Young Adults and the Church

In 2008 the Church of the Brethren hosted a gathering of Young Adults as part of the continuing conversations about ministerial leadership. The goal of the gathering was to discuss the emerging realities for the church as the denomination discerned the needs for a new system of calling ministers. Each of the sessions began with prepared presentations and a series of questions for those gathered to discuss around their tables. After the event, a Minute was prepared from the conversations. Brethren Life and Thought will publish a number of the presentations here over the course of several weeks.

The following presentation was prepared and offered by Jordan Blevins.

Gregory Boyd writes, in an article in the Christian Century,

Jesus revolted against the powers that fragment relationships by modeling what communal life under the reign of God looks like. Though he was the Son of God, he didn’t try to go solo in his life and ministry. He had a network of friends, like Mary and Martha, on whom he could rely when he traveled. He banded with a group of 12 disciples who traveled and ministered with him. And he chose three people (Peter, James and John) to form his most intimate circle of friends. His life manifested the truth that where God reigns, individuals will be united together in close-knit communities. ((Gregory Boyd, “Created for Community: Out of My Cave” The Christian Century. 19 May 2009. http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=6933.))

I have been extremely blessed over the last 6 months or so with my involvement in the Young Adult community in the church – both the Church of the Brethren and the larger ecumenical church. I serve on the Young Adult Task Force of the US Conference of the World Council of Churches, the Young Adult Steering Committee of the Church of the Brethren, and was a part of the planning committee for this gathering of young adults that took place in Arizona in December. And as I reflect on all of these experiences, one thing jumps out – young adults get what Gregory Boyd is talking about.

Roughly 30 of us gathered in Arizona in December 2008 to talk about what the future of leadership in the Church of the Brethren should look like – particularly in the context of the Church of the Brethren Ministerial Leadership Paper, and looking at revising that. But, it couldn’t just be that simple. To consider what leadership would look like, we had to think about what the church looks like. And to properly consider what the church looks like, we had to think about what the culture in which the church resides looks like. And so that is how our conversations moved. As Dana Cassell, Matt McKimmy, myself, and Josh Brockway wrestled with the framing of this conversation – and as I looked back over our planning notes, one particular piece of our conversation stuck out at me. Young adults don’t necessarily want to be a part of a committee or team that meets regularly and just does church business, but part of relationships and conversations. We want a more organic process, a more casual form of leadership. This also caused me to reflect on another piece of Gregory Boyd’s article, when he wrote

Think about it. Once a week we go to church (a religious building) rather than seeing ourselves as the church. As good consumers we typically choose a church on the basis of our own preferences, conveniences and needs. Since we’re conditioned to assume that ‘the customer is always right’, we believe we have the right to have things our way. If one church fails to please us, we simply shop for another that will. Since there are only so many of us religious consumers to go around, churches have to compete with one another to acquire and keep as many consumers as possible. This, of course, puts pressure on pastors to sweeten the religious product they’re peddling by adding as many blessings as possible to their message and by refraining from saying or doing anything that might drive consumers away. ((Ibid; http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=6933))

It’s not just in the church but in our culture as well. Young adults don’t want to be “programmed for” but rather “participate in.” It’s not just about program for program’s sake, but relationships in groups that are doing the work of the church. People want to feel like they’re a part of something larger than just themselves.

As such, that is what we tried to do. We began each of our sections for conversation with two brief paper presentations, in order to frame our conversation. Each presenter was invited to leave the group with questions, and once the presentations were over, we moved into a world café style session to wrestle with the questions. World Café moves people from table to table – aiming to get you talking to the largest number of people in the room as possible. We also had sheets of paper down on the tables, with markers, to provide for continuing reflection and conversation in that form, too.

One of the things that really amazed me about this group, and all the gatherings of young adults I have been apart of, has been that desire to enter into relationship with one another. We aren’t just coming together to make procedural decisions, or plot out a plan, but rather to figure out how to be the church, in relationship with one another. Around those world café tables, people disagreed with one another – a lot. I think it is safe to say that at the end of our time together; people still disagreed with one another – a lot. But no one was going anywhere. We were committed to figuring out what the future of the Church of the Brethren was going to look like – together.

We encouraged current church leaders to share are some reflections on leadership with us. One of those reflections came from Deborah DeWinter, of the US Conference of the World Council of Churches. She shared some thoughts to help us frame our conversation, and she said,

To be a leader in the church is to recognize in the other the image of God and to call each other to accountability in this relationship we have as children of God. There is one family: God’s family. One family table: the Lord’s table. One calling (the family business): to love one another, as we have first been loved.  Everything else is commentary. It is to live a life of expectancy (expecting God to work for good in all things)….to call others to join together in experiencing the Advent spirit…eyes and ears, hearts, bodies and minds focused solely on the manger where the unlikely Messiah, the Prince of Peace, promises to turn the kingdoms of this world upside down….doing this, using our gifts; using us.  Imagine that!

I think that vision of leadership is what we were seeking to come to – one that seeks to transform the church into a vital community of believers.