I spend a lot of time talking to diverse 20-something Christians who are looking for ways to make a difference in the world. That work takes on stark urgency this summer, in light of Ferguson, Baltimore, and other recent events that tore the mask off the myth that we live in a post-racial society.
The young adults I encounter span the racial, ethnic, socio-economic, and theological spectrum. They are part of a generation that’s drifting from organized religion, according to the recent Pew Research Center study on American religion. But they are often deeply spiritual, drawn to ancient sources that awaken holy longings to build hope, rather than ignore the despair around them.
Connecting this spiritual hunger to real-world practices is key to the work of the Forum for Theological Exploration (FTE), a leadership incubator for Christian ministry where I serve as a research fellow. Through FTE’s recent Christian Leadership Forum — Active Faith Matters — more than 70 Millennials committed to justice and ministry gathered with lay leaders, pastors, and scholars to design a future they would like to see, using the stories and songs of faith-based social justice movements of the past 50 years for inspiration.
Many of these sacred activists will engage their cities this summer, putting into practice real-world skills that help them address fatal flaws in the society in which they are coming of age.
Here are four of the ways young adults are building up an “infrastructure of hope” by living and leading through their Christian faith to strengthen communities — in a time when news of social unrest seems unending.
1. They are working at Freedom Schools.
This summer on a farm near Knoxville, Tennessee, the Children’s Defense Fund will train some 2,000 college-aged students to step into the lives of school children, helping close the achievement gap that occurs in underserved neighborhoods during the languishing months of summer.
Hiram Jamison IV, a 26-year-old Pentecostal from Oakland, California, will spend his fourth summer in a row teaching in a Freedom School. This year, he’ll be using math and science to help fifth graders “begin to think like little engineers, all the while tying it into our culture as people of African descent in America and beyond.”
There are 32 Freedom Schools in California alone, and hundreds across the country: they all need volunteers to lift up this hands-on program — based on Christian principles and values — that aims to eliminate the effects of poverty while empowering children of color to “make a difference in themselves, their families and communities.”
2. They are taking twenty-first century Freedom Rides.
Fourteen people — six of them under the age of 30 — just completed a deep-dive through the Southern sites where non-violent protesters challenged racism and won the Voting Rights Act 50 years ago. Hosted by the Raleigh, North Carolina-based School for Conversion, these journeys amount to a holy pilgrimage — time for learning, lamentation, and relationship-building that gives birth to action around contemporary justice issues.
Katelyn Chapman, a white 26-year-old who took a Freedom Ride a few summers ago, describes how the trip helped her understand the life of an undocumented friend: “I realized a totally different reality that my friends and neighbors here are living with, having to be in fear of the very people who are supposed to keep them safe.”
Chapman, a member of the Evangelical Covenant Church, tells of the simple difference made by the relationships born on the journey: “The social gap just seems to be bridged if people become friends with the people the news talks about.”
3. They are partnering with local activists.
The Dream Catcher Summer Listening project in Richmond, Virginia pays urban teens a small fee to get to know their neighbors. They send teens out to interview elders, block by block, learning what they like about where they live and what they would change if they could.
At the end of the summer, the community gathers for a party and listens to what the young people learned. Out of that party will form an action group to create achievable goals. Last year’s actions included the birth of a block club, a creative and performing arts youth project, and a peace and justice circle.
Based on the principles of Asset Based Community Development, the Dream Catcher project will employ 20 teens and six young adult interns this summer as researchers, interns, and story-catchers as part of Embrace Richmond.
4. They are intentionally weaving themselves into their cities.
A longer list would include young adults serving as pastoral interns at vibrant team-led ministries where they help create what one D.C. pastor calls “liturgies of the streets.”
It might also include the young adult who is living in an intentional community in Philadelphia while she investigates “sustainable ways of being in the world, ways that are nourishing and satisfying” but not driven by financial success alone.
Or young adults who are finding a mentor who’s creating new forms of community while building networks of urban farmers or working through a local court system to introduce restorative justice.
Or taking a seminary class behind bars in classrooms where both inmates and non-inmates study scripture together and witness new meanings emerge. I’ve recently met pastors doing all of these things — and taking young people along with them.
It is, in short, an exciting time to be a young person who wants to make an impact and ignite change in the world.
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Instead of heading off to build homes in Belize or dig wells in the Dominican Republic, some young people are answering a call to work in Detroit, Richmond, Oakland, Atlanta — the list goes on — to address some of the root causes of poverty and other forms of systemic injustice very close to home.
They are savvy and street smart. They are fueled by deep passions and connected to wide streams of spiritual sustenance. And they are looking for older Christians as role models.
As, Genevieve, a 20-something white Quaker woman recently told me: “I am looking for models of Christianity about which I can say: these people understand and are led by the Christ that I understand and want to be led by.”
If you are committed to the church and have a desire to help Millennials find their way back to Christian community, I challenge you to consider how you might support the ways they are engaging in meaningful, sustainable, hands-on justice work and then help create spaces for them to reflect on the work they are doing.
Notice them. Help them name their gifts. Nurture the leadership, power, courage, and compassion they already hold to address the systems of injustice that drain life. This is the way toward hope, the way toward a future God is calling us to create.
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