Millennial identities as emerging ecumenical missional paradigm : a critical study of culture as a crisis and opportunity for mission

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Over the past few decades, discussions around youth identity crisis and missio Dei have become one of the most challenging issues of our time. Given that staying true to self and God is complicated. We seldom come to terms with what our identity should look like in relation to the character and image of God. Just like any experience, a self-discovery experience with the 'self' and an attachment relationship with God, is like a rollercoaster ride. The researcher engages the reader in an empirical study that zooms in on the identity crisis of Stellenbosch Christian Millennials in relation to the subcultures of self and God images. Hence, attempting the all-important question: How can a Christian life, lived within the restorative and prophetic context of imago Dei become the milieu in which the youth-in-mission finds an enduring and satisfying identity in a time of crisis? The research is an exhaustive study that draws from the theories of attachment to God, authenticity, and theological anthropology in its exploratory navigations to bring to bear the identity crisis of Christian Millennials who participated in the study. Using a qualitative case study design, the researcher exhaustively gave account to the experiences of the respondents in the study by providing the reader with a robust narrative that explains the identity crisis of Christian Millennials in relation to their self and God images. The hallmark of the study was the observation of a common coping mechanism by way of splitting or self-fragmentation, used by the respondents to deal with their identity crisis as they struggled to remain authentic to self and maintain a positive God image. They dealt with their identity crisis by self-creating a prophetic future within the structural qualities of the self to engage in a relationship between its divine given purpose in an eschatological future and the mission of God. It was this identity crisis that led to an opportunity that enabled the youth-in-mission to interpret their experience in God's terms. The researcher introduced this opportunity as a coping missional hermeneutic, which is a theological model that allows us to change the frame of our identity crisis to the pattern of the imago Dei in order to tell our stories from the perspective of missio Dei.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University