The young Soldiers I first counseled as an Army Chaplain are in their 40’s by now. In the early 2000’s, our discussions revolved around topics with a distinctive future trajectory. Things like marriage or divorce, children, whether to stay in the Army or return to civilian life. Undoubtedly, the future was something to look forward to.
Today, the emblematic millennial, who seeks me out for counseling, is quite different. Millennials are often anxious, depressed, and without a clear telos or moral purpose.
Our conversations often go something like this.
Me: What brings you in today?
Millennial: The future is terrifying. There are few fulfilling job prospects and limited opportunities to travel. I’m not sure if I want to have kids. I’m often sad and even have suicidal thoughts.
The catharsis of the counseling relationship allows emotions to flow freely, often giving way to tears. When they have expressed these long held emotions, I ask them about their relationship with God.
Me: Tell me about your faith background?
Millennial: I didn’t grow up in the church. I don’t believe in God. I believe in science.
Or…
Millennial: I went to children’s church and youth group but was never really part of the church. I think everyone in the church is a hypocrite.
The millennial generation has grown up with the cavernously wide and disparately shallow epoch of social media. Over half wake up at least once per night to check their phone. Only 53% of Americans say they have meaningful, daily face-to-face social interactions, including an extended conversation with a friend, or quality time spent with family.
Millennials grew up in the shadow of 9/11 and have never known a time without war. Yet, compared to previous generations, few millennials will serve or personally know someone who has served.
Now here’s the challenge that we all face; How do we spiritually guide, teach or employ someone experiencing deep existential angst, isolation, fear, a sense of separation from the church, lack of deep relationships, lack of meaning, and bereft of a sense of connectedness?
I have understood for a long time now, that these moments of deep spiritual vulnerability are valuable opportunities for intergenerational connections. Oftentimes millennials share these fears amongst their peers resulting in a shared melancholy, leading to a greater sense of futility. And yet they come to me in hopes that someone older, and hopefully more mature, can provide an explanation and a reason to continue. They’re looking for someone with a different perspective. Someone who has something to offer beyond the contemporary echo chamber of confusion.
And after countless conversations, these are the patterns I have found. My hope is that they might be a guide for those who find themselves fortunate to connect with millennials.
Millennials want mentorship.
Millennials were the first to experience the transition from high touch learning environments to low touch computer based learning and testing. It’s no wonder 22% of millennials claim to have no friends. Living in an economically prosperous America, millennials have been given every device and distraction to live with, but they often want guidance as to meaning.
It has to be real mentorship though, not canned methods from an untrusted source. Ideally from a real person whom they perceive as wise, authentic and trustworthy. Their inherent mistrust often leaves them adrift, unable to attempt to seek out help.
Provide high touch, meaningful mentorship and watch how this distracted generation becomes engaged and fulfilled.
Millennials want community that lasts.
Treat each engagement with a millennial as an opening to a lifelong relationship. And follow up again and again and again until the relationship takes root.
Millennials are less likely to divorce than their parents and experts expect them to continue this trend. Many came from divorced parents and disaggregated families. They experienced the grief of divorce at an alarming rate and they want something better.
They want relationships that last and mentorship is just such a relationship. Once choosing a mentor, millennials are very likely to put in the necessary effort to continue the relationship. Local churches, the institutions that have stood for generations in local communities, can reframe their mission as an ongoing and open community.
Old is not necessarily passé to millennials. Their love of Stranger Things (1980s), beards, vinyl records, and the past might be evidence of their desire of a world that exists beyond the present moment; time in both directions.
Millennials believe in action and service.
The faith that matters is the faith that results in action. Virtue is validated by the service it creates in the life of a person.
Give millennials the truth and help them find a way to apply it in their community. Let their creativity take root. In the best of moments, the mentor can respond like Saint Paul;
“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1), or as our Lord directed us “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”” (John 13:34-35).
Again, and most importantly, millennials see through phoniness.
That is to say, they value transparency above all else. They have their scars and they don’t like it if you hide yours. Jesus’ people are imperfect people. Allow millennials to see the depth of our collective failures as Christ’s Body and make no excuses. Let them see grace offered and the Gospel fulfilled in all its messiness and beauty.
Millennials don’t expect perfection, but they prize authenticity.
The French Philosopher, Jacques Maritain, ahead of his time, expressed the deep bellow of the millennial soul in writing, “We do not need a truth to serve us, we need a truth that we can serve.”
Similarly, it’s been my experience that millennials crave the unique telos found among faithful and broken Christians. What is offered in the Body of Christ is a future, family, meaning, joy, forgiveness, community, peace, rich relationships, authenticity, mentorship, action, and above all else; hope.
The Church, society, employers, we…must deliver.
I appreciated the thoughts from Lt. Col. O’Lear.
As a military veteran and a police chaplain, I have seen similar attitudes among young police officers, although the fraternity that exists within the police and Sheriff’s offices tend to provide the missing sense of community when the younger officers are on duty. The difficulties come when the duty day is over.
Many officers have a difficult time finding a sense of community outside of their jobs for several reasons. First, there is a tendency for officers to become more and more cynical over time as they interact with the public when individuals are behaving at their worst. This cynicism is magnified by the negative attitudes against law enforcement that have become so loudly vocalized in our society and together these influences interfere with building trusting relationships with those outside the “department”.
