Editor’s Note: At the publication of this article, the millennial generation spans an age range from eighteen to thirty-four, and numbers approximately 75.3 million people—outnumbering the baby boomer generation in 2015 for the first time in history. Looking at those numbers logically, it makes sense that a large percentage of millennials are currently in or have just graduated from an undergraduate degree, and many are currently pursuing graduate and postgraduate academic work. While on-campus ministries seek to impact this generation for Christ, few are doing so with the intentionality and commitment of the work of people like Christine Suh, assistant director of spiritual formation and care at Pepperdine University. In order to give you a view of their exceptional work with the spiritual lives of the student body there (an evaluation sure to make them blush and protest), we asked Christine and her colleague David Lemley to give the readers of Conversations a window into their work and understanding of the challenges and opportunities unique to the students under their care.

To the ancients, friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all the loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue, ” writes C . S . Lewis in The Four Loves. “The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.”C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), 57. There is weight to Lewis’s observations, especially now—more than fifty years after his writing these words.

In the midst of declining commitment to communities of faith, researchers identify the millennial generation (born between the early 1980s and early 2000s) with the highest dropout rates in the church.Kara Eckmann Powell and Chap Clark, Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011). The tendency to lean into a me-centered, individualistic, consumeristic mindset that we see throughout Western culture often frames the way millennials perceive spiritual formation. Because of this, millennials are not compelled to engage in genuine community with one another. Researchers tell us that millennials seem to be caught between two possible destinies—one “moored by the power and depth of the Jesus-centered gospel and one anchored to a cheap, Americanized version of the historic faith that will snap at the slightest puff of wind.”David Kinnaman and Aly Hawkins, You Lost Me (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 28. If millennials continue to stay disengaged from authentic community, there is cause for concern as to whether they can be grounded in the Jesus-centered, trinitarian gospel.

Dallas Willard says that we are “unceasing spiritual beings, created for intimate and transforming friendship with the creative community that is the Trinity.”Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 10. In our work with college students, we recognize generational characteristics preventing students from entering into the relational identity Willard describes. Despite the absence of conditions particular to twenty-first-century obstacles to relational identity, Jesus’ first-century call out of such isolating distortions and into authentic community resonates today. Along the brief itinerary of Matthew 19:23 through 20:28, Jesus calls his companions to pass from

• duplicity to transparency (19:13–15, welcoming the children)
• comparison to belovedness (19:16 through 20:16, the rich young ruler and generous landowner)
• a gospel of self-maintenance to a gospel of incarnational grace (20:17–19, the journey to Jerusalem)
• a spirituality of self-exertion to a Spirit-dependent life of love (20:20–28, the ambition of James and John).

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01.  From Duplicity to Transparency

Our society encourages us to engage in inauthentic, shallow living. We currently live in a culture dominated by social media. To some extent, digital-native millennials are highly tuned to their interconnectedness through online networks. However, the intensity and frequency with which millennials interact with one another online creates unique temptations to engage in duplicity and image management. The instant gratification that comes from simply “adding” friendships or “liking” photos is not conducive for meaningful engagement and potentially perpetuates a false sense of having “community.”

This creates two worlds for each person—their “online” self and their present self. Students tell us that there’s a difficult balance in staying committed to one’s true self. They share that their journey toward transparency often gets distracted by the temptation to show their “best selves” online. It is often easier to develop a brand in one’s network than do the work of authentic connection to one’s neighbors.

Although Jesus’ disciples never unfriended someone on Facebook, they certainly knew how to curate an effective social network. They were no strangers to ignoring the requests of people in their midst to preserve outward reputations. Few of Jesus’ contemporaries had more hidden status updates than children. In Matthew 19:13–15, Jesus breaks through these virtual barriers to inclusion by honoring the request of these low-clout individuals, preferring authentic presence over public profile.

The kingdom does not come virtually but authentically when we receive those among us humbly calling for Jesus’ blessing. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggests in Life Together, we must set aside an idealized version of community in order to receive the gift of authentic communion with those in our midst. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works vol. 5, ed. Geffrey Kelly (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996).

We find that students need permission to unplug from their online self in order to be present in community. In seeking ways to create a space that could renew and refresh our student ministry leaders, we came up with the Unplugged Retreat. The retreat vision and structure emphasized the need to slow down from the busy pace of life and unplug from technology. We didn’t want our student leaders to go to a typical retreat, where activities are scheduled back to back and there is no space for solitude and rest: a wilderness workshop. We wanted to give them structure and tools to experience being fully present with one another, give their souls space to breathe, and remove the temptation to engage with one another inauthentically. Students receive the gift of community by seeing one another as brothers and sisters, rather than personal brands, spending a weekend in small groups with staff and faculty.

This experience requires both an invitation and an interpretation of that invitation. For high achieving, public-identity-managing digital natives, it is difficult to move past their social media avatars, transcripts, and resumes for the false self that must be constantly presented and promoted. Millennials need opportunities to enter together into a time and place where we will be a community of presence, facilitating a mutual reaching for Jesus’ blessing rather than negotiating self-interest and earned status.

