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Jay Strack: Reaching the Millennial Generation
Time: 00:52:58 (hours:minutes:seconds)
At the 2009 KBC annual meeting, messengers heard from featured speaker Jay Strack, president of Student Leadership University in Orlando, Fla.
Preaching from Exodus 17, Strack spoke about how to reach the millennial generation and avoid criticism of how others are ministering to young people.
“Let’s chisel it in our hearts that still the overwhelming majority of those who…make true decisions to follow Jesus do so by the age of 18,” said Strack. “We’ve got a holy calling to try to reach this generation for Jesus Christ.”
Christians can either look at the future as “dangerous times, or a door of opportunity,” he said. “Our dreams must be bigger than our memories.”
Strack challenged pastors to embrace their roles as mentors and evangelists of the younger generation and held up the life of Moses as a biblical model of how to do so.
He noted that Moses listened to God’s call for him to mentor Joshua, and fulfilled that role by “waging war with Joshua, walking with Joshua, worshipped with Joshua, and working with Joshua.”
Strack outlined four great needs in every teenager and child that Christians need to address if they desire to reach young people for Christ, noting that students, “don’t want a pat on the head, they want an opportunity to do something great for God.”
Each student, he said, needs a model, a mentor, a motivator and a monitor.
“The solution is the Shamgar principle,” said Strack, referring to Judges 3:31. Following the example of Shamgar, Strack challenged pastors to start where they are, use what they have, and do what they can.
“Our ministry is about this next generation…and our example should be such that it’s contagious,” he said.
