Reaching people across generations, across different communication tools, and becoming a missionary into a different communication culture sounds scary. It is. It’s not easy. The thing is, it’s supposed to be tough.
When I speak to churches and pastors about how to reach a Millennial audience, from the perspective of a Gen-X, or Boomer, I really need them to understand this before I go deeply into the content. Sometimes, understanding ourselves, and where we’ve come from is as complicated as understanding the people we’re trying to reach.
In the story of Jacob wrestling with with God, he wrestles all night, his hip was broken, and still he kept at it. Finally, the morning comes. God gives Jacob a new name, Israel. The name is the name of God’s chosen people, and it means, the strugglers, the wrestlers. But it’s not just the struggling. He says “because you have struggled with God, and with humans, and have overcome.”
It’s supposed to be a struggle. We are supposed to wrestle with this stuff. Now, just because Jacob fought all night until daybreak, and overcame, doesn’t mean we always will. Israel the nation has been a living example of this. So, when you find yourself struggling, it’s ok. It’s supposed to be this way.