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02.  From Comparison to Belovedness

We are tempted to disregard our identity as God’s beloved children by substituting our identity with our reputation, social status, relationships, vocation, or accomplishments. Often, millennials engage in self-rejection by placing their identity elsewhere than being God’s beloved son or daughter.Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World (New York: Crossroad, 1992). They are tempted to see their peers and community as competitors, preventing them from engaging one another at an authentic level.

Since completing their first application for admission, our students have rehearsed the idea that belonging is earned through a carefully curated list of achievements. They are presented with a constant buffet of opportunities to advance based on accumulating experiences and associations that will secure their future, and each one requires the narrowing and tailoring of their belovedness down to a marketable presentation. The result is a student body with a seemingly impossible list of accomplishments and associations, with a staggering level of reported weariness and loneliness. It is a self-rejection in every invented comparison highlighting what one is not but should be. They wonder, “What more could I be doing?”

In Matthew 19:16 through 20:16, Jesus is approached by a young man with a stellar resume. Their interaction does not have the anticipated outcome, as the young man’s list of accomplished righteousness is met with an unanswered call to entirely divest himself of the wealth and security at the basis of his identity.

As usual, the disciples need a bit more coaching on how to receive this teaching. Perhaps Peter stands up well in comparison to the young man’s righteousness, and the disciples have already given up the worldly security that kept this man from Jesus. But Jesus responds with a parable clarifying that the kingdom of heaven does not come to the degree one earns it; it comes to any who accept the generous invitation to God’s life and work. Comparison will do this community no good. The last will be first; the first will be last.

During our student leadership training, we begin our time together with “laying the altar” (modeled after a workshop with the Renovaré Institute). We ask students to bring an item that either represents their relationship with God or describes where they have seen God at work in this particular season of their life. Students are then given the opportunity to share a “story of becoming” (finding their own narrative within God’s narrative) with one another. These sessions, placed strategically next to each other, allow our students to view one another as companions on the journey, not threats or competitors to their roles. They are able to build off the authenticity that they first offered one other during these first few days of training. This intentional space allows them to see themselves, and one another, as God’s beloved son or daughter. As they spend time together throughout the week, spiritual friendships are formed, and this sets the tone for having true community and accountability throughout the year.

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03.  From a Gospel of Self-Maintenance to a Gospel of Incarnation Grace

We have grown up with imbalanced, distorted understandings of the gospel. The picture of God we have has been formed over the years through various influences and significantly shapes the way we live our daily lives. The gospel message that millennials inherited often falls within two extremes. Either God is an abstract notion of love who passively watches us from a distance (moralistic therapeutic deism),Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 163. or God wants us to believe the right things and act the right way in order to get into heaven (gospel of sin management).Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998). Students struggle with the distorted images of God that they bring into their time in college. If millennials do not take the time to explore and encounter the inherently communal, trinitarian God of the universe, they will continue to categorize their faith as something they manage with a framework of instant gratification.

The life of discipleship depends on a right understanding of God; that is, God revealed in the self-offering love of Jesus. After demonstrating that the kingdom belongs to the least, and our place in it will not depend on our accomplishments, Jesus pulls the twelve in close to make himself clear (Matthew 20:17–19): Resurrection—the life inheritance Jesus’ students seek—is only coming on the other side of rejection and death. This journey is to God, to be sure, but it is a road of neither well-timed affirmations nor well-managed successes. It takes the traveler down a “long obedience in the same direction” (the title of Eugene Peterson’s classic book) on a route that requires vulnerability, trust, and authentic accompaniment.

Jesus’ small group of hearers must be friends who have moved beyond therapeutic or utilitarian views of one another. The unavoidable cross at the end of Jesus’ mission strips away any superficial sense of assurance or effectiveness. In Spiritual Friendship, Aelred of Rievaulx discusses three types of friendship: carnal friendship—grounded in the shared pursuit of pleasure; worldly friendship—based on mutual benefit; and spiritual friendship—based on shared discipleship to Christ. He makes the case that the only true form of friendship is spiritual friendship because at the very core of these relationships is the desire to encourage one another to love God and love neighbor.Aelred and Mary Eugenia Laker, Spiritual Friendship (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1974). The cross of Jesus sets aside all the self-interested motives that prevent true accompaniment, as love, expressed through presence and grace, becomes the only bond that would keep such a band on this journey.

In annual assessments of spiritual development, we find year after year that peer relationships have the greatest impact on spiritual growth. A spiritual life adviser (SLA) in each residence hall oversees fifty residents in a pastoral capacity. The SLA’s job hinges on developing relationships beyond personal satisfaction or mutual benefit, inviting residents to a journey of spiritual friendship. When we hire and train our SLAs, we emphasize the language of “incarnational ministry” and “life together” to give students a framework for sharing in real and genuine growth together. Our philosophy statement uses the metaphors of gift, cross, and journey to emphasize the various ways they can see their leadership roles as an act of surrender and service, modeled after Jesus.

