Compared with post-70s and post-80s, post-90s is a characteristic generation with unique creativity and observation. China has made continuous progress in material civilization but still lacks spiritual civilization. Many people put their spiritual sustenance on post-90s. Post-90s bear great hope as well as much mental pressure.
Post-90s is regarded as a generation of both personality and danger. They place high requirements on themselves but don't have inner beliefs. Fragile hearts hide under their high-profile appearance. More and more post-90s take the path of corruption and crimes. They seek spiritual satisfaction in all kinds of extreme ways.
The society begins to pay close attention to the spiritual guidance of post-90s. The church has also noticed the need to shepherd post-90s. Middle aged and elderly people often go to the church. However, nowadays you can hardly see youngsters in a church. The thoughts of them are more modern and diversified because they always accept new things from all over the world. If a church doesn't keep pace with the times, it will be hard to meet the needs of post-90s.
What can the church do to attract the generation of post-90s and make them feel at home? Here are two ways.
1. Optimize the model of evangelism
Gospel is the truth so there must be some preaching in it. However, young people are bored with mere preaching. Gospel is actually an abstract concept. Different people need different length of time to totally understand it. Therefore, we need to make some changes when evangelizing youngsters.
I've seen a wonderful group activity of a house church. Members introduced themselves to each other and played interactive games before evangelism. The time of evangelism was less than half an hour and members shared their views of beliefs and religions after that.
Young people won't feel like they can do nothing but just listen to preaching in the church. At first they may go to the church due to the relaxing atmosphere and a sense of belonging there. The mutual trust and love among members in the church will be their beginning of believing Christianity.
2. Starting from feeling love
A church is used to shepherding post-90s in an old way without listening to their feelings and needs most of time. Some churches think that nothing is more important than spreading God's words and shepherding believers. Such ideas are right. However, the world is changing so fast. These churches may have lost the chance to stay with youngsters before evangelizing them.
When post-90s come to the church, the priority is not evangelizing them. We should make them feel and understand love first. Evangelism can be realized through love. Post-90s like accepting new things. They may not be attracted to the church due to the so-called "truth" at first. They just want to know what a church is like. However, when they feel the love and tolerance in the church, they may be willing to learn about the belief.
We should seize the curiosity of post-90s. After seeing a church filled with love, which is different from outside world, youngsters will focus on gospel.
All above is written according to my personal experience of churches and post-90s generation, not representing all people's ideas. Post-90s is an emerging generation for many churches. We should keep close attention on them for gospel.
