They are self-centered philanthropists.

Or, the next Greatest Generation, though lacking the steady commitments their grandparents had.

Rich Addicks/AJC (ENLARGE)

Julia Sierra Wilkinson, 21, will attend Harvard Divinity School this fall, and David Allen, 25, attends Duke Divinity School. During a recent conference for ministry candidates at Emory University, Wilkinson and Allen spend some time in Cannon Chapel.

Rich Addicks/AJC (ENLARGE)

Julia Sierra Wilkinson (with laptop), 21, absorbs a lecture at Emory University during a conference for ministry candidates.

They are denominational mixers.

In spite of coming of age post-Sept. 11 and seeing firsthand the nearly unassailable poverty of the Third World or inner-city America, they are hopeful.

Welcome the coming generation of Christian leaders, as described by those working with them.

Millennials — teenagers to 20-somethings — will soon be in your local pulpit.

The people who track the trends say what they see leaves them optimistic and concerned.

The young generation brings a paradoxical mix of global consciousness and self-interest, curiosity about ancient Christian disciplines such as meditation as well as the living-out-loud stylings of Facebook and a devotion to faith but not its institutions built by previous generations. Churches will change under their guidance.

"It is thrilling to be with them," said Trace Haythorn, the president of Atlanta's Fund for Theological Education.

The organization builds church leadership and fills pulpits by finding the best and brightest students from all denominations interested in ministry and giving them scholarships and support.

"I think we are going to look back on this time and see it as a new Reformation [the 16th and 17th century age of rich thought that birthed Protestantism]," Haythorn said.

The youth movement has a sharp social conscience and energy to match. College admission officers tell Haythorn that 10 years ago, a student might mention a summer mission trip in an application.

"Today, you don't get a story about the trip they've been on, but about the nonprofit they started," Haythorn said. "I go home feeling guilty that I haven't done more."

Metro Atlanta's Zach Hunter, 16, not associated with the fund, has become nationally known for his faith-based organization that fights modern-day slavery in Africa and Asia.

Young leaders' eyes are turned toward problems at home, too.

David Allen, 25, a Fund for Theological Education fellow at Duke University, recalls going to Washington with his church youth group from Cobb County. A tour took them past the marble halls of power, then it wended into some of D.C.'s poorest neighborhoods, to tattered streets where hope was wrung out long ago.

"That was jarring to me ... and this was three miles from the White House and Congress," Allen said.

It helped point him toward the pulpit. If he doesn't wake his future congregations up to broader social problems, he will consider his ministry less than successful, he said.

Studies also call millennials self-centered, over-indulged. Many of them see religion as a consumer good that should meet their needs if institutions want to keep them as "customers," said Rodger Nishioka, associate professor of Christian education at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur.

They want a life given to good causes, but also given to consumer goods, cool places to live and convenience.

"I think they are a combination of Mother Teresa and Donald Trump," he said. "There is a generosity and magnanimity I haven't seen in a number of years. At the same time, I'm seeing this Donald Trump sense of entitlement, the worst of the world of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears."

It is unclear to him which personality traits will dominate.

"In the next few years, I think we are going to see if it's going to tip more toward Donald Trump or Mother Teresa," he said.

Millennials have already lost devotion to denominations.

They have been taught that their lives will balance on shifting commitments in their own self-interest — they will have to move careers and homes with economic tides, constantly retool job skills with technological change. The same rules apply to faith.

They hold to Jesus as "the way, the truth and the life" but work across denominational or faith lines, Nishioka said.

They are willing to lend themselves in nearly freelance styles to a cause, and willing to move on to something new after they feel like they have made their contributions; they choose churches based on their needs rather than denominational loyalty, he said.

They are suspicious of traditional authority, but quick to adhere to the authority of their own experience. They don't wait around for leaders to give directions, but jump in and do, Nishioka said.

Lawrenceville's Jonathan Merritt, a 25-year-old Southern Baptist seminary student, thought his denomination's go-slow stance on taking action on global warming was timid.

Merritt wrote his own statement this year, got input from Southern Baptist scholars and put it up on a Web site he helped create. Some leaders signed it, including then-president of the denomination the Rev. Frank Page and Merritt's father, the Rev. James Merritt, also a former president.

The denomination's conservative leaders, who question global warming or faith-based environmental movements as suspect ideologies influenced from the left, reacted strongly in word and print, sending the story into headlines.

Merritt is unperturbed.

"We don't feel as obligated to toe the political line," he described his generation by phone. "We are willing to stick our necks on the chopping blocks and tell what we believe to make a difference."

Haythorn said if churches are going to attract or keep up with the millennials, they are going to change, and some already are doing so.

Some churches led by young pastors meet in coffeehouses, school gyms or even bars. Though the churches are still tied to denominations, many de-emphasize those links, using nondescript names, such as All Souls Fellowship, a Presbyterian church in Decatur.

They look for ever-changing programming and ways to engage members in causes locally and abroad to attract and keep members. Haythorn and others expect the young leaders to move churches toward similar flexible and active associations of believers. Haythorn predicted, "Those [churches] intimately involved with their neighborhoods and who can connect with the global needs will be the successful ones."