Second, many officers find it difficult to leave the stress of the job at work, and when they take it home with them, their family relationships suffer. Thus, the relationship they have built in the past are affected in the long-term by this latent stress, and the loss of those relationships can be the result.
In some conversations with my students at UD, I find a similar combination of stress and cynicism, although from different causes. College life can be stressful for any student. It is part of the maturing process to learn to reduce stress through proactive discipline in responsibilities, and resisting the temptation to procrastinate. However, in combination with an ever-present cynicism concerning the future, the motivation to excel is eroded.
Unlike law enforcement officers, students’ cynicism is more often based in the messages they get from peers, news, and social media. The growing unrest in our political system, combined with messages of doom about global conditions like climate change, war, and terrorism, drown out whatever positive input they may receive. Without an active spiritual dimension to their lives, they see no reason hold out hope for positive change in the future, which taints their personal aspirations and ambitions.
The answer to this is no mystery. As a minister, I have found that people who are actively involved in a spiritual community deal more effectively with stress and find hope for the future. They live longer and enjoy better mental health and build relationships more easily. Young people today certainly need mentors, and mentors who can guide them socially, professionally, and spiritually are needed above all.
I think to understand where the stresses of the Millennial generation come from we need to look at the overall impact that the policies of the Baby Boomer generation have created, from the perspective of a Generation Xer.
It’s true that Millennials have never known a time without war, yet some of them, born after 9/11, will still be asked to fight in that war. As a Generation Xer, I watched as the country changed, and hoped that cooler minds would prevail. They didn’t. The Millennials will pay that price.
While the Millennials may not personally know someone who has served, they are more likely to know someone who was affected by gun violence within the borders of our country. Such violence is pushed aside by those who value their gun ownership rights over the rights of a child to get a terror-free education.
While the Millennials are living in an economically prosperous America, they do not share in that prosperity. The increases in wealth continue to trickle up to the 1% with lax tax laws and no penalties for corporate welfare programs. The younger generation cannot hope to get an education and pull themselves up, for fear of taking on debt several times higher than Generation Xers have (some of which are also still paying off those student loans). Millennials work two and three jobs to barely scrape by, and then are criticized for not wanting to go out (tired and broke) to meet new friends. It is for this reason I believe they value the limited friendships they have.
While the Millennials find virtue in service to the community, they look at the lack of concern prior generations had toward simple things, like littering, and greater things, like climate change. In the face of a world that is slowly turning against us, they watch as prior generations ignore science in preference to faith, rather than in combination with it. When presented with a false choice between science and faith, a Millennial will overwhelmingly choose science.
How do we spiritually guide the next generation? We do so through action, not just words. We work to create a world that values clean energy, safe and inexpensive learning environments, changes in economic policy to benefit the lower and middle classes, and better foreign policies that embrace our differences and make us examples to the world, rather than enemies of it.
The greed of prior generations makes it difficult for a Millennial to have a future to look forward to. When I talk with Millennials, I stress to them that their future is squarely in their hands. They need to vote and convince their peers to vote. They need to speak out against injustice and act to preserve their interests. They need to be the change that they are looking for. While there are those of us willing and able to listen and commiserate, the future is theirs to make. We didn’t leave the world a better place for them, like prior generations had, but they have the power to design a future worth dreaming about.
Hi Kelly!
I’m a 31 year old who has served in the military and is currently a FT student at UDTS and a bi-vocational pastor. I appreciate your thoughts and post. As I’m raising my kids too I can’t help but think that while technology is a big thing that changed when I was growing up I think there is another possibly more important change that happened. The other big change was just how many families were two income families. What’s even crazier is how most of us grew up with both parents working to provide for the house and still received next to no assistance if any when we went to college. I know for my grandparents it was much less often that both parents worked outside the home. During the week I would spend maybe two hours a night with my parents before we were off to bed. Who raised us? I just think that has had a huge impact on the world we are seeing today. We spent most of our time in school being told to be quiet, listen, stand in line here, so on and so forth.
Josh, great thoughts. Thank you for your service as well.
The data points in a different direction. Parents now spend more time with their children than in time’s past…
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/09/30/parents-spend-more-time-children-now-than-they-did-50-years-ago/91263880/
Additionally, dads in particular spend more time with their kids…
https://www.mother.ly/news/millennial-dads-spend-more-time-with-their-kids
How we spend our collective time is quite different. Can you imagine sitting around the radio as a family listening as stories are dramatically read by actors? How about board games instead of video games? How about an occasional phone call to a family member instead of constant group chats, tweets, and posts?
Your point of having two working parents is well taken. Elizabeth Warren actually wrote a book “The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke.” In it she encourages creating a fiscal environment where mothers are encouraged to stay at home as primary caregivers. I do not claim to know your situation but it frequently falls into three settings. Both parents work because 1) they have to in order to make ends meet…particularly with credit card debt or student loans 2) both feel the need to work 3) the work is there…particularly in our current job rich environment.
Thank you both Lieutenant O’Lear, for your wisdom about intergenerational mentoring, and President Bullock, for sharing this with us.