Joe wanted a spiritual friendship with someone who would help his faith grow deeper, but he wasn’t getting that from the youth worker who preferred merely “hanging out.”
Joe explained. “He’s a great guy, but I don’t ever feel like I’m getting anywhere. I really want to grow and move forward.”
We’ve all heard youth workers say they are following the example of Jesus, who just “hung out” with his disciples. That misunderstanding of Jesus’ relational style makes me cringe! Yes, Jesus hung out with his disciples and they lived life together. But he also challenged them with words and experiences, imparted vision to them, exposed them to important truths, taught them, delegated roles, created learning experiences for them, sent them out for mission, and debriefed with them.
Jesus was intentional and proactive in how he related to them. If you want to be a strong spiritual leader, you will do the same. As we, like Jesus, take time to discern what captures or immobilizes the hearts of emerging adults, we can begin to relate to them in intentional ways, considering not only what needs to be said but also how to communicate it in a way that will be understood. Intentionality calls us to not only pass on the truth we’ve learned but also do it in a way that is relevant to the emerging adult’s world.
Truth telling is primarily concerned with the question, “Did I communicate truth?” Intentionality adds: “Did I communicate truth meaningfully?”
Asking both these questions together allows the disciplemaker to explore how to say the right things for that person’s heart in their particular stage of life or circumstances. Speaking or pointing to truth in a way that is personally meaningful is the fruit of Spirit-directed discernment that’s responded to with intentionality.
Characteristics of Intentionality
What does it mean to move into a relationship with intentionality? Different personalities or experiences may cause us to come up with various answers to that question, but there are a few key aspects of intentionality that we need to be aware of before we can practice it in our relationships with emerging adults.
1) Intentionality is not “natural.”
Choosing to love through intentionality may come naturally to type-A, action-oriented personalities, but many of us would rather believe that disciplemaking relationships become productive on their own—naturally. An aversion to anything that feels scripted is understandable; being intentional can take on an organic feel, though, when it is in response to discernment.
Discernment teaches us to be thoughtful about our encounters with others.
2) Intentionality teaches us to make the most of every opportunity.
Intentional disciplemaking capitalizes on the opportunities that present themselves through discernment and seeks to partner with the Lord in taking action for the good of the other.
3) Intentionality produces positive spiritual tension.
Being proactive about responding to the work of the Spirit—instead of choosing the path of least resistance, which is our natural tendency—may cause tension. An experienced disciplemaker learns to not only embrace tension but also to lead others toward healthy tensions that can facilitate spiritual growth. Disciplemaking that avoids tension may actually nurture the emerging adult’s flesh.
Helping others become like Christ in those everyday moments provides an important arena for life-giving transformation. The fact that we and those we disciple are given grace to enter into the Christlife does not mean we can sit back and coast.
Grace and effort are not opposites; they are companions. Grace energizes effort. Grace and effort are needed for intentionality to take place. Intentionality in our spiritual friendships allows us to restore the flow of life-giving grace and truth into areas of spiritual disconnection.
Tools, not Steps
But assisting someone in trusting the Father’s wisdom, humbly submitting in response to the Father’s heart and leadership, or fulfilling the Father’s will in love may require us to:
• offer correction
• confront untruths
• call out their potential
• help them redefine their reality
• assist them in recasting their vision for their life
• train them in certain skills
• pursue truth with them
• celebrate victories with them
These are intentional actions for loving others as God loves us. But these actions can never become our goal, or a checklist of discipling steps. Skills and tasks are merely tools that are available as needed on the disciplemaking journey.
Anyone who has ever fixed a broken chair or a leaky pipe knows one of the most basic principles of repair: different repairs require different tools. Being required to use a hammer for every repair, for example, would be extremely frustrating and inefficient. In any given project I’m working on, I use the tools that will be most helpful for the job and save my other tools for different projects. Whether it’s unclogging a sink or fixing a broken screen door, using tools is clearly not the goal; fixing the (sometimes costly!) problem is.
In a similar way, focusing on the goal of developing the postures of the Christlife as disciplemakers leaves us free to pick up or discard a tool according to its usefulness to the relationship. Discipleship relationships rarely go “according to plan,” so we need to be flexible and purposeful; indeed, the spiritual journey, with its spiritual battles, requires intentionality that transcends checklists and “paint by number” formulas.
I have often pressed into disciplemaking relationships with one set of assumptions about how to best connect a person to Christ only to discover a new set of issues that shifts my approach. Again, Jesus came not to accomplish a long checklist of actions but to accomplish the will of his Father. Following Jesus as our model, then, means that we must focus on the goal—developing the Christlife postures of trust, submission and love and helping others do the same. Continually refocusing on this goal positions our encounters toward true transformation.
Strategies for Discipling Emerging Adults
The following are some specific strategies for re-focusing the emerging adult: envisioning potential, encouraging trust, enabling submission and empowering love.
1) Envisioning potential.
Seeing another person with God’s eyes sets the stage for transformative growth in that person’s life. A disciplemaker’s ability to envision the potential of Christ living through the unique personality of another profoundly affects that person’s ability to envision it for him or herself.
Sociological studies have consistently shown that when people are subjected to low expectations they have a tendency to underachieve. Envisioning potential in positive terms has the opposite effect. Even as a young adult, our ability to succeed in life may be strongly affected by our internalization of the potential others have reflected to us.
An important tool for a disciplemaker is the ability to mirror a godly vision of potential. Such envisioning reflects the Father’s approach to his people.
