You know the church is old when I’m considered a “young pastor.” At 38 (and counting), my bald head and protruding belly is quickly pushing me toward middle age. My mp3 player has Willimon sermons and music by Arvo Part. I have neither tattoos nor piercings, and puzzle why anyone would want to do that to their body.
The point I’m getting at is that I’m not really all that young, even though here I sort of look like I am, given that most delegates and guests are retired and have time to participate to gatherings like these. We are governed by older people. And I worry that our grey and white heads send the message that we are a church of and for older people.
But we’ve passed a motion allowing youth delegates (age 16-22) with voice and vote. But I can’t think of any young people who’d want to participate in this kind of exercise. And if they did, I would be shocked if they wanted to come back, or invited their friends to participate.
However, the mood here among some folks is that having youth attend as delegates will attract only a handful, if that. So we’re not in any real danger of an army young people out voting the clergy (as if that would be a BAD thing). Some people are concerned (or celebrating) that we couldn’t get enough young people.
We have 151 churches in the ABT synod. So we could conceivably have 151 more people at convention. Some say that such a challenge is impossible, beyond the ken of our small church family.
But I think we could easily get one young person per congregation to attend. ONE PERSON. If we can’t find, recruit, cajole, wheedle, entice, ONE young person to attend the gathering of our church family, then we’re not doing our jobs.
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2008
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June
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- The Church of the Future?
- Where are the Youth? Why here of course!
- What next?
- In case you were wondering
- Accomplishment?
- Making the Convention better
- Simple Instructions Just for Lutherans
- Convention Accomplishments?
- Party Time!
- Bishop Susan Johnson
- One loaf left
- Same-Sex Blessings
- Final Election Results
- Further Elections
- "Blue Ribbon Committee"
- A Tie!
- Synod Elections
- Saturday Morning
- strange message?
- Convention Moments
- Singing with Lutherans
- How many Bishops can you stuff in a SMART CAR?
- A note about comments
- Two ends of the spectrum
- Anybody out there?
- Youth Delegates and Article 7
- Youth Delegates?
- Day Two
- Evening Service
- Quote of the Day
- Bored and Tired
- Introduction
- Welcome to Convention 2008!
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June
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2 comments:
I am one 16-22 year old that would have loved to be a delegate at the Convention. In fact, I was up until my church finally read the bylaws and realized that they could not send a youth delegate because the motion in question had not been passed. While I think it is very important to get the youth of today involved with the church of tomorrow, I hesitate in sending them to what they would consider a dry, boring convention about things they do not understand not want to understand. Besides this, 16-18 year olds will never get permission to take two days off of school just before finals (which start next week!)
Last night while I was talking to my brother (Erik) about this exact topic he told me what the Synod in New York does. They organize the Synod Youth Convention and the Synod Conference Convention at the same time. The Youth Convention starts a couple days earlier at which point, the youth do all their "fun" activities but they also learn about what is going on at the Conference Convention. By the end of both Conventions, the youth join all the "white haired people and the retirees" to vote on the matters they need to be voted on. Maybe this is something the ABT Synod should be looking at.
Last time I was at a Synod Youth Convention was five years ago so I might be a little out of touch but it wasn't that great. The worship band was nice but I would of liked to be at a service like we had at the Anglican Cathedral as well.(Some youth do like the organ and singing four part harmonies.) I think we need to encourage worship of all types to our young people. Don't just expose them to what we think they will like. However, I may be wrong. I'm on the tail end of 22 so I can't even go to the next Convention as a youth.
I would be interested...but the age limit would have to be lifted a bit higher...or i would have to change my "birthday" to come next year. Why not raise it to 25?
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