Five tips for grads

                                                        

It’s graduation season, when bright young students must endure one final, mind-numbing lecture before collecting their degrees: the commencement address.

This speech seldom contains advice you can actually use. The speaker often receives a generous check for his or her remarks, but dares not utter anything that might offend someone for fear of being protested, “disinvited” or blacklisted from future graduation ceremonies.

Not being a celebrity, a politician or a rich donor, I have little chance of ever being invited to deliver a commencement address, much less disinvited. But I’ll share a few practical tips for you grads anyway, at no charge:

1. If you need to move back home for a while — or delay moving out — it’s OK. Millions of others share your plight. But make your bed and help with the dishes. And offer to pay rent, whether it’s asked for or not.

2. Don’t check your text messages during job interviews. Trust me on this one.

3. If you’re graduating with significant student loan debt (2011 grads walked the aisle owing an average of nearly $27,000), pay it off before you incur more debt. Don’t start your adult life in bondage to creditors. It will set a pattern you might never escape. Stay available to God. As long you are servicing debt, you won’t be fully available to serve Him.

4. The job market still stinks. You’ve probably heard about that. The unemployment rate for older teens and post-college 20-somethings hovers around 16 percent and tops 25 percent if you include young adults who have given up looking for work or are underemployed part-timers. Don’t lose hope while waiting for your dream job. Any honest work is honorable work in God’s economy. He will open the right doors in His time if you follow Him. In the meantime, learn everything He wants to teach you where you are.

5. The research about Millennials, the generation born between 1980 and 2000, says you want to experience the wider world up close — to see it, touch it, interact with it. OK, now is your opportunity to do that, unfettered by the family and school commitments of the past or the major adult responsibilities you will face in the future. Go out there and find a place to serve God and others for a year or two, or more, regardless of whether it specifically contributes to your career path.

“One of the characteristics of Millennial life has become the image of the traveler,” observes David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, which has exhaustively studied Millennials and their relationship to spiritual life. “They want to wander the world, both in real life and in digital ways. They want to feel untethered. There is a trend among young adults of delaying the pressures of adult life as long as possible; they want to embrace a lifestyle of risk, exploration and unscripted moments. …

“This transience stands in contrast to the staid, predictable, and often overprotective experience that most churches seem to offer. The gap is simple: Millennials are a generation that craves spontaneity, participation, adventure and clan-like relationships, but what they often find in churches are featureless programs and moralistic content. Leaders who hope to alter the spiritual journeys of today’s Millennials need to embrace something of a ‘reverse mentoring’ mindset, allowing the next generation to help lead alongside established leaders. … Millennials are more willing to be challenged than most church leaders are willing to challenge them.”

If you recognize something of yourself in that generational profile, embrace it — even if Mom, Dad and your own internal clock are desperately urging you to get a job and settle down. But don’t wander for the sake of wandering. Wander with a purpose: God’s purpose.

He might lead you to the ends of the earth to proclaim His love to people who have never heard the name of Jesus. He might lead you to serve within walking distance of the street or the church where you grew up. He might lead you to do both.

Follow Him. Those two words are the best graduation advice you will ever hear.

(To investigate the global possibilities of “wandering with a purpose,” visit http://going.imb.org/)

Still answering "the call"

Listen to an audio version of this post at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/120/12078/12078-66968.mp3

A friend from high school days contacted me last week with some exciting news — and a question.

“My 14-year-old daughter believes God is calling her to be a missionary,” he said. “Where does she need to go to learn about what she needs to do to prepare for this calling?”

This young woman doesn’t just have some vague sense of leading toward mission work. She feels specifically called to go to a large country in Asia where millions of people have yet to hear the Gospel of Christ.

With all the ways churches, volunteers and Christian groups can now do international missions in a globalized world, you might think the old-fashioned, individual “call” to missionary service has gone out of style. Some folks have even said as much.

Maybe God didn’t get that e-mail. He still seems to call certain people to follow Him into the world — not for a week, a month or a year, but for life.

“A 13-year-old called me earlier this week” with that kind of aspiration, says Joye Russell, who counsels potential future missionaries contacting the International Mission Board for the first time. She hears from three or four teens a month, sometimes more. You can call her or her colleague, Pat Thorpe, toll free at (888) 422-6461.

“We talk to people from ages 8 to 80,” adds Russell, herself a former missionary to Africa. But guiding young people, she says, “is especially close to my heart because I felt the call to missions at age 12 and my pastor didn’t help me at all.” She loves helping kids, teens and young adults seek their place in God’s purpose. The IMB Student Mobilization Team helps many more (visit thetask.org).

Missionary calling is a mysterious thing. Some people can tell you about a single, life-changing moment when God spoke to them clearly. Others talk about a growing sense of leading and purpose over many years. Despite the subjective nature of “the call,” few evangelical mission agencies will send someone as a long-term missionary who lacks a clear sense that God is telling them to go. And when the going gets tough overseas, few missionaries will make it without such a sense of call.

An IMB guide for prospective missionaries describes it this way:

“Those who are called to a special task [have] a specific sense of God’s leadership in their lives. That may come in a dramatic spiritual experience or in reflecting on how God has led you through a series of circumstances. Many experience this personal leadership to overseas missions service when they are involved in a short-term missions project. God may affirm that they are doing exactly what He has called them to do. Everyone experiences this call in a different way. How has God spoken to your heart?”

