Xers are a spiritual class of people. True, they are indifferent to the spirituality of Christianity, which they see as cold and institutional. And they have largely rejected the Eastern-oriented New Age spirituality of their Boomer parents as being too intangible...to be of any earthly use. What, then, is Xer spirituality?

The spirituality of my generation is transrational, yet it is concrete in its expression. You probably wont find a typical Xer singing hymns in church or chanting his mantra or channeling spirits. To Xers, getting out and rock-climbing can be a spiritual experience. Or sailboarding. Or cycling. ... Xers tend to believe in transcendent realities, but they also like to pour their energies and put their bodies into a spiritual experience of the here and now. Taking risks, playing hard, going to extremesthis is how many Xers define spirituality.

Though largely unaware of what the Bible is all about, Xers are naturally accessible and receptive to a worldview that transcends reason and logic. While the worldview of the Bible is reasonable and logical, it is also transrational. It demands that we accept many things we cannot understand: mysteries, paradoxes, prophecies and unanswered questions. Xers will be receptive to the Bibles transcendent and transrational worldviewif that worldview is presented in terms that Xers can relate to.

Today we dont need to start by framing the question of Is there a God? Instead we find ourselves back in the days of the first century church, when superstition and mythology were on an equal plane with science. In those days, the question was not Is there a God? but Which god is God? And that is the question of the 1990s and beyond. For Generation X the answer to that question is not found in an overwhelming mountain of evidence for the existence of God or the resurrection of Jesus. Xers are not likely to respond with a single-moment-in-time decision for Christ. They are much more likely to respond over a longer period of timea gradual result of a process of relationships.

In process evangelism, the conversion experience takes place over a longer period than we have tended to expect from our technique-oriented evangelistic strategies of the past. In process evangelism people are convinced of the reality of Gods love not by propositional arguments or one-time evangelistic rallies but by a daily, consistent, practical demonstration that Christianity works and that Gods love is real. In process evangelism pre-Christian people discover the reality of God and the love of God in the transparency and love of Gods people.

The institutional church has a role to play in evangelizing Generation X.

But if we are honest we have to recognize that the church is not on the front lines of the spiritual battlefront in this world. The church is an encampment just behind the lines. The front lines are out there, in the real world, on the campuses, in the neighborhoods, in the offices and behind the storefronts, in the clubs and bars, in the gyms and on the courts and in the streets of our world. To put it in sports terms, the church is where we gather for the huddle, but the real game is out there on the playing field where all the grunting and sweating and bone-crunching takes place. The playing field of the outside world is where we do our evangelism and where the game is won or lost.

My friend NASA scientist Robert Slocum wrote a book called Ordinary Christians in a High Tech World. There he differentiates between the church gathered and the church scattered. We need the huddle, we need the church gathered, we need the institutional church, we need the weekly worship service. But when we come out of the huddle, its time to scatter, to fan out and take our position on the playing field, to put our shoulders and knees and heads into the game, to grunt and sweat and take our shot. With Jesus as our coach we have to move out, fight for yardage and keep our eyes on the goal.

The key to reaching this geneation does not involve putting up a sign in front of the church and inviting people in. Odds are they wont come in. The key to the heart of Generation X is personal evangelism practiced by ordinary laypeople with a heart and vision for taking the story of Jesus Christ to this generation. If we truly want to reach this generation we have to go where the people are.

My experience, and the experience of others who are working on the turf of Generation X, indicates that our personal effort to evangelize the people around us should be organized around relationships rather than apologetics [through process evangelism].

Process evangelism can be distilled down to four essential cornerstones.

Cornerstone 1: Authenticity.
The Christian must be authentic and committed and must have a deep and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. The Christian faith must be the core reality of this persons life, not an act. Authenticity can only be demonstrated over time.

Cornerstone 2: Caring.
The Christian must demonstrate genuine caring and unconditional love for the pre-Christian, regardless of that persons level of belief or lifestyle. This doesnt mean we never confront sin, but we must always demonstrate love and acceptance of the individual, whatever the sin. True caring is lived out and proved over time.

Cornerstone 3: Trust.
The Christian must demonstrate absolute integrity, truthfulness, loyalty, confidentiality and openness. Only after establishing a deep level of trust will the Christian be able to share how the story of Jesus Christ has intersected with his or her life. Trust can only be earned over time.

Cornerstone 4: Transparency.
To be transparent is to be real and to allow others to see the reality of our lives through our openness and vulnerability. We admit our mistakes. We confess our sins. We tell the story of our pain and our problems, so that others can see God at work in our lives. Transparency is most effective when practiced in long-term relationships.

