Imagine that 24-year-old millennial named Jessica is your neighbor. How would you go about sharing the gospel with Jessica? Note: This was written for an evangelism class I took.
It’s important to understand the needs, values, and beliefs of millennials because that will serve as a gateway to reach their hearts with the gospel. Some of Jessica’s values shown in the video are: Open-mindedness, authenticity, speaking straight and frankly, accepting all people without questioning their beliefs, etc.
Here are some characteristics of millennials like Jessica.
- Some have been exposed to the church and have had a bad experience with it. As such they know the bad aspects of the church even including the history of the inquisition.
- Many have no real church background.
- They don’t believe in a personal, all-powerful God like the Judeo Christian God.
- They may be atheists or theists who believe that God is energy that permeates all things, etc.
- They don’t believe in absolute truth but in “individual absolute truth”. Everybody has their own truth.
- They are natural activists with a high sense of a call to social justice to protect others, the environment, etc.
- They don’t like division over social, economic, political, and spiritual issues. They like to advocate for accepting and respecting everyone’s beliefs as equally viable for that person.
- They think the Bible has good moral stories in it but was written thousands of years ago and is not relevant or authoritative.
- They believe in the golden rule and other moral principles the Bible teaches.
- They believe as long as a person doesn’t hurt others, they can do whatever makes them happy. As such abortion, sexual immorality (e.g. premarital sex, etc), smoking, marijuana use etc will be acceptable as long as it makes the doer happy and doesn’t hurt someone else.
- They value being very open-minded. Accept everybody’s believes and respect them without questioning or trying to correct them. You don’t have to believe what they believe, only respect it and leave it alone.
- They think churches are focused on money-making.
- See Jesus was a good moral human leader.
How does one share the gospel with Jessica (or any other millennial)?
1) Wage spiritual warfare and fight in prayer first. It should always start with prayer. She has been involved in so many things that the devil has her bound up. She has many strongholds the devil has built. She has been to psychics, oracle readings, etc. I will pray for spiritual vision to be given to her and for the blindness that Satan has cast on her to be broken. Write her name down and do what George Muller did. Persist in prayer for her even if it takes years.
2) Choose the right approach for the right time. As the relationship grows and her heart softens and she becomes more open, the approach will obviously change. However, in the beginning, the traditional approaches of the past may not work with her because her beliefs and values are different. For example, she likely may not be attracted to Christ to avoid hell or go to heaven.
As far as the 3 Vs (Vulnerable, Visual, Verbal) are concerned, being real, vulnerable, authentic, and sharing my recovery testimony (at the right time) without embellishment is very likely to build trust with her. This is because millennials value authenticity.
Being visual with my faith and serving and loving her unconditionally would go a long way. This would involve both incarnational apologetics and servant evangelism approaches. Because she appears to harbor some resentment toward religious people and is very suspicious of people who try to convert others, I will try to be very careful that I don’t make it every seem as though I’m serving her just because I want to look for an opportunity to share Christ with her. People are made in the image of God and have inherent worth and are worthy of service even if the gospel couldn’t be shared. If a Christian works in a mortuary, he should treat corpses with respect and care even though there is no chance of sharing the gospel with them. So I will be authentic in the way I live my faith and when she opens up and shows interest, I will talk with her to the extent that she is ready while all the while praying that God will remove Satan’s blindness and move her to choose what is right.
As our relationship grows, I will need to show her (not tell her) how a relationship with Christ enriches life here and now, not in the distant future alone.
When it comes to being verbal, William Fay’s book Share Jesus without Fear approach may not be the best approach to take with her. That does not mean that incarnational apologetics alone will be sufficient for her or for any other millennial. I will strive to be very well practiced in my informational apologetics so that when the opportunity comes and she opens up, I won’t make any mistakes.
The story video and the three circles video would be most helpful for Jessica when she has gotten to the point where she either believes or at least strongly suspects that there is a God who created the universe. As presented in the video, her beliefs about God at this point would make these two videos unlikely to help her early on. But later, when the ground has been plowed and softened, a time would come when she would need such knowledge.
In an interview I read by CRU.org, Josh Chen, a CRU staff member who studies millennials urges believers to “ respond to the human in front of us, rather than simply subscribing to one evangelistic approach.” [3] He argues that the gospel needs to be contextualized for millennials and that some of the questions and assumptions that have served the previous generation well don’t serve millennials because they have such different values and beliefs to start with. Chen says, in one sentence, he would describe the gospel to a millennial thus, “Jesus Christ came, lived and died to free you up to be who you’re created to be and to restore the world to goodness.” From my experience, I think millennials can resonate with that.
In addition to the above, I will use my knowledge of the mindset of millennials as well as the incarnational apologetics and servant evangelism approaches taught in this course to meet her fundamental human needs in the following ways:
3) Invite her and provide her with community and belonging. This is a fundamental human need that Millenials often struggle with. In the age of Facebook and instant gratification, a community is something people crave. That community could be myself, my family, and as they feel comfortable, a church group that is nonjudgmental but loving and accepting. Because Millenials are suspicious of organized religion or outright hate it sometimes, inviting them to a large mega-church may not be a smart thing. A loving house church or similar group that is detached from a large church may be best.
4) Seek to understand her and help her grow into who God made her to be, even without mentioning God. As Stephen Covey used to say, first seek to understand, then to be understood. Take an interest in helping her grow to become who God has created them to be.
5) Help her fulfill her need for creative contribution. When possible, help them find ways to use their God-given talents and be able to contribute to life in ways that they are gifted and passionate about. Millennials are natural activists and like to make the world a better place. This is a human need that is common to all people but whose expression seems to be heightened among millennials.
6) Help her find significance, purpose, and meaning. Millennials care about doing work that has a purpose that is greater than oneself. I will seek ways to approach the gospel from that angle.
References
https://www.cru.org/storylines/2018/january/how-can-we-reach-millennials
