It used to be that a degree or a position of power would give you a platform to share your opinions and insight. Not anymore. For millennials, authority must be earned through a demonstrated track record of authenticity.

That doesn’t mean that millennials are disrespectful of those who have positional authority. Generally, they do respect their professors, teachers, pastors or parents. However, for millennials, respect is not the same as listening, learning and changing. That requires something more.

What I love about this is that it forces those of us in leadership with millennials to put aside the cliches and empty words and live authentically. We can’t talk about concern for the poor without doing something about it. We can’t preach about the fruit of the Spirit without exhibiting them in our lives. We can’t encourage life change without living it ourselves.

The challenge that millenials put upon leaders is that we actually have to practice what we preach. As soon as we show inconsistency between our words and actions, we lose the opportunity to influence the lives of the millennials in our midst. The upside of this is that this is a change we should probably already be making that will cause us to become better Christians and better people. The challenge, however, is to help millennials to realize that all of us are in process and even if we do demonstrate some hypocrisy, we are trying to do it better. Maybe we can invite them to help us out in the journey.

Sometimes this desire to change the status quo can get them in trouble. I talked to one young person who, in his first week at his new job, had created a plan to make the entire operation more efficient and couldn’t understand why his boss wasn’t more receptive to his ideas.

For those of us who spend a lot of time with millennials, however, that desire to shake things up can be dramatically refreshing. First, you always know where you stand. Living in Minnesota, “Minnesota Nice” dictates that you never tell anyone how you really feel about the situation but instead passive-aggressively seek to derail things until you come to that realization on your own. Millennials will always let you know how they feel about the situation even if you would rather not hear it.

Second, millennials rarely critique without providing solutions. They have grown up in an age of constructive criticism, always working in groups on school projects where critique had to be accompanied by positive statements and suggestions to improve. Those ideas have stuck and created a generation of creative problem solvers.

Finally, the desire to bring change means that they value what has already been there. If they didn’t value it, they would simply disregard it or throw it out entirely. But bringing change means that they value what is there even if they see flaws in the current way of doing things. This means that you know that they are on your side.

The key to all of this, however, is to be humble enough to listen. If you are willing to hear and validate the desire for change and even bring some of their suggestions into reality, you will find that you have won over an incredibly loyal following who will continue to work hard to make your life and ministry better.

A recent Saturday Night Live sketch poked fun at Millennial optimism -

While this video takes the hopeful optimism to a ridiculous extreme and while it may be true that Millennials can lean toward self-promotion and unrealistic life aspirations, there is something refreshing about the unwavering belief that the future is wide open and that you can become whatever and whoever you want to be.

I was at a conference earlier this week and one of the speakers said almost in passing, “Are you more afraid of missed opportunities or making mistakes?” I think that statement highlights beautifully the difference between Millennials and previous generations. Previous generations tend toward the safe, the secure. We think through every option, strategize for every eventuality, and when we finally have ruled out any possibility of failure, we take one baby step forward.

Millennials, however, crash almost aimlessly into the future. A missed opportunity or experience would be tragic. Failure isn’t really failure – it is an opportunity to experience something that didn’t work quite as well as hoped. When ideas don’t work out, Millennials simply jump into the next opportunity with just as much enthusiasm. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the words, “So here’s my new idea…” come from the mouths of the young adults I work with.

Imagine what would happen if the refusal to fear failure were combined with a Spirit-led focus toward the places where God might use them to bring transformation into a broken world? Maybe that should be something that those of us who mentor Millennials begin to think about.

One of the troubling statements about my generation’s belief in God came from the work of Notre Dame professor Christian Smith, in which they believe in moralistic, therapeutic, deism: a God who is up there, who helps me if I need, so long as I remain a good person. Essentially, if this belief remains, my generation will wrestle with an idle God who exists at our disposal. And, behind this is a belief in the individualistic nature of humanity. We believe that God is here to meet my needs and my preferences. And, I think that two things will shake this up:

The first is that the individual self cannot exist for itself healthily without God. When the individual seeks self-gratification, it will end up in both/either narcissism and self-destructive behavior. Only when I am able to die to myself am I truly able to find myself. This true-self, is not made up of what society tells me I am, or who I want to be, but is who God tells me who I am. It is as Paul says, “not me but Christ who lives within me.” The self that finds itself in the source of life no longer needs to exist for the self, but exists solely to enhance and deepen the lives of those around them. This is a call away from the individual ego, the individual consciousness, to allow God to have a renewal of the self and the mind, and embrace the existence of God within us. The Christian faith we receive here is received from God.

