Millennials

Millennials are the future.  Whether we embrace it or not.  Toby had a really good message on Sunday that spoke the truth about the position that the current church must embrace and about the position that the millennials find themselves in and are non the less concerned about.  This position is a position that is different than the previous generation, they are a generation of innovators, thinkers, and free wills, they are the "We" generation.  This in contrast to the previous generation of the "Me" generation, building wealth, and creating a stable, comfortable lifestyle.  There are pros and cons to both ways of thinking.  Glen Beck pointed this out from some books and authors he read and interviewed, I think the "Pendulum" was one of the books.

Toby talked about building the future of the church that includes building up the next generation of leaders, the problem is that the Millennials have a lot of ideas and energy, but no resources or money or wisdom to navigate getting successful results.  Generations need to work together to build a future of tomorrow that encompasses all of our strengths.  Together with can build anything, divided we fail.
We need to utilize our elder generation for their wisdom, they have so much to offer and we have already let many years of experience disappear and those that had learned so much pass a way without that knowledge getting handed down to the next generation.  We have lost our family history from being past on by dividing the family with sending our kids to school and we head off to work, only to be united briefly, if we are lucky for maybe a quick dinner.  We have lost the family as the nucleus of our society.

Millennials have learned from this, that friendship and love are more important then financial success, success that keeps us from Gods primary calling on our lives which is to love one another.  When we accumulate all this "stuff" we need to house it, store it, maintain it, and use it, it doesn't leave us with much time to enjoy life with those we are living it with.

We need to understand the Millennials are a generation of creative minds that want to create.  I met with a networking group of entrepreneurs in Denton about a year ago and it was very interesting that most of not all of them did not have business cards and most of them did not have a lot of money and din't seem to care about having any money as long as they were able to create.  Not that they didn't want to make money, but that it wasn't their first concern.

All this being said I believe that the direction that this thinking will head them is actually a good one.  One thing that humans will always have the ability to do is critical, creative, and cogitative thinking.  With the dawn of AI, robots are a long way off from being able to create outside of a logical process, I don't want to say they will never get their, but they are a ways off...   With this thought in mind the future belongs to those that can think critically, creativity, and cognitively.

We need to be teaching the next generation with the skills to think this way.  In a digital world we need to offer opportunities to be hands-on, to think strategically (verses data collectors, reference: "Making Your Brain Smarter" by Sandra Bond Chapman), and think independently.

(See Future of Education)