Thursday, April 26, 2012
Where are the Young People?
Anyone who knows me understands my love and appreciation for the young adults in our communities. I am not duped into believing young adults are anything more than beloved people of God, anymore than children, middle-aged, or older adults. Young adults do not have the golden key to solving the great problems of the world, nor do they have the sole understanding of scripture or wisdom for nurturing relations or sharing stories. My understanding is that we all have a part to share in this great mystery of living faithful lives with God and with each other. The presence of young adults in the conversations and worship is vital to our being in the body of Christ, both here at General Conference and back home in our local churches. Simply because we are not whole without their voice, their passion and frustration. We are not whole unless we see their hands and feet at work, and hear their laughter and watch their thumbs fly on their twitter keypads from their iPhones. Unless we are all at the table, we are not whole.
Yesterday I wore a black tee-shirt that simply asked the question: "where are the young adults?" lots of great answers to the question arose. 1) they are out beyond the structure of institutional religion was one answer. Another was, "what young adult would spend eleven days stuffed in a convention center making up rules?" More answers. "they are out being and doing church, instead of pretending and playing church." "they can't afford to be here because they have jobs and can't take time out or afford luxury of downtown hotels, etc." "they gave up a long time ago".
I can tell you from my sensitivity and love for my young peeps. We miss you. We as a church have silenced the voice of young adults by not electing you as delegates. And we lay heavy burdens when we state in plenary sessions that it will be up to young clergy in the USA to save our church. And then we in reality have few toung adults here with any voting power. From our WNCC delegation, we have one clergy young adult and 2 laity. I am the second youngest clergy delegate (sad because I am 44 years old). We do have young clergy who would love to be here "restructuring the church" and leading us in new ways that may or may not "save the church", but would certainly give us insight in how to be a relevant and needed body of healing and compassion in the way of Jesus. We are too bright of folks to not figure out a way to get a more shared power and needed perspectives around the General Conference Table. I am still looking o listen and hear young adult clergy and laity perspective.
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thank you for this good reminder, sfw.
ReplyDeletethat Older is not smarter or wiser...or more Welcome At The Table.
Thanks for this, Shelly. One problem is that by making the General Conference two weeks long, we make it almost impossible for young adults and youth to participate. In my Virginia delegation, for example, 10 of the 13 lay delegates are retired. Retirees are best suited for this service, unfortunately, because few working people can take two weeks off work. In addition to purposefully electing these young people, we need to develop technology to help do much of the work ahead of time, and shorten the actual meeting time. Also, many longtime delegates are happy to sustain the status quo and fear the changes that young people could bring to the church.
ReplyDeleteExcellent comments! The comments you raised are what we should be discussing in the United Methodist Churches across the world. We are losing too many of them to other faiths.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for being concerned about this Shelly, I wholeheartedly agree! I am a young adult from the WNCC who couldn't come this year. I wish more than anything that I could be in FL right now, I even met with our bishop the day he left for GC to talk about the issues at hand. From my perspective, there are a couple of barriers:
ReplyDelete#1 timing. It is May 2nd, nearly all college students are in exams or the week before exams. No college student can afford to miss that much school right at the end of the semester. I have found that most summer jobs don't start until late May-early June because of High Schools. Maybe if GC had been 2-3 weeks later more of us could have come. I can count of 3 other young adults from my conference off the top of my head who would like to be there but can't because of exams and graduation.
#2 Young adults don't see the vision. You are right that young adults are out BEING church instead of being IN church. However, I believe that is because most young adults do not see the value in making more rules. For me, (a prospective pastor beginning divinity school this fall) I have struggled long an hard to believe in the future of the church, and I'm one of it's biggest supporters my age! My peers don't see how the church is going to be an important factor for the future.
#3 No one told us about it. Think about it, how many of the current delegates even knew what general conference was when they were in high school and college? I only know because I'm super involved in the conference AND my dad is a pastor! we need to be telling youth and young adults about the importance of this conference. And we need to bee seeking young adults who are interested from an early age. Youth ministers should be encouraging high schoolers to get involved and interested in conference work.
Lastly, we need a way to get to conference. The number of young adults interested in GC is small enough, the number of us who can afford the costs of the trip is even smaller! help us get there and more of us will come!
I will be at the next GC. No doubt. But by then I will be a young clergy member, not a lay youth/young adult. I'm glad you are concerned about this! I certainly am!
THANK YOU! ....for writing this post, for wearing the shirt, and for refusing to ignore the obvious. It will be fascinating to see how the next generation redesigns the landscape of what we call "church"!!
ReplyDeleteJeane Walker