The second is a calling into community. I am convinced that in our individualistic culture, we are more restless and lonely than ever. I think Mother Teresa said it so well when she said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” We have not learned how to need one another. We have not learned how to submit our lives to one another. If Christianity is going to kick this idleness, they will have to learn that we don’t get private lives. God wants us to confess our secrets, our brokenness, and our sins to one another, because this life, this work, is not something that can be done alone. Carrying our inner poverty is too much to bear on one’s own. The Christian faith here is received from one another.

Both of these lead us to the reminder that we are not our own. The life with God leads more deeply into community of his presence within us and with those around us. Both of which calls for a surrender to a life of love. And, it begins to be a life that is received, and not determined by what I say it is.

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Follow Mike Friesen on his blog or on Twitter.

Earlier this week, I had a conversation with yet another parent who was desperate for solutions for what to do about their struggling young adult child. They had run out of options and had nowhere to turn. They felt like they were completely alone and had no one to support or encourage them in their journey.

Sadly, that’s the position most parents find themselves in. They think they are the only ones, they feel like failures, not realizing that they may be in the majority. With young adult unemployment rates at the highest point since WWII and record numbers of young adults moving back home, more parents are hurting than ever before.

Our attempt to help takes several forms. First, we offer individual coaching for parents to help them walk through this challenging time.

Second, our You Are Not Alone support group curriculum provides a 12 week support group to be used in churches and community organizations.

It is absolutely essential that churches begin to make space for the growing number of parents to be able to share their stories and find the support they need. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to help.

Yesterday, my neighbor Gabe and I went shopping to replace our died-too-soon 7-year-old lawn mower. We have a tradition of buying lawnmowers together in order to save a little money and because, really, why do we think that everyone has to own every tool and piece of equipment you might ever need (but that’s another post…).

Our journey began at Costco, because you never know what absurd deals they might have on something like a lawn mower, but they didn’t have any so we went to Home Depot. There’s nothing special about Home Depot. Cement floors. Orange everywhere. Clean, but nothing fancy. We made our way to the lawn mower section, avoiding the temptation to jump on the riders and pretend to drive around the store.

After we perused the mowers for a while, an employee came up to talk with us. Wray is a retired engineer who knows everything about lawn mowers. We asked some questions about differences between certain models, then he started asking questions about our previous mower. We told him about our mower shooting out smoke and oil from the exhaust. He asked us if we have any steep hills on our respective properties. Of course, Gabe has a 45 degree angle in front of his house. Who knew that most lawn mowers are only intended for a 22 degree incline??? Wray directed us to the Honda mowers because they are the only ones that have overhead cam engines which can handle steeper inclines. We weren’t quite ready to spend $400 on a mower, but we learned a ton from Wray and were thrilled with the service we received there.

We decided to check out Menards before we made the purchase. The local Menards is a brand new store. Huge. Wide aisles. A wide, 100 yard conveyor belt escalator to take you upstairs with ease. Beautiful on the outside and the inside. No lie, there was a baby grand piano in the center of the store being played by a man in a tuxedo. Unbelievable.

We found the lawn mowers and, knowing what to look for, found a cheaper lawn mower that had a Honda overhead cam engine on it. Now if only we could buy it…

We looked for 25 minutes to find someone to help us. Finally we found someone in the rug department who said he knew a little bit about lawn mowers. He searched the computer and found that they were sold out of the model we wanted, but the store 20 miles away had some. We asked if they could call and hold one for us. Nope. They don’t do that. At this point we were almost ready to go back to Wray (but even Wray’s fantastic service wasn’t worth an extra $120…). After receiving a similar lack of service in the also brand new second Menards, we finally made it home with our new lawn mower.

Lesson Learned: No matter how much you clean up the outside, if you don’t clean up the inside, the stuff that makes you who you are, it’s not going to make much of a difference. How often do we try to make ourselves look prettier, thinking that will somehow change our hearts, but in the end we’re still as selfish, unloving, mean and angry as we’ve always been. It’s only by changing our character and our hearts that we become new, and only through the Holy Spirit’s work within us can our hearts be changed.

Failed Lesson: Menards still got our business. Cheap prices still won despite crappy service.

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Finish college and do not have any children until you’re at least thirty. follow the signs not the guy in front of you.

Enjoy the infancy of adulthood. Don’t let anyone treat you like you are not a full adult.

Don’t be in a hurry to grow up. But grow up just enough so you can plan on enjoying years 26+.

Stay present! Follow your dreams. Don’t be deterred by what might happen, or by what other people think is important for you.

Follow your heart, not what others think.

You will regret more of what you don’t do, opposed to what you tried and failed.

Always look for ways to build upon what/who you have/know. don’t always try to start from zero or reinvent stuff.

Guard your heart..I mean really, really learn what that means and do it!!

