The Passion Generation

Grant Skeldon, Ryan Casey Waller

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780310351894
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Millennials have disrupted almost every major industry. Whether you're a parent trying to raise them, a pastor trying to reach them, or an employer trying to retain them, they're disruptive. As the largest living generation, millennials are one of the most studied but misunderstood groups of our day. And the chasm between the generations is only getting wider.

Speaker and founder of the Initiative Network Grant Skeldon pulls back the confusing statistics about millennials to reveal the root issue: it's not a millennial problem, it's a discipleship problem. Millennials are known for their struggle to hold jobs, reluctance to live on their own, and alarming migration away from the church. And now our culture is feeling the results of a mentor-less, fatherless generation. But how do you start discipling young people when you struggle to connect with them?

Written by a millennial, The Passion Generation will guide you beyond the stats of what millennials are doing to the why they're doing it and how we can all move toward healthy community. With wit, compassion, and startling insights, this book shares stories and studies drawn from Skeldon's years of working to bridge generational gaps. In his signature conversational style, Skeldon offers researched strategies that will spark healthy connections, and practical methods that will help you disciple the millennials you love.

This book is your guide to understanding the millennials in your life who are seemingly reckless but far from hopeless, for the future of the church that depends on them.

PART 1

DISCIPLING MILLENNIALS

CHAPTER 1

THE GENERATION GAP

March 8, 2006, was the biggest day of my life.

Before I tell you why, allow me to tell you a little about myself. I was sixteen years old, and like most high school kids, I found my identity in something other than God. To me, Jesus was a good guy and I knew he was real, but I didn’t want him yet. He was nice, but he also was a killjoy. I wanted to have fun first and then settle down later. I told myself, “I’ll be a Christian when I’m twenty-six.” I’m not kidding. I planned an age to become a Christian. It was pretty ridiculous, but it reveals how much I didn’t get it.

God didn’t sit on the throne of my heart. Instead I replaced him with typical substitutes. First, it was basketball. I had always loved the sport and been identified as a basketball player. My friends and I played all the time. Second, there was my girlfriend. We had been together for three years (which is basically forever in teenage years), so everyone thought we were going to be high school sweethearts. She was the girl on the hip-hop team, and I was the guy on the basketball team. It was like a ghetto High School Musical in the making.

And yes, you heard that correct: my school had a hip-hop team. It’s probably a good time to tell you that I grew up in a part of Dallas that was a little more urban, which is a euphemism for growing up with a lot of Hispanics and African Americans. This was pretty awesome, because I’m Hispanic and African American. My mom is a five foot little Mexican lady, and my dad is a six foot four South African man. They’re definitely a unique duo. But I’ll be honest. I feel like a Mexicant, because I can’t speak any Spanish. And my dad is white, so he’s not what people expect when I tell them he’s from Africa. (Once when I spoke in Uganda, I joked that I was technically African American, but when I told them my dad was South African, they laughed and said, “That doesn’t count!”) My upbringing is important for you to know, because the third thing on the throne of my heart was the approval of people. I, like many high school kids, cared a lot about what people thought of me. I just wanted to fit in and be liked, but it’s hard to fit in when you always feel different. Our culture shapes a lot about us: food, dress, music, hobbies, values. Being Mexican but not feeling Mexican, and being South African but not feeling South African, made it pretty hard to figure out my identity. Who am I? What am I supposed to be like when I’m diverse and everyone else isn’t?

Luckily, my high school was radically diverse. So for the first time in a long time, I felt like I belonged. Things were great. Our basketball team was good, my girlfriend was legit, and I had just landed my first job at my favorite clothing store, Marshalls. I was living the dream.

Then, in one week, everything came crashing down.

On Monday, my girlfriend cheated on me. On Wednesday, I was kicked off the basketball team. And by Friday, my popularity was washed down the drain. Everyone was talking about me, but not the way I wanted them to. I know it sounds dramatic, but from my limited teenage perspective, life was over. Everything I had been passionate about and everything I had placed my identity in was gone.

I had no girlfriend to spend time with. No basketball practice to attend. No friends to go see. Just gossip to avoid and feelings to numb. So when I got invited to a youth group I had never been to before, I accepted the invitation.