As disciplemakers, then, we can help emerging adults turn their attention from failures to the hope of Christ who is able to “make all things new.” Connect them with a positive vision for their life in Christ—grounded in the truths of Scripture, enhanced by an understanding of how God uniquely created them to function in the body of Christ and sealed by the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.
2) Encouraging trust.
Surrendering to the Father’s wisdom. Paul exhorts his readers, “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (
Changing the way we think is essential to living the Christlife. We must learn to think with the mind of Christ even while we’re surrounded by a culture that often pushes our minds in an opposite direction from his. We desperately need to connect ourselves and the emerging adult to a stable touchstone of truth—the truth and wisdom that come from above.
To lead someone from the foolishness of this world toward trusting God’s wisdom may require tools like confrontation, correction, speaking truth, championing them, or helping them see the truth in God’s Word or his world. Again, the purpose of using tools like these is to encourage trust and surrender. Keep the purpose at the forefront so that you’ll be open to discovering other tools as well.
3) Enabling submission.
Fully embracing the Father’s love for us—choosing to respond vulnerably with an open heart—is humbling. It means being willing to find our ultimate satisfaction in his all-embracing affection and care for us. It also means choosing to believe, with the simplicity of a baby dependent on his or her mother for sustenance, that he has our best interests in mind.
The disciplemaker then might need to help young adults turn from a prideful, controlling or fearful independence to a humble dependence on God and interdependence with his people. Or they might need to journey with emerging adults as they take intentional next steps in looking to God for his leadership in their lives and following wherever he might lead.
All of us struggle to keep soft hearts in a world that rushes in with harsh realities. Sometimes it can feel like we’re standing in a batting cage without a bat while a relentless machine throws distractions, temptations, lies and challenges at us with alarming speed. I may dodge the balls the best I can, but once I’ve been hit several times, I begin to harden myself against further damage. Our tendency to self-protect turns us away from the shelter of the Father and causes us to develop survival strategies like relational and emotional distance, self-focus, self-sufficiency, self-justification, self-gratification, denial, and using or blaming others.
These strategies pull us away from drinking deeply from the well of living water that promises to nourish our hearts and souls—and allows us to stand calm amidst an unwelcome torrent. Jeremiah recognized these twin tendencies long ago in the Israelites; they, like us, were not leaning on the Father and instead were relying on faulty strategies (cracked cisterns): “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (
Wise disciplemakers are intentional about unearthing faulty strategies and connecting young adults to the reality of their choices. And they reveal the alternative opportunity: embracing love, protection and the fulfillment found in Christ, our living water.
4) Empowering love.
Fulfilling the Father’s will. Simply put, “Jesus calls us into intimacy with Him and then imitation of Him.” Fulfilling the Father’s will through loving others flows from the intimate connection found in the first two purposes: trusting the Father’s wisdom and submitting to his leadership and heart. These are what move us pro-actively into the lives of others.
Those who surrender to the Father’s wisdom understand that it is God’s will for them to live in selfless generosity, lovingly pursuing those on whom God places such a high value. And those who live within the embrace of the Father’s heart will find their hearts beginning to beat in cadence with his. As disciplemakers, we can help empower emerging adults toward this, guiding them to fulfill God’s will by pursuing godly relationships with an engaged heart.
It is so easy to embrace this value, but often so difficult to live it out. Thirty-one-year-old Emily, for example, was great at using a combination of media (Facebook, texting, etc.) and face-to-face encounters to show interest and connect with others as she built relationships; engaging others through both words and appropriate affection was definitely a strength of hers. However, she had never learned skills that would help her navigate difficult relational encounters and hang in there until they were resolved. She needed to be taught how to practically persevere in relationships.
If young-adult disciples are not actively loving those around them, we need to be intentional by challenging unawareness, confronting unwillingness, exploring wounded areas or teaching relational skills that will help draw the disciple toward this important posture of fulfilling God’s will. Again, you’ll find examples of tools for intentional disciplemaking in chapters seven through eleven.
Empowering emerging adults who are intent on living the Christlife means helping them embrace an ethic of involvement in the lives of others and learn to love the things that God loves from a place of selfless generosity. These will come from an overflow of Christ’s wisdom and heart in the disciple.
Intent on Growth
Becoming like Christ does not happen for emerging adults through merely “hanging out” with someone older or wiser than them. It must be an intentional pursuit.
For the past five years, twenty-eight-year-old Kristin has served the Lord in Thailand by teaching elementary-school children who have never heard of Christ. Knowing the challenges she would face, she deliberately stayed connected to other Christians and looked for mentors. With great relief and even greater excitement, she recently told me that she finally found a couple willing to proactively speak into her life.
Their readiness to pursue her with Christ-focused intentionality is making a huge difference in her ability to grow in the midst of the challenges she faces as an emerging adult and vocational missionary.
While much can be accomplished through discernment and intentionality, the next rhythm we will explore maximizes our impact in the lives of others.
Adapted from Shaping the Journey of Emerging Adults: Life-Giving Rhythms for Spiritual Transformation by Richard R. Dunn and Jana L. Sundene. Copyright(c) 2012 by Richard R. Dunn and Jana L. Sundene. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515. IVPress.com.
Richard R. Dunn (Ph.D., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is lead pastor at Fellowship Evangelical Free Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Jana L. Sundene is associate professor of Christian ministries at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois. She served as an associate youth director at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., and as a visiting instructor to Wheaton College.
