Articles on the Millennial Generation

After reading the books I also read through three different articles on the millennial generation. These articles were:
The Net Generation Goes to College by Scott Carleson
Welcome to the Future: The Millennial Generation by Neil Murray
Implications of National Study of Youth and Religion Findings for Religious Leaders, Faith Communities, and Youth Workers by Christian Smith

All of these articles looked ahead to the future and what each author thought that the future could possibly bring concerning the millennial generation. These articles were fascinating. They presented a picture of what the youth look like and how we as leaders might be able to better reach them.

Scott Carleson dealt with the ways in which the millennial's learn and what is the best way that leaders can teach to effectively communicate with the students. Carleson sees a broad difference between the millennials and the previous generation, he sees that they both relate to the culture around them in very different ways. One of the comments that he made to their learning style really rang true for me, he said that "millennials don't read as much as the previous generation did. They prefer video, audio, and interactive media" (3). This is extremely important for leaders to know. As a youth minister you need to be able to know the ways in which you can best be able to reach your youth group and Carleson provides an answer for this question.

Neil Murray writes to the future employers of the millennial generation telling them of the observations that he has made of the millennials compared to generation x. He talks a lot about the amount of commitments and the schedules that are normal for a millennial to have. This is helpful in youth ministry as you try to understand planning and scheduling. This is also able to answer a lot of the questions that are raised after a youth minister notices the lack of frequency in attendence of the youth group. Murray says this about the busyness and the selfishness that encompasses the millennial's lives. He says "Their young lives are whirlwinds of activity centered on them, arranged for their benefit" (4). This can make it difficult though for a youth minister because their youth are already strung so tight with other commitments. It makes one have to face the issues of priorities.

Christian Smith wrote my favorite of the articles. This article was written for Princeton Theological Seminary after Smith had spoken at their annual youth forum. He writes about the culture that are youth are in and how that affects religion and the religious culture. He sees the central problem of the millennial youth as "teenagers benign 'whatever-ism'" (60) about life. This raises a problem with the church because finding out how to raise passionate disciples of Christ becomes hard when the youth are only whatever about life. This article clearly defined my own frustration with the youth group that I worked with because they too were only whatever about God and about life.

These articles helped me to not only understand the culture but also to be able to answer my own questions that had been raised in the internship.