I wasn’t really interested in finding God, but I was now single, and I was told there were hot girls there, so I went. It wasn’t my first time in church, but it was the first time I went of my own volition. I had attended only when my mom dragged my brothers and me along. It wasn’t that I hated church. But I definitely didn’t like it. I just had never really connected with anyone there. Like most millennials, I craved authenticity, and the church just didn’t seem authentic at all.

But that night, church went from being fake to being the most hopeful place on earth. For the first time, I heard the good news in a way that was real to me. I realized that the reason I was in shambles was because I had placed my identity in things that wouldn’t matter in eternity. My whole life unraveled in one week because God wasn’t my foundation. I was tired of trying to earn the approval of man instead of simply receiving the approval of God. So on March 8, 2006, I placed my future in the hands of a God who would never leave me.

The very next day, God gave me back my girlfriend, my spot on the team, and my popularity.

Okay, that didn’t happen. God didn’t give me my old life back, and in the end I didn’t want it anymore. I had him, and I didn’t need anything else.

The crazy thing about God is he can change your life without changing your circumstances. After my conversion, I returned to the same heartache that crushed me, but I was different inside. God was now in me. And I didn’t care anymore about what people thought. Leonard Ravenhill once said, “A man who is intimate with God will never be intimidated by man.” I didn’t know it at the time, but God was just getting started. It wouldn’t be his last intervention.

THE SECOND MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF MY LIFE

The next year was full of culture shock. I was in a whole new world and just trying to learn how to respond to it. I mean, God got me ten years earlier than I had planned! I went from a basketball team where most of my friends were black to a church community where all my friends were white. You can hang out in a group for only so long before you start trying to live like them and look like them. I started wearing American Eagle. I started wearing Hollister. I traded my baggy jeans for skinny jeans with holes in them. I went the whole nine yards. You have to understand, no one at my church dressed like the kids at my school. So I adapted. The funny thing is I didn’t just change the way I dressed. I also changed the places I ate. I don’t know if this is a white thing or a Christian thing, but I discovered the second trinity of the church: Starbucks, Chipotle, and Chick-fil-A. All places I had never been before I started hanging out with white Christians. (Don’t lie. You know you’ve been to at least one of these places in the last three days.)

Fast-forward two weeks from the night I was saved, and we come to the second most important day of my life—the day discipleship began.

A man in the new church I was attending, a guy named Kevin Batista, heard I had given my life to Christ. He sought me out to challenge me to follow him as he followed Christ.

The following pattern is critical to everything else I am going to say. If you don’t learn anything else from this book, just make sure you get this pattern. I promise it will make all the difference. Here it is:

• Jesus invited me to follow him.

• I accepted Jesus’ invitation.

• Kevin, who had been following Jesus longer than I had, invited me to follow him as he followed Jesus.

• I accepted Kevin’s invitation.

I followed him as he followed Christ. I had no idea how important it is for a young Christian to be discipled by an older and more mature believer. Heck, I didn’t even know what discipleship is! Thank God Kevin did. I thank God even more that Kevin didn’t just know about discipleship but had dedicated his life to doing it. And not the kind of cheap discipleship that has become so commonplace in today’s church. Kevin was into the real-deal discipleship modeled by Jesus in the Gospels.

What do I mean by that?

Well, most Christians think of discipleship as simply a meeting over coffee to pray, read the Bible, and share a little bit about life. Of course, there’s never been anything wrong with some good ol’ Scripture, a triple shot of espresso, a couple of high fives, and goodbyes. Coffee and conversation are awesome things to do with one another. But coffee and conversation aren’t discipleship. Jesus didn’t invite the disciples to go have coffee with him. He invited them to go do life with him. So Kevin and I didn’t really do the whole coffee and conversation thing. Over the year and a half that Kevin discipled me, we probably met one-on-one only two or three times.

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Coffee and conversation aren’t discipleship.

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Kevin wasn’t interested in inviting me to a quick catch-up on the week. He wasn’t interested just in who I was dating or how many quiet times I had. He wanted to k...