What About Millennials and Missions

With so much being said today about millennials and the role they will play in the very near future of the church I was delighted to run across one of the most reasoned and well-written articles I’ve read in a long time on the subject. It was written by Dr. Wanjiru Gitau and published in Global Missiology , January 2018, entitled; ” Millennials, Missions, and Missio Dei: Bridging the Conversation (Part 1)”.

Dr. Gitau is a research fellow at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC) at the University of Southern California (USC), pursuing a multi-year global research project commissioned by the John Templeton World Charity Foundation on contemporary religion. She is a Kenyan educated in Nairobi, Edinburgh, and the United States, with extensive global experience, including research projects from Korea to Kentucky.

She explains the arc of missions over the past 300 years in a way that makes you see how and why it has unfolded as it has, why we are where we are and what the future might hold. Her insights into the natural forces at work in every generation (including millennials) help us see, not so much what millennials will do with missions but, what will drive them.

“Now, engaging millennials in missions means acknowledging what secular educational institutions have recognized, that the problems of the world continue to evolve, and new solutions are needed. It is that search for solutions, the mistakes along the way, and yes, eventual victories that make men and women. That’s why the world is fixated on heroism, a legitimate quest of its own, but no generation can find its place in the world through the methods of its forebears.”

In other words, millennials, like every other generation, will be problem-solvers.What’s important to understand is that both the problems they solve and the methods they use will be different than their forebearers. The good news is that millennials come to the stage with an expanded view of a phrase that pastors often use, the local church is the hope of the world . To the millennial, “Everything, every arena of human activity including business and economy, politics and government, health and environment, media and arts, family and education is part of God’s activity in the world, thus of the Christian commission.” writes Dr Gitau.

This generation is already pre-disposed to the idea that God’s is as concerned with the here and now as He is with the hereafter. If that be true, then the methods we will use to move missions forward will look very different than the ones which got us to this point. And why shouldn’t that be so? God has always been leading us into a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of His redemptive purposes in this world.

Click here for the full article: Millennials, Missions, and Missio Dei: Bridging the Conversation (Part 1) or email us at info@significantmatters.com and we will send you a copy.