so that it led to the story of Jesus.”
For all postmoderns, the focus is on personal experience. As we reach out to iGens we must be willing to share our faith story (personal experiences), invite them to participate in the life of the faith community (develop relationships), and help them connect their story with Jesus’ story in increasingly meaningful ways.