Young People's Address at GC
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The 2004 General Conference created the Division on Ministries with Young People, within the General Board of Discipleship. Now the 2008 General Conference has heard the first ever Young People's Address, before the whole gathered body. United Methodist News Service reports on today's address in this news story. It sounds like the 6 teenagers and young adults represented a diverse cross-section of the church.
The church yearns for young people, and young people yearn for a place to belong, according to one of those who gave the address. Amen to that. What they said up there is important. The fact that the church invited them to say it and celebrated their presence is even more so.
The church yearns for young people, and young people yearn for a place to belong, according to one of those who gave the address. Amen to that. What they said up there is important. The fact that the church invited them to say it and celebrated their presence is even more so.
Labels: General Conference, Young Adults, Youth Ministry
posted by Andrew C. Thompson at 11:57 PM
10 Comments:
The young people chosen seem to have done a good job -- I checked out only a couple of the videos of their addresses but the quotes in the UMNS story give the impression they all took their role seriously.
But I'd have to disagree with you that they represent a diverse cross-section of the church. With the exception of the young lady from Russia, all of the speakers came from conferences that are declining in membership, according to the GCFA report released last month.
The furthest south that any of them claim as a home is Nebraska, and that young man is the only speaker from the two largest jurisdictions, the South-Central and Southeastern. The tiny Western Jurisdiction, smaller than some Annual Conferences in terms of members, has three speakers.
I admit I speak with a bias -- one of my former students submitted an address to be considered by the GBHEM, and she didn't get selected ;-) But even so biased, and even conceding that the young people themselves pulled off a good presentation, I still can't help but feel the Ministries with Young People division let us down by working from such a narrow slice of our total church's pews.
That's a really good point, friar. I was thinking more along the lines of the division of men and women, the presence of the young woman from Russia, the presence of the clergywoman in addition to the laity, and the variety of young adults ages (from 16 to 29). It didn't even occur to me to take into account the geographical representation from within the U.S.
But your point is well-made. If you don't have at least one person from the South, where Methodism is and always has been the strongest, then it's problematic to say that it is truly representing a cross-section of the church. Thanks for pointing that out.
As a young adult, a GC delegate, and a person in the NEJ, I thought they young people represented a great cross-section. There wasn't an NEJ speaker either, and regardless of growing or declining membership, these people represented active young folks in our connection from diverse settings and backgrounds. Without having a speaker from every area and conference, I guess you can always make the argument that things weren't balanced, but I think the response was overwhelmingly positive.
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I think I threw in a tangent by noting the geographical disparity -- the real point I wanted to make has to do with representation. The 1.8 million United Methodists of the South Central jurisdiction were represented by one speaker. The nearly 3 million UMs of the Southeastern jurisdiction were not represented at all. The 389,000 UMs of the Western jurisdiction -- and I exaggerated my case; the largest annual conference is about 40,000 members smaller than that -- were represented by three speakers.
The 3 million UMs of Africa were not represented, but the 15,000 of Northern Europe were.
So I'll still have to disagree that the Division of Ministries with Young People did a good job in their selection. They apparently did select good speakers, and those speakers did well. And certainly they can't offer a spot to a representative from every annual conference.
But if there's room for three speakers from the Western jurisdiction out of the six total, then there's room to adjust that roster to offer some kind of representation to a larger number of our people. I hope I'm clear that I don't think the young people who spoke did poorly or somehow failed. They didn't, but I'm still pretty sure the DMYP did. The positive response is a good thing and demonstrates that the young people's address was a good idea. But the under-representation of the largest portions of our membership leaves me wondering why that good idea didn't get better treatment at the hands of the Division.
I was hoping for some comments about the importance of the UMC on our college and university campuses. Maybe one comment from a speaker who had been to college of the role that a campus minister or campus ministry had in his or her life. Maybe next time!
I am here in Fort Worth for the duration of the General Conference, and I'd like to address a couple of the topics raised by people. Just so you know, I am 36, so just out of what is technically considered "young adult", though still considered by my AC "young clergy".