We have failed in our calling if the pre-Christian ever thinks, Im just a target, an evangelistic project for you. You dont want to be my friend. You just want to hang my scalp on your belt. We have failed if we ever breach a trust or break a confidence with that person. We have failed if we are insensitive to the place the pre-Christian occupies on the spectrum of belief or if we try to push that person into a commitment before he or she is ready.

Now, Im not saying that we should never ask a person where he or she stands with Christ. On the contrary, there must come a time where we speak plainly about Jesus, or evangelism will never take place. The point is that we need to be sure that the relationship is strong enough to withstand this kind of conversation. The other person has to know that we care about him or her as a person, not just as a potential convert.

If the evangelism of choice for todays generation is personal and process-oriented, does that mean that the other forms of evangelism are invalid? No! Other forms, such as Billy Graham-style mass evangelism and media evangelism, can still be used to reach Generation Xbut to be effective they must be linked with a personal, process-oriented approach. This has always been true, even with preceding generations. Many people mistakenly assume that evangelism is what takes place in a packed arena when Billy Graham gets up to speakbut for the vast majority of people who respond at the crusade, that single-point-in-time event was just the culmination of a process of being evangelized by the people who brought them to the crusade!

There was a time, says Doug Schaupp [of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Los Angeles] when we could preach at people and they would respond to the gospel. But preaching at people doesnt work too well anymore. We cant just come at people. We have to go with them. We have to get into their world, just as Jesus came into our world and became one of us so that we could come to Him. Its called incarnational evangelism, becoming incarnate or figuratively being born into another persons world. Just as we feel loved by Jesus because of all he went through to identify with us, our pre-Christian friends will feel loved by us as we go out of our way to identify with them.

Schaupp describes a five-step process he used in his incarnational approach to evangelism:

1. Do what they do. Ive seen people evangelized in the course of all kinds of crazy activities. Something happens when Christian and pre-Christians get together for skate-boarding, skiing, going to the movies, listening to music or even something as dorky as trick-or-treatingwhatever the pre-Christian likes to do. Its called bonding, and bonding is a powerful step of trust-building as the foundation for evangelizing. The traditional approach to evangelism is to invite pre-Christians to do what we doworship, Bible study, conferences. I ask you: which approach sounds more inviting to a pre-Christiangoing to church or going to the beach? Eventually, after a real bonding has taken place, you can get them to move toward Christian activities, but you have to move toward them first.

2. Enjoy and accept them. People can sniff out insincerity. If I merely go through the motions of doing what pre-Christians do without giving them my heart, they will probably feel patronized instead of loved. Evangelism is the most effective when it is natural and unprogrammed, when you truly enjoy spending time with and talking to the people you are witnessing to, and when you truly enjoy doing the things they like to do.

3. Affirm what is good in their values. This step can be very difficult for Christians because we have a tendency to be judgmental. Sometimes we fear that such affirmation will cause them to think we agree with all of their values and even their sinful habits. In reality, refusing to affirm what is good in their value system creates distance between the Christian and the pre-Christian. It also ignores the fact that God is already at work in the heart of that pre-Christian, planting biblical leaning and values in that persons mind and drawing that person   to Himself. Finding something that can be authentically affirmed in a pre-Christians worldview can be a very powerful witness to pre-Christians.

4. Share the story of Jesus in their terms. This is the tricky step, the transitional step. Youve already done the hard work of building trust and incarnating yourself into their world in the first three steps. But heres where we can easily make a mistake. We often forget which words and terms make sense to pre-Christians, and we slip into our church lingowhich is a turnoff to the unchurched. But if we can stay in the other persons world, while remaining cool and be unshockable, we can have a real influence.

5. Invite them to follow Jesus in a way to which they can relate. Again, this is another place Christians often get tripped up. Theyve gotten into the other persons worldview, and theres a good two-way identification going. Its time to extend an invitation. At this point Christians often blow it in one of two ways. Either they get religious and scare the pre-Christian person off, or they never get around to inviting the pre-Christian at all! Yet its so easy, once that bond is established, once that person knows you care and you understand the way he or she thinks, the way he or she feels! All you have to say is, Are you up for following Jesus? I know youd really dig what hes about.

This kind of evangelism is not that hard. You just have to be able to get into another persons world, to understand how that person feels about life and to love that person like Jesus would. Thats the kind of evangelism he practiced, and it still works today.

This article is excerpted from Jesus for a New Generation by Kevin Graham Ford. Published by InterVarsity Press, the book is available by calling InterVarsity Press, 1-800-843-9487 or faxing 630-887-2520.