Pursue the 20 and 30-somethings
by Marc McCartney
Director of Events
The RightNow Campaign
Delivered at the Unreached and Least Evangelized Peoples Forum
November 2007
Irving Bible Church
Irving, Texas
I was born in 1972, so according to a generational chart, I am “Generation X.” Growing up we were called “Gen X” which is a generation without a label, but that was a label in and of itself. We didn’t like that label, so we created our own label - “Busters.” The reason we did that was because everything we got in life was busted. The “Boomer” generation created all this stuff then brought it to us, but it was busted. The family was busted. The church was busted. The economy was busted. Everything we got in life was busted. Even sports was busted and corrupt.
I’m telling you that because my generation has some issues. We have some angst to deal with. We’re not happy about everything that has transpired. However, my appeal today is to please look beyond that. Look through the outer shell and look into the heart of a generation that can be untapped. This generation has the potential to do amazing things.
What I want to do today is tell a story about our ministry through the RightNow Campaign. I’ll share some of the insights we’ve learned as we’ve been working with 20 and 30-somethings for the last three years.
The RightNow Campaign started with a friend of mine named Brian Mosley. Brian is director of the RightNow Campaign. During the summer after his junior year at Baylor University, he went on a mission trip to Tanzania for six weeks. Brian was a telecommunications major, so he was using his major field by shooting video for missionaries. While he was doing this, his mind was opened to a whole new world.
My friend Brian had never thought about using his skills in telecommunications and video for the Kingdom of God. He’d always thought that he’d just work for a TV station or try to get a gig in Hollywood. That was the mindset he’d grown up with, so when he went to Africa and saw how God could use his skills, he was blown away.
About the same time, Brian had these two college roommates who were accounting majors being recruited by the Big Six accounting firms. Something really interesting was happening. As Brian was praying through this idea of missions, he said, “Okay. Here’s what I’m going to do.” He took out the Missionary Handbook and looked up the 50 organizations that said they did some kind of video work. He poured out his heart. He wrote personal letters to every single one telling them who he was. He was very proactive. He sniffed all this stuff out.
Meanwhile there is knocking at Brian’s apartment door. It’s Ernst & Young, and it’s Arthur Anderson, and it’s all these other big accounting firms taking his roommates out to barbecues, to bowling alleys, to movie theatres, and places they can wine and dine them. Brian is pursuing missions over here. His roommates are being pursued over here.
Mail starts coming in. Brian gets excited and starts opening packets. Every one of them starts the same way—“Dear Friend…” and they pretty much end the same way too. Meanwhile, Brian’s roommates are getting offered six-week paid internships just to see if they really like these accounting firms. Brian is scratching his head saying, “I’m trying to do something for the Kingdom. These guys are going to account stuff! People are going nuts over them and I can’t get anyone to personally follow up with me, to call me, to do anything.”
So within the same college apartment, you’ve got the six-week paid internships and you’ve got the 35-page packets to fill out. Brian felt like he had already poured out his heart to these groups and now he has to do it over and over again?
The accounting firms wanted to know his roommates. They wanted to know their character, to spend time with them, and to figure out who they were. They already knew they had the education. They were trying to get to know them.
The mission agencies seemed to be burdened by Brian. He was something that they had to do, that they had to go through. It seems that the accounting firms understood the power of this generation—both the good and the bad. And they understood that they had to get to know them, and get into their heads.
There are a couple of quotations that reflect this generation:
• “This is the most high-maintenance workforce in the history of the world…The good news is they’re also going to be the most high-performing workforce in the history of the world. They walk in with more information in their heads and at their fingertips…and sure, they have high expectations, but they have the highest expectations first and foremost for themselves.” Bruce Tulgan in Rainmaker Thinking (Generational Researcher and Expert)
• Matt Chandler is pastor of The Village Church. He is a pastor of more than 4000 twenty and thirty-somethings. “This generation can be described in two words: bored and lonely. Despite the fact that they have more to do (internet, work, etc.) and more ways to connect than any previous generation.” That’s a glimpse of what we’re dealing with.
• Another quotation comes from Manny Fernandez, National Managing Partner for Campus Recruiting: KPMG. “Gen Y-ers are able to do and learn so much more than I could at that stage. And they’re not looking to have a career like I have, with just one company. So we’ve got to build tools that are not just about retention but about having people develop skills faster, so that they can take on longer opportunities.”
