What Do We Need to Do to Effectively Engage Millennials with the Gospel of Jesus?

"In last year's Annual Church Profile, 60 percent of the more than 46,000 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) reported no youth baptisms (ages 12 to 17) in 2012, and 80 percent reported only one or zero baptisms among young adults (ages 18 to 29). One in four Southern Baptist churches reported zero baptisms overall in 2012, while the "only consistently growing" baptism group was children under five years old"  Christianity Today, May 2014.

If you are a Millennial, how would you advise the Church in joining you in being salt and light to your generation?  What do you wish the church would change  about itself to help you reach your peers?  What do you like about what your community of faith is proclaiming and demonstrating of the Good News of JESUS to your friends?  How would you advise an older group of people, far removed from your generation, to re-think or re-imagine how to be the church?

Re-thinking Outreach

Let's reimagine outreach and pray for more miracles in places like #SNAPortlandOR  #SNA #NAMB

Watch this Francis Chan video and be encouraged:

Re-Imagine Discipleship

The following excerpt is taken from Alan Hirsch's e-book: Disciplism - Reimaging Evangelism through the Lens of Discipleship (you can download the free Ebola at Exponential),

"The wonderful people of Soma Communities based in Tacoma, Wash., have adopted this process as a consistent practice.5 Vision Leader Jeff Vanderstelt rightly emphasizes that the integration of the gospel is a lifelong process. For Soma, in the pre-conversion stage of discipleship, emphasis falls on the evangelism dimension, but is still seen as part of discipleship. Once someone gives her life to Christ, the emphasis shifts from evangelism to discipleship, but in a real sense she is always being evangelized.

Actually reframing evangelism within the context of discipleship squares pretty nicely with what missiologists call the Engels Scale. With this Scale, we can observe definite stages that people undergo in coming to faith and growing in discipleship. It will look something like the following continuum, ranging from -6 to +6

Reframing mission and evangelism around discipleship really does make space for long-term, authentic, loving relationships with people in our lives. This in turn gives credibility to our message and cultivates meaningful friendships—virtues we can certainly use in greater quantities at any time. And the really intriguing thing for me as a movement guy is that if every follower of Jesus simply did this with just two or

Reframing mission and evangelism around discipleship really does make space for long-term, authentic, loving relationships with people in our lives. This in turn gives credibility to our message and cultivates meaningful friendships—virtues we can certainly use in greater quantities at any time. And the really intriguing thing for me as a movement guy is that if every follower of Jesus simply did this with just two or three people in their lifetime and asked those people to do the same—disciples- making-disciples-making-disciples in a “pay-it-forward”-style movement—we would actually get the job done in one or two generations! That’s Great Commission ministry as Jesus intended it."

 

Discipleship

evangelism/discipleship-----------------follower of Jesus----------------discipleship/evangelism

Belonging to believing........

Discipleship means.......

.....adherence to Christ and, because Christ is the object of that adherence, it must take the form of discipleship.  An abstract theology, a doctrinal system, a general religious knowledge of the subject of grace or the forgiveness of sins, render discipleship superfluous, and in fact exclude any idea of following christ...Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ -- Bonhoeffer. 

Evangelism Problem or Relational Problem?

The gospel has always been a relational transaction. The relational dynamics of the gospel can not be overlooked. Occasionally, you may have your airplane conversion story, but these are the rarity not the norm. Most people want to get close to you in order to discover how close they want to get to your Savior. So, how many people do you know who are far removed from God? One is a good start! Now, today, how will you be proactive to move this person from becoming a follower of Jesus?
» Acquaintances need to become Friends as you follow them into their context, praying as you go .

» Friends need to become followers of you through invitation and food.

» Followers of you need to become Followers of Jesus through relational investment with you and other followers of Jesus.

» Followers of Jesus need to become Family through living in community.

» Family needs to become Disciplemakers through life on mission.

If we are going to make disciples of Jesus Christ, we have to have a message, but we also need acquaintances - those far from God. We must go to them. It requires ordinary living outside the walls of the building in close proximity with those who are missing. If you surround yourself with just insiders, you will

As you follow Jesus today make a choice to pray for a person of peace who will become a friend of you in order to become a friend of Jesus.

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