Ministry to iGen

By Alan B. Sun

What has worked in the past with Millennials will not get us to where we need to go with iGen. This new generation of youth and young adults will challenge the way churches, organizations and fellowships do ministry. This eBooklet is a primer to both introducing ministry to iGen and taking a thoughtful approach in outreach to this next generation. There are five main calls to this generation that will address topics related to iGen like mental health, beauty, and safety to name a few. With over 14 years of on campus experience Alan speaks from his research and observations of this generation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alan B. Sun
• Release date: Apr 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393269939

Alan B. Sun

Alan serves as the Associate Regional Director for San Diego InterVarsity. Alan loves developing leaders, talking about generational shifts and partnering with churches to further the kingdom work of God. He is a visionary ENFP, enneagram 3w2, and his top 5 strengths are Restorative, Woo, Activator, Communication, and Includer. He also loves swimming and eating noodles with his wife and two kids.  Alan was born in Northern California, he graduated UC San Diego with a degree in Molecular Biology and worked at LIFE technologies. After 1.5 years in the biotech industry he left for campus ministry in 2006. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary where he learned about Christianity at the crossroads of theological education and practical application.

Book preview

Ministry to iGen

by Alan B. Sun,

Edited by Amy Stears

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INTRODUCTION

(Photo above taken at UC San Diego Fall 2019 Library Walk, Photo Credit Stephen Sena and Rachel Gustaff)

I was born in 1982 and went to college at UC San Diego before the first Apple iPhone became a cultural icon. This does not make me old, but I would not consider myself young either, especially when I work with college students. I began working as a campus staff minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA (IVCF) in 2006 and have been in a spiritual mentorship, relationship and discipleship of staff and students since then. I love ministering to the new classes of students that come every year to study and hopefully impact the world we live in. Working in full-time ministry at community colleges, state schools, and universities has taught me how to innovate and observe the cultural shifts in our schools here in the United States. And as an Asian American born to immigrant parents I always knew how to observe differences and was quick to spot cultural shifts. In the beginning that skill was hit or miss, and I was not always on point because those neon colored marshmallow jackets I bought in 1996 were supposed to last longer than they actually did. 

The generational shift happened around 2017 for me and it felt like the earthquake of the century, you could see the aftershocks of culture shifting. I had been working with students face-to-face on campuses over a decade in 2017 and had recently graduated from seminary with a Master of Divinity. Yet nothing could have prepared me for this radical shift in culture. It was the Internet Generation (iGen) or Generation Z (GenZ) depending on where you are reading source nomenclature.  The author of iGen,[1] professor Jean M. Twenge, dates iGen as those born after 1996 but notes that generational groups do not always align perfectly to birth years. As my team of campus ministers and I tried to grapple with the changing landscape of college ministry, we realized that what worked before is not what will keep us growing or even surviving for the future. In his recent book The Ride of a Lifetime former CEO of Disney Bob Iger dedicates a whole chapter titled If You Don’t Innovate, You Die. The principle applies perfectly to college ministry today. Our outreaches were falling flat, the calls to faith felt too public and not