Businesses understand that their average employee in the same job will have to be trained twelve times throughout their career. Why would they have to be trained twelve times if they are in the same job? Because everything is changing! It’s going to keep changing and keep changing, and they have to get new training in new skills as they are doing their job.
What wise businesses understand is that this generation is going to respond relationally, not simply responding on technology. Technology is a tool, and this generation can use it in a relational manner, but what the accounting firms had to do was to go out and get them. Brian was looking for someone (anyone) who would get personal.
Here are some of the things that we’ve heard over the last few years from some of the people we’ve worked with in mobilization:
• “It just seems to me that mission organizations are in love with their methods. They are always looking to the way God worked 50 years ago.” (20-something describing his experience with a well-known mission organization)
• “The organization contacted me and they want someone who is debt-free. That will be awhile for me as I am paying on $46,000 in student loans. Plus the guy that called me didn’t seem too excited about talking to me or about the ministry. In my opinion there has to be some passion from a ministry about what they do if I am going to have a passion for what they do. ” (Late 20-something describing his experience with a well-known mission organization)
• “I just feel a little overwhelmed with groups going to Africa right now. I’ve been presented with like 50 groups, and I have a hard time connecting.” (College student describing his experience trying to get started in missions)
My point in telling you this is that this generation needs help. They need guidance. They need coaching. They need someone to walk alongside them and to help them understand what is going on.
The last thing I’m going to do before I get into some of the specifics that the RightNow Campaign learned from Brian’s story, is a video I saw on YouTube last week. It’s been viewed over a million times. It was created by students of Kansas State University about how their generation learns. What they did was a week long project where they used a “Google document” which is very interactive. They had over 200 people collaborate and made over 367 edits on this document in one week and then they shot this video in 75 minutes (one class period). This is a generation talking to you about learning, and how they learn.
One of the things that we at the RightNow Campaign have learned is that this generation is concerned with global issues and giving their wealth back to the world. Take for instance “American Idol”—the most watched television show in the history of the world. One in ten households in America watches that show. The viewers are more than likely to be in their 30’s. The show raised more than $70 million in one night for AIDS in Africa! Money was raised because this generation cares. We’ve got to guide them. We’ve got to coach them and connect them.
We at the RightNow Campaign became aware of a few things from Brian’s experiences:
1. Relational trust is huge for my generation.
Brian wanted to be known by one of the mission agencies. He wanted them to personally invest in him and take some time with him. The one agency that ultimately got through to him and finally called him on the phone wasn’t the agency that he was going to connect with, but he did develop a relationship with them that lasts to this day. These people were committed to him, and they emailed, called, and prayed for him. They knew when he had a test. They had lunch with him when they were in town. There was a relational connection. And that couple is one of the reasons that Brian started the RightNow Campaign. They pursued him, and they earned his relational trust.
2. My generation needs to understand that they don’t have to be a preacher or a singer to be used by God.
While that may be obvious to some people, the 30-something generation doesn’t fully get that yet. We see on stage the guy that preaches and the girl that sings, and we think that we have to be like them for God to use us. But we’re starting to see that whatever passions, whatever skills, whatever desires we have are there for a reason. The Bible says “whether we eat or drink, whatever we do, do it for the glory of God.” God has given us these skills, and He wants us to use them. Brian started with video, and he had never thought that he could use his video skills for the Kingdom. He then wondered how many of his peers felt the same way. This generation has no idea that what they’ve learned they can do for God’s glory. And so the RightNow Campaign is trying to help our generation understand that you don’t have to be a preacher or singer to be used by God.
3. My generation has to be pursued.
The missing piece that was there for Brian was something we call the connecting point. Mission agencies are doing phenomenal work overseas, but they are not doing very well here at getting people to understand and contextualize their message. They need to understand how to reach this generation and connect with them. And so we decided that we at RightNow were going to be that connecting point. We were going to: (1) help communicate to our generation; (2) get into a relationship with them; and (3) do whatever hard work it took so that we could connect them to opportunities in the mission filed. We started to do that by using live events. We did that because we knew that relationally we could connect with people face to face at a live event. Have you heard of OneDay or the Passion Conference or Louie Giglio? We were at the first OneDay in May 2000 in Memphis, Tennessee. There were about 50,000 college students there. It was four days but they called it OneDay. We met about 5000 students. We set up a big tent, and students came by who wanted to be mobilized or to figure out how they could connect to mission opportunities. So we had 5000 students come through and say, “Yes. I want to take the next step and do something in missions.”