Regarding preparation for a young person sensing “the call” to eventual missionary service, here are some suggestions I gave to my friend’s daughter:

-- Pray. Love the Lord. Worship Him. Spend time alone with Him just as Jesus did. Seek Him, not for any of His gifts, but for Himself alone. Learn His Word. Worship is the purpose of missions because God wants all peoples to worship Him.

-- Pray for the area of the world toward which you feel called. Learn about the peoples, history and current events there, as well as other places in the world where God is working.

-- Read the biographies of great missionaries through the ages. And learn about some of today’s mission heroes.

-- Become a pen pal or Facebook friend with a young missionary on the field. Learn about how his or her life is being used for God, about the victories, defeats and realities of living in another culture.

-- Get to know the world at your doorstep. Make friends with and minister to immigrants, international students and refugees. Learn a second language and use it in ministry.

-- Go on a mission trip overseas. This is the great opportunity today’s Christians have that previous generations didn’t. Most current long-term missionaries started as volunteers or short-term workers.

-- Pray about a gap year between high school and college when you could serve in missions in the United States or abroad. Serving after college is great, too. But in the meantime, don’t become so committed to a relationship, a career, a mortgage or other obligations that they make you less available to God.

Russell also shares these essentials with young people she counsels:

-- Develop your God-given gifts and skills through vital involvement in your church and your community.

-- Become an active Gospel sharer (if you aren’t one already). Get evangelism training if you need it.

-- Stay healthy. Take care of yourself.

-- Stay as debt-free as possible. Debt keeps people off the mission field.

I’m praying for my friend’s daughter — and for all the other young people still being called by God to missionary service.

Back to school for 130 million

Listen to an audio version of this post at
http://media1.imbresources.org/files/87/8729/8729-47598.mp3

Another school year is gearing up — a good time to focus on one of the fastest-growing “people groups” on the planet: college students.

Worldwide, the number of college students has more than doubled — to 130 million — in the past 50 years, according to Ken Cochrum, global campus strategist for Campus Crusade for Christ.

“If taken as a whole, this generation of college students would constitute the world’s 10th-largest country,” Cochrum reports in the August edition of Lausanne World Pulse. “Governments of developing nations have realized that their future depends upon a well‐educated population who can compete in today’s borderless ‘glocal’ economy.”

Those governments, joined by corporations and advertisers, “invest millions of dollars each year attempting to influence students and the choices they will make for the rest of their lives,” Cochrum observes. “What about the church? What level of urgency and intentionality do we give to making disciples and building Christ-centered movements among students today?”

Good question.

Cochrum lists some of the major urban centers that have become magnets for students — Moscow with 1.2 million, Mexico City with 400,000, Rome with 250,000. The list grows, along with the hopes of millions of families riding on their sons and daughters seeking higher education.

I met several elite university students in Moscow a few years ago. They attended a professional development seminar based on Christian principles.

The seminar stressed the “soft skills” seldom seen in Russia’s highly competitive business climate: relating to others, constructive criticism, encouragement and teamwork.

“We’re really trying to help students with their understanding of human relationships,” explained one of the seminar leaders, a Southern Baptist worker. “How do you treat people if you want to build trust? One of the most important principles we focus on with them is the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated — with dignity and value.

“We’ve had students who’ve finished the initial phase of training say to us, ‘This is going to change my life.’ Or they’ll say, ‘The Golden Rule is the most important rule in all of life.’ These are lost people saying what Jesus said. It really is business training, but it’s amazing what the Holy Spirit can do when we present truth.”

Maxim, an international business major, had tears in his eyes after the final session as he thanked the leaders. He wrote on his seminar evaluation form:

“I’d like to find out my values. Would you help me? Do you think that career is the meaning of life? When I’m dying, I want to be sure that I was a good man, that I’ve walked through a right life. Is there truth in business that’s going to help me?”

The next step: an invitation to one-on-one mentorships with Christian business professionals. After that, responsive students are invited to home worship groups to delve more deeply into the Gospel. When they become disciples, they will become leaders for Christ in Russia.

Churches and mission ministries probably will never have enough resources to reach every searching student like Maxim. The way to keep up with the global student explosion, Cochrum believes, is to nurture student-led movements that multiply disciples and leaders.

“Healthy student-led movements of spiritual multiplication serve as a leadership engine for the body of Christ,” he says. “Students don’t remain students forever. Within five years most of these 130 million will be on their journey to the marketplace. They will begin leading families and paying taxes. They will shape fields such as government, scientific research, education, sports and entertainment.

“Today’s students will determine tomorrow’s culture. … The next few years represent a significant window of opportunity.”

And let no one underestimate their spiritual potential. American Protestants counted fewer than 1,000 missionaries worldwide before the YMCA launched the Student Volunteer Movement in 1888, led by John R. Mott. By 1920, the movement had directly mobilized more than 8,700 missionaries for reaching the lost — and influenced many more to go — setting the stage for an unprecedented era of Christian expansion worldwide, despite the wars and upheavals of the 20th century.

A new student-led movement might do the same in our time.