Faithfully Reaching the iGeneration: From an iGener's View

Recently I read an article on RelevantMagazine.com by a guy named Rex Miller called "The iGen Manifesto." It's an interesting article and contains a lot of insights on the radical differences and shifts that have occurred due to technology in my generation, mainly concerning how we all communicate, find/view/listen/experience media, and how we express ourselves creatively in ways that somehow involve technology, like posting videos on youtube, blogging, or podcasting, and how this is going to affect the world we are inheriting and the Church that we Christians are a part of. Miller views part of these technological forms of communication as a means of escapism from the world that his generation, the Baby Boomers, have left for us, full of war, environmental, and humanitarian problems.

From my perspective, I felt the article was somewhat pointing out the ineffectiveness that the masses have felt to change anything in the larger scale due to the boomer generation. I'm not being pessimistic about that generation, however, and I know for certain several members of that generation have done great things for this world and for more importantly, the Church, but when it comes to the politics of this world the boomer generation has seemingly made the masses feel pretty ineffective at changing anything on a global scale. Things are screwed up and many feel we can't change it, so the "igeneration" has resorted to blogs, online video games, and youtube to find another world where we can create works that actually contribute to something in someway.

Things started this way, but we've seen things change. These Web 2.0 applications, primarily used for entertainment, have in the past few years began to be used as instruments for social change. You can now watch a documentary on the crisis in Sudan on youtube, you can read the blog on the ONE website about firsthand experiences of poverty and crisis throughout the globe, and anyone can go to everystudent.com to read about what the gospel means to today's college student.

Now the iGeneration has come not only to use the interconnectivety and interactions of the internet to change the world now in a physical way, but also in a spiritual way. The gospel can be discovered online now, through simply reading the Bible online, reading a Christian's story about how Jesus changed her life, or watching a video online that examines a message from the Bible in a creative way. These videos are not only online, but used in church services and small group meetings all over. Interconnected social sites such as Myspace and Facebook have numerous ministry groups and events with new ones forming everyday.

So what does this mean for already formed, substantial ministries that are faced with the changes that our generation has enacted? The iGeneration wants involvement, we want things to be open sourced, like Firefox or Wikipedia. How do churches and ministries respond to this? Should they? Do the positives of Web 2.0 and open source in society transfer to ministry?

I don't know.

The prospect of being a part of a church service that has been touched in someway by large numbers of the congregation is exciting. Errors can be corrected. Nuances can be more easily added and smoothed over. But then, I don't really know how this could plausibly work, and I don't think it can peacefully happen.

The Bible clearly states that each Christian is given different gifts, and these gifts correspond to that brother or sister's role in the body. Preachers preach. Leaders lead. Teachers teach. Administrators administrate. Artists create. Writers write. Number crunchers number crunch. Thinkers think. This is how a ministry is run, correct?

I suppose what bothers me is the thought that ministries have to change to reach certain generations. I think this is true to an extent, but it also bothers me that these types of changes are so often forced onto ministries from the outside or from the dreaded problem of low numbers. Are these ministries not seeking the guidance of the Spirit? Do the ministries that change conforming to the world, or following the Spirit's direction to reach the world?

This is complicated.