From that experience we decided that if we’re going to be relational and personal, we needed to call these 5000 students on the phone. E-mail is a great tool if you know someone. Otherwise, it’s just spam. So we started calling them, and we learned very quickly that it takes 9 calls to get a hold of a college student. 9 times 5000 is 45,000. We made 45,000 phone calls. We had volunteers come in and we had 50 people on the phone bank calling students. We would just ask them simple questions – What’s God doing in your heart? What do you have a passion for? How can we help you? We learned that you have to pursue this generation. What Brian did is rare. He sent out 50 applications to organizations, and he even got bogged down. But he is rare. With my generation, you have to pursue us. Just like the big accounting firms that were pursuing Brian’s roommates, you have to pursue us. That’s what we tried to do in our follow-up—keep pursuing and try to connect people.
We also tried to figure out how we could be church-based. So in our conversations with these students about their passions and what God is doing in their lives, we’d ask them if there was anyone in their church that knew about these passions. So we’d tell them to go back to their church and talk to a pastor, a Bible Study leader, an accountability partner, or someone. We told them to let that person know what you’re passionate about and see if there’s a way that you can connect to that through your local church. If not, get back to us and we’ll connect you with one of the opportunities that we are aware of through RightNow. We have about 4,000 opportunities on our website.
4. My generation doesn’t think they are qualified to serve Jesus Christ.
We learned that about 70% of the people that we would call about two weeks later to follow-up were connected to the opportunities at their local church. And we started asking why it took our phone call to get them connected to something at their own church. There were two reasons (the lesser one was a communications issue). (1) Some just didn’t know that the opportunities were there. (2) But 90% didn’t think they were qualified to serve Jesus Christ. They thought: that’s me in three years; that’s me after I finish Perspectives; that’s me after I get discipled; that’s me after I get this degree; that’s not me yet.
They did not see themselves as qualified to serve the Lord Jesus Christ! That’s a problem. We have to help them understand that we are on mission all the time. God has given us the mission. So we’ve got to help them understand that and to live that out. So as we look around churches in the USA today, we see 20 and 30-somethings that love God and have a heart for God. They are good people. They are relatively committed. They listen to the messages of the pastor. Yet they leave the church utterly unchanged! It’s driving me nuts.
5. My generation compartmentalizes our faith and our life.
It’s inconceivable that we have this faith over here and we have this life over here. We compartmentalize the two and they never come together. That’s a picture of this generation. We read the Bible, and it doesn’t make sense. Faith without works is dead. Faith expresses itself through love. We act on it not because we have to, but because we’re compelled to. Because of the faith we have in Christ, we must put our faith into action. So that’s what we at RightNow are trying to get our generation to understand and to put all the pieces together in this puzzle. We can’t keep compartmentalizing these two. Faith and life must go together.
Overall, we at The RightNow Campaign have learned a lot. It’s not just that we have to pursue this generation. It’s not just that we have to do it relationally. And it’s not just that we have to open their eyes to the mission that God has given them. We have to help them connect all those dots.
The way that we have helped this generation connect the dots is to take their specific and unique skills, passions, and desires from God and connect them to actual opportunities. When we started, our core value at RightNow was that we were going to connect our generation to missions. Now, our core is that we’re going to connect our generation’s passions, skills, and desires to specific opportunities to put their faith into action.
So that’s what we at RightNow do. We still do the follow-up. We call them on the phone after we’ve met them at an event or through our website. We ask them the questions: (1) What is God doing in your heart? (2) What is God doing in your life; and (3) What do you want to do?
We’ve got about 75 missions organizations that we work with, and they have about 4000 opportunities online. But we’re finding out from this generation what they are passionate about and what their skills are, then RightNow is the matchmaker. We find the opportunity that meets them, and then we connect them to that. We believe in this generation. We think God can do amazing things. Pursue us.