First, the applause at the end did not have a patronizing feel in the arena--there were lots of tears running down the folks of a lot of people, including some of our delegates. To be in the room when something like that happened was incredible and to have that presentation happen on the heels of the Bishop's address (which was also spectacular) was a real way of saying that they hit a home run. When we broke for lunch there was energy and passion running through the crowd and lots of conversation about it everywhere I went. Their address has continued to be a part of many of the conversations that I have heard taking place in committee meetings as well.
Second, I'm usually a bear on representation, but I think that it didn't have much affect on me (I'm from the South Central) simply because with the exception of Kira and possibly Jason (who spoke about being from the reddest of red states), they didn't speak about their young adult status in geographical terms. They spoke about it in relational terms, which is I think much more characteristic of this age group. It's been said before in this blog that young adults are a much more mobile population (for example, Texas in the South Central Jurisdiction is my home, but I went to college in the Western Jurisdition and seminary in the South Eastern Jurisdiction). I would be interested to know if any of them have spent significant time in any of the other jurisdictions. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I didn't get the feeling that any of them were particularly trying to represent their jurisdiction. I think they were far more concentrating on representing their age group in relationship to all the other age groups, which may have been enough for this time. Though clearly not, since it bothered some.
Third--I too noticed the lack of college/campus ministry. I would be interested to know if any of them participated in campus ministry of the United Methodist variety. Campus ministry has become so underfunded that I think it's very possible that the university or college (if they went) they attended did not have a Wesley ministry attached. What does it mean that the most compelling stories these six could tell were not about our presence on campuses?
Fourth--back to the question of what they were actually saying. I think what I took away from it was that young adults didn't need the patronization of older adults, either lay or clergy. That they have hope and energy now. And that they aren't giving up on the United Methodist church, despite what some people have read and interpreted the stats to say. They were saying, "We don't just deserved to be trained to sit at the table someday. We deserve to be at the table now because everything you're talking about--hope and passion and energy and creativity--we have it now in spades. What we do need is your prayers and your support and a place to give our voices. We will not be you. We will be ourselves. And everyone needs to get okay with that pretty quick 'cause we aren't going anywhere."
Okay--so that was long. Sorry! I've got many many more thoughts, which I'd be happy to share if asked!
Cynthia, thank you for that interpretation of the address. For that matter, thanks to all of you who have responded on this. It's really helpful for those of us aren't in Ft. Worth right now, so feel free to elaborate however and to what length you'd like!
Friends, I was on the committee that led this project and pushed for multiple voices (not just the one lone voice that traditionally does this type of address).
We did look at geographical diversity- but other factors came into play that were more important- like what the applicant had to say about the direction of the United Methodist Church in the opinion of a young person or about their faith journey. The pool came from applicants- and there were a lot of good ones. The youth and young adults on the selection committee chose these six. We would not even be talking about this if it was just one person...we would be arguing over the fact that one person did not represent many different voices of young people.
Maybe next time- under different leadership it will be different. I must say that I feel God spoke through these 6 young people and that the DMYP did not fail at hosting the selection process. I am very proud of these young people and the DMYP.
Peace,
Jay Clark
Jay --
With respect and regret, I will continue to disagree that the selection committee did its job. More than half the United Methodists in the US were voiceless at this table.
The entire population of United Methodists who live in what some call the Third World and others call the Two-Thirds World, about 3.4 million people, were voiceless at this table, and I can't bring myself to believe that we can hear about the future and direction of our church if these voices in particular are omitted. Our church is not just persons in industrialized northern hemisphere nations, and much of its future story will be written south of the equator. I in no way mean to say the omission was somehow deliberate -- I'll leave that to conspiracy theorists and ignore it as the silly idea that it is. But I think it is an omission that seriously weakened the potential impact of this idea on our General Conference and on our church.
I've now watched all of the addresses and I can agree with your pride in the job done by the speakers selected. Because of the reasons I've outlined above, I can't agree with your pride in the job done by the selection committee.
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