water-wellA few weeks ago at Launch Ministry’s weekly Bible Study we read the story of the woman at the well from John 4. I was writing down notes throughout our whole discussion because the points that this couple thousand year old story brings up are still valid today. In case you’re not familiar with the story (which I wasn’t until a friend read it to me at church) I’ll try to give a short summary with a lot of paraphrasing and hopefully little bias.

The story starts with Jesus traveling to Galilee, through Samaria. According to Jewish law and social custom Samaria was not to be traveled to, and the Samaritan  people were deemed unclean. “Good” Jews would walk many miles around Samaria just to avoid it and its people. Jesus, disregarding social norms, makes a point to stop at a well in Samaria to talk to a woman there and asks her for a drink. This was unheard of because she was a Samaritan her water containers were “unclean” and so was she. Jesus offers the woman “living water”, which confuses the woman. before she can really ask questions Jesus plays the prophet card, telling the woman that he knows about her five divorces and current unwed domestic partnership. The woman, knowing now that this is the prophet known as Christ runs back to town and gathers everyone to come see what’s going on, and they come. (There’s more, which I’ll use in part two of this post since I don’t want to get off track).

Why don’t people get connected with Millennials

First, within the right groups of people there’s a lot of communication and personal interest in Millennials. For instance in Chaska, MN – Launch Ministry, local non-profits, business owners, and all the regulars at the coffee shop have made me feel very connected and engaged with the community around me, including older generations. In this community there’s a huge support base to young people, myself included, but I think this is a niche in a wider environment of adulthood. Just like the Samaritan woman there are some obvious social reasons why we’re disconnected from older people, or why we feel that we are. One of the biggest reasons I have experienced is simply a difference of appearance and what appearance means to us (I will get at this more in part two). Millennials aren’t bogged down as much from the “right” look. We might have tattoos, body piercings, blue hair, thick glasses – all things that past generations find either repulsive, or at least unprofessional (even though we feel differently). We also carry ourselves in a “have all the answers” self confident manner that says that we care more about our abilities and drive than our marketable qualities. It could also be as simple as our generation’s disregard of authority, or the image of the hooligan that we’ve adopted. It’s easy to circumvent us when we’re just trying to succeed in our way.

Why do young adults need to be connected with?

I hear a lot of Gen Y and Baby Boomers say, “What went wrong with Millennials? Why do they need so much help with the same things we went through?”. I think the fact of the matter is the world is not the same as it was just fifteen years ago. Education means more, the job market sucks, family support is often lacking or non-existing. Sometimes we get lost without guidance from parents and mentors, and sometimes we just require more chances to learn how to do things right. When older people stay away from my generation it creates a rift. On one hand we’re trying to get jobs from people who have many differing values than we do and on the other hand we’re trying to express our ideas and unwillingness to conform. Without a middle ground we either get stuck in the “old ways” of society and loathe the transformation into our parents or we go to the extreme of non-conformity and never find a place to fit in and start a life.

What happens when someone goes out of their way to connect?

When Jesus tells the Samaritan woman about the “living water” referring to grace through God she responds in a way that makes me think she had no idea what he was talking about. Often in my daily life I seek the advice of mentors and role models around me, because quite often they have experiences that I do not. Millennials as a whole like to do things their way, we don’t like to be guided by generations that we feel have left us in the dark, and this is not good. It’s my personal opinion that I think many people my age have trouble admitting that they don’t know what they’re doing or that they need help figuring out life, which brings me to my next point. Sometimes we don’t know that we need help, and that’s where our mentors and community members come in. In the story above the Samaritan woman did not seek out Christ, he found her, in fact he made a point to break social norms to go see her. Helping emerging adults won’t work unless older, wiser people break their tunnel vision and see the problem. When successful adults take the time to meet and counsel Millennials it helps us solve our problems, but also makes us feel wanted and connected to our elders, which in turn will make us more willing to pursue help in the future. It’s like we’re addicted to struggling and all it takes is a weekly cup of coffee to break us out and make us grow. 

Effects of connections, self esteem, role models, changing worldview

I just want to end with what actually changes in our minds when we have a role model or just someone to help us make hard decisions. When we know we might fail we need to hear something like what Alfred says in Batman Begins “Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up again”. We can learn to be less critical and keep what little self esteem we have. If we have a good support system in our lives we start to feel better about people in general, which makes us more responsive to the help that some are willing to give. In addition to a heightened responsiveness we learn to think larger than our little personal bubble. Life becomes more manageable at the current point so we can start thinking about the future, especially if we have someone to sort it out with.  When our view on life, love and happiness changes to become healthier we can start making plans for the things that we know we want, which leads right back to having the confidence to accomplish goals. Our success is like a savings account with interest, if we keep the success rolling in we’ll accumulate more interest in the form of efficacy.

Jason Garver has been part of Launch Ministry for nearly 4 years. Between college classes, reading physics textbooks, spending time with his girlfriend, and working, he still has time to serve as a Launch Pad house manager. Connect with him on Facebook or Twitter or check out his new blog.