Sometimes not saying anything is better. Letting them know you are there for anything at any time helps a lot more in my opinion.

Dream it & then do it.

Open an IRA account.

Lift your eyes, live for something bigger than yourself.

be very careful whom you marry

Find the one thing you love doing more than anything else in the world. Do that.

Find a faith community. Do it now. Being in a church now will change your life.

Don’t take yourself so seriously.

Be smart about money. You do not want to start your adult life underwater with debt.

Dont let others put you down and discourage you because you are

Don’t settle for a “job.” Take the time to find your vocation, what is God calling you to do with your life?

Never underestimate the importance of simply being there for someone.
Don’t isolate yourself from people or from God. Life was not meant to be lived alone.

Embrace what you don’t know yet … the human brain finishes developing @ around 25 or so.

If u are in college, make the most of it. It’s a privilege to have 4 uninterrupted yrs when all expected of you is to learn

“it is not good to be alone”

when to listen and when to speak….when in doubt, listen. Write it down!

Make sure you’re best friends before you get married.

Life is not downhill after college/marriage/career/fill-in-the-blank. It’s ok to take your time figuring stuff out.

Find a person who has worked through all their issues and have them mentor you. They can be your go 2 person when you need help.

Be kind. To others and yourself.

Breathe.

Work hard, but know that everything will be OK. Relax. Enjoy today.

Don’t let others conform you but let God transform you.

Don’t ever let work become your whole life and make sure you take the time for your friends and family, they matter most

Find a way to be committed to Jesus without steam rolling your opposition. be life-giving.

travel…a lot!

Don’t rush! Life is longer than you can imagine. You have time to do and be so many things.

Follow God without measure, Find your calling and do it, find your true love and don’t let go….chill out…..pray…..love.

Re-learn the “faith” your parents taught you for yourself, scrub it and start over. Take what you agree with along the way.

Don’t hurry through it. It goes too fast as it is. Ryan – 26. Haha.

Pick a major that will actually help you get a job, of not don’t take out student loans.

It’s okay if you don’t have all the answers. You’ll live into them.

Quit worrying about your hair. Everyone has a bad hair day and you are not your hair.

Rolling Stones, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you might find you get what you need.”

Dogs and babies are more work than cute, no need to rush out and get either.

God speaks to us in different ways. Listen for your story.

Our shortcomings don’t disappear with age, instead they compound. Invest heavily in your search for identity & maturity.

Trying to change who you are won’t work and is exhausting. The sooner you accept yourself, the sooner you can get on with it.

Listen to your mom…she’s probably right.

Don’t take _____ too seriously, you’ll probably change your mind.

You do *not* need to drive so fast.

Don’t listen to everyone who tells you these are the best days of your life. This is only the beginning! It gets way better!

Don’t think you have to “have it all together” to be used by God.

You will not wake up one day to magically find you are who you want to be. Ask yourself who you are becoming today.

I know it will be hard, but learn to forgive yourself, accept your limitations, and be prepared to unlearn a lot.

Don’t for one second think you know where you’ll be in 10 years… Life is FULL of surprises that you can’t even imagine!

Find a mentor you can trust and stay in consistent contact with.

 Scot McKnight Series – The posts are ordered from the bottom of the page to the top.

This is the second in a series of posts based on the book Arrested Adulthood: The Changing Nature of Maturity and Identity by James Cote. In this post, I’ll be discussing the crisis of identity that many young adults experience.

According to Cote, “The identity crisis is characterized by a subjective sense of identity confusion, behavioral and characterologcial disarray, and the absence of a recognized role or roles in a community. Resolution of the identity stage is facilitated when (1) a community role is acquired, (2) behavior and character become stabilized, and (3) a relatively firm sense of ego identity is developed.”

It is clear that we have not done a very good job ushering young adults into the community. In very informal surveys of churches in our area, I find that none of them have a significant population of 18-25 year olds and have little to no ministry happening among this age group. I wonder if this issue of identity might be at the heart of the problem. Certainly, churches and the community at large have not created opportunities for young adults to have an established role within the community. This would require an intentional effort to make space for those who might not be as mature as we would like. It also demands that we allow room for significant roles that might result in failure. But if we are too concerned with results and the “product” that we are attempting to produce (be it church services, outreach events, etc.), then we will never have space for those who are still trying to figure out who they are and where they fit in.

Beyond just creating roles within the community, it is important that we also are intentional about helping young adults discover, form and stabilize their character and behavior. This is where discipleship and mentoring become essential as there is no one-size-fits-all answer for what a young person ought to become. It is essential for adults to walk alongside those who are still searching for their identity and help them to discover the potential God has placed within them to live Christ-centered and socially successful lives.