Let’s talk about millennials (which includes me). We are the foremost generation exposed from juvenile to the postmodern worldview of standards, understandings, and detestations. Justice, for example, is defined as acceptance in which moral values have misplaced objectivity to the individual and reserved agreement. We live in a biosphere where community has been forgone to the secondhand involvement of life through text messaging and social media.

Yet, the developing generation of professionals has acknowledged the lonely disadvantage of technology and identify the necessity of intimacy. We are a generation nearly missing from the church as well.

How can we as Christians aid lonely people, when they perceive no reason in coming to church to find the community many do not truly experience?

In what way do we reach them?

My gut (maybe the Holy Spirit) tells me we have to somehow meet them where they’re at. Perhaps that means meeting them on social media, or coffee shops (I was just talking to a pastor recently who said people at his church go to a local Starbucks to evangelize), or bars. However, when I say this it sounds uncomfortable. It sort of sounds like we would need to go to their places of worship, which are the coffee shops, online and bars. It seems to me the bottom line is this generation is not going to just jump right in and buy into the faith because they’ve come to church. It makes me think of when you go shopping for a car, or a new computer. I’m the type of person who doesn’t want to talk to the salesmen because I know all they’re trying to do is close the sale. What I prefer is to do my own research and make my own informed decision without someone telling me what I should buy. Maybe this is similar to how they feel. Maybe all we need to do instead of inviting them to church or selling a product (or experience) is to help them make informed decisions. Maybe what we need to focus on is having honest discussions instead of inviting someone to become part of a community or church. Maybe having a discussion with someone who is lonely and isolated would be so refreshing for them, they’d be willing to listen and continue the dialogue. Perhaps what this looks like is being so intentional that we are periodically reaching out to different nonbelievers on social media just to ask them how life is going and start a conversation. Perhaps we can apply the same method at the coffee shops and bars.

What do you think? Leave me a reply below.