The idea that God is an abstract notion of love or passively watches us from a distance is no longer a viable option to residents interacting day-to-day with SLAs actively seeking out incarnational ways to love the way Jesus loves—sacrificially, with compassion, integrity, and accountability. Students who may believe God’s acceptance is dependent on learning to manage their sin are challenged by encounters with peers trained to initiate relationship as a gift, investing in life together on the journey.

At the end of every year, we receive reports from residents describing the spiritual transformation that took place as their SLA fully accepted them and continued to extend God’s grace to them—even in the midst of their struggles with sin. They experienced the rest and joy that come with being fully accepted by God in the midst of their sin and brokenness. They come to know this acceptance through the gracious presence of peers committed to incarnational life together.

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04.  From a Spirituality of Self-Exertion to a Spirit-Dependent Life of Love

Our culture keeps us from tending to soul care. Willard states, “Our soul is like an inner stream of water, which gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other element of our life. When that stream is as it should be, we are constantly refreshed and exuberant in all we do, because our soul itself is profusely rooted in the vastness of God and his kingdom, including nature; and all else within us is enlivened and directed by that stream.”Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002), 204.

The students we work with constantly share how busy and full their lives are. There is almost a glorification of the idea of being busy, and that if for some reason there’s an open slot in your schedule, you aren’t being productive or relational or useful enough. The students that struggle the most with this may very well be our students in ministry leadership positions. The terms, “burned out” and “exhausted,” are used frequently when we ask them to share their experience throughout the semester.

Our glimpse into Jesus’ mobile (but not virtual) learning community concludes with disciples who emulate Jesus’ style of living but disregard Jesus’ source of life (Matthew 20:20–28). Having heard Jesus out on his apparent plans for martyrdom, James and John ask for the privileged status of prime seating in Jesus’ throne room and are even willing to pay the price for it. The economy of the kingdom does not favor the most noble lives but those who will receive what the Father has for them and offer what they have for others. The way of Jesus does not lead to burnout from admirable busyness. It is sustained through surrender, through increasing connection to the free gift of whatever is needed for obedience. The community of mutual, self-offering love, not the exhausted individual, witnesses to the way of Jesus.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus models time and time again his need for solitude in order to be renewed by the Spirit and power of God. As followers of Jesus, we need this discipline in a culture that values constant accessibility, productivity, and efficiency. For this reason we invite our spiritual life advisers to attend one Soul-Sabbath retreat each semester.

Soul-Sabbath retreats are crafted as two-and-a-half-hour sessions at a retreat center about five minutes from Pepperdine’s campus. During these retreats, students turn off their phones, practice quieting their hearts, and reconnect to their true selves and their relationship with God. Students sign up to go in groups together (ranging from five to fifteen individuals) and are not allowed to go alone. In our original vision for Soul-Sabbath retreats, we were intentional about making sure this was a communal experience so that students are able to be with one another in a vulnerable space. Even though they have clear instructions not to speak to one another throughout the retreat, they practice being fully present to one another in a way of entrusting one another to God. At the end of the retreat, students each share their soul-care experience with the larger group. As they move from solitude to community, they grow in offering their authentic selves to one another. As students see and eventually hear one another engage in soul care, they offer each other spiritual friendship. They are relieved of their compulsions, bound up in the midst of their roles, routines, and online identities, to encounter the freedom of being God’s children together.

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05.  Together in the Labyrinth

Ultimately, it is difficult to defeat habits of thinking that threaten spiritual community if our structure of life together implicitly affirms duplicity, comparison, self-maintenance, and self-exertion. Emerging adults in a formational, educational context, need (1) the opportunity to try on Jesus’ patterns of thinking and doing and (2) preparation for the task of creating and maintaining those structures for themselves in a world that will not value or recognize them.

We regularly enjoy taking students to walk the labyrinth at Serra Retreat, not far from our campus. Most students pray the labyrinth for the first time with us. The labyrinth is a practice enjoyed by many in individual prayer, but we find asking students to enter as a community uniquely rewarding.

Perhaps millennials have not rejected spiritual community but relationships that seemed inauthentic to them in light of what Jesus ultimately offers. We frame our introduction to the labyrinth much like we explain our invitation to the spiritual life; it is an invitation that requires interpretation. Your partners in the journey are determined not by affinity or preference but by the willingness to enter. The labyrinth is not a test of one’s devotion in comparison to others; not every student will benefit in the same way. The labyrinth is not a maze to solve; it is a journey to take at the pace that suits God’s purpose for one. The labyrinth is not a journey of self-fulfillment but of self-emptying and Spirit-receiving.

Often, among the fruits of this experience, students enjoy the experience of navigating the presence of others in the midst of their micro-pilgrimage: We have to make room for one another; in my response to others’ presence and habits, I see my tendency to judge and my own fear of judgment; I could never be sure where I was, or where others were in relation to the center, but I knew we were headed the same direction. They are quick to recognize the lessons in spiritual community. We watch as each small group develops an experience unique to their true selves and relationships to one another, and a clearer sense of Jesus’ call to the happiest, and most fully human, of the loves.