Last
week's essay (regarding
passing on the Anglican tradition) struck home.
My wife and I are in our forties, with two young
children. We are members of a warm and active parish,
but most of the members are over 60 (part of this
is due to the fact that we live in a retirement mecca,
but that is not the whole story). There are few children
in the parish and fewer still who show up regularly
and Christian Education is almost an afterthought.
I
am an Episcopalian/Anglican because the traditions
of the BCP, and the Anglican musical tradition speak
to me. "Creative" liturgies, happy-clappy music,
and a theology of affirmation and happy thoughts
seem to be what some think will bring them in. I
doubt it. And, if we go that route, we lose an important
component of what makes us Anglican in the first
place. Better to join the Baptists up the road, or
the RC's, the Methodists, or the Lutherans.
Your
photo says it all. There is little so dated as what
was "contemporary" a couple of decades ago.
Ted
Gale
Calvary Episcopal (Indian Rocks Beach)
Pinellas County, Florida, USA
15 May 2006
In response to your front page article I
was moved by the Holy Spirit to write what we have experienced
at a small rural church, of a very large diocese. (Roughly
divide South Australia in half and we cover the entire west).
Our
congregation is aging, for the young people have
had to leave this area for further education and
employment. The young families whom we have contact
found it increasingly more difficult to bring their
children along, partly because the children didn’t
find the traditional Sunday School inspiring. So,
in response we brought the children into the body
of the nave, dedicating an area for reading, drawing,
and activities where the children could lie or sit
as they chose.
This
did not hold interest for long. The young people
found other activities to do on Saturday nights or
Sunday mornings and still didn’t come. What
is interesting though is that our own daughters disliked
the new children’s area and preferred to sit
with us in the pews. Our youngest has in fact asked
for the old style "time out" session instead.
What
do we do? Recently, our Synod endorsed a move to
further encourage creativity in presenting the Gospel,
just as your article has alluded. On the one hand,
an aging congregation has only so much energy to
expend. But on the other hand, we have made some
investment in our young ones who have left the town.
In their own way, they are witnessing Christ to their
peers, and they are respected for it. They plant
the seed of faith on soil that we perhaps see as
unfertile. This can only be but an inspiration for
us.
Part
of our creativity I sense is to come through developing
a purposeful tapping of our collective spiritualism,
where prayer is offered over extended periods, a
kind of prayer tank. This is God's a gift; a kind
of intelligence that has been blessed upon us.
The Y generation has suffered and don’t deserve
to be abandoned. Small hotspots of success continue to
glow, but there recipe is rarely transferable. That’s
where our collective spirituality needs to work. We can’t
rush into populist fads without the detail, nor can we
tarry in reverential meditation.
We
are at a cross-road, and frustrated knowing full
well our pilgrimage may follow the well worn path
that the London Times article seems to gloat over.
It is our prayerful hope that it doesn’t; but
ministry to the next generation may well be at the
grass roots, and not in heritage–listed buildings.
The
Reverend David Thompson
St. James Anglican Church Ministry District, Southern
Flinders
Jamestown, South Australia
17 May 2006
my
parish is quite focused on
developing youth and young adult programs. I am incredibly
lucky as a young adult (I'm 27) to have ventured upon a brilliant
minister and a parish focused on education, progress, and
growth. My parish is 'being faithful to the future' of the
church, recognizing that while this might at times create
conflict, it's vital to the sustainable development of young
disciples and thereby the Anglican church.
My
church has Inquiry courses for new adult members
as well as for youth members. Both courses enable
members to learn about the basics of Christianity,
the history of the church, some principles of theology,
the reasons for what is done in liturgy, the physical
items used in a service, the church calendar, etc.
Although a generous amount of material is covered,
the courses and the medium for communicating the
material meet the audience where they live. Much
like Christ in his educational capacity, our minister
and our curate are both successful in stepping into
the lives of their students to educate on a level
that their students can understand and can become
passionate about. Education is definitely one key
in attracting and retaining all new entrants to the
church.
However,
attracting youth and young adults to the church goes
far beyond educational programs. The one thing terribly
lacking in my generation, and I suspect in younger
generations as well, is community. We've grown up
focused on individual achievement, independence,
realism, cynicism and rapidly shifting trends. We
are also a generation of media, instant communication
with virtually anyone in the world and an overload
of stimuli. However, even with this constant stimulation,
I believe a lot of my and younger generations are
lonely and are searching for an authentic, accepting
community in which to feel safe in belief and exploration.
Our
parish, through the passionate, insightful leadership
of our minister, understands a lot of these trends
and is moving toward strategies to address the gap
between what has been the dying traditional Anglican
parish model and the necessary, sustainable Anglican
Mission parish model. We brought in a curate specifically
to develop youth programs. Slowly but surely, we
are starting to see growth and development and most
importantly, community interest in attending services
and getting involved in these youth programs. In
addition, our minister has handed control and responsibility
for developing a 20's-30's ministry to a couple of
us who are passionate about its development and experienced
in developing high school, university and young adult
programs for politics. Through our inclusion, we
are drawn deeper into a commitment to facilitate
the growth of our youth programs.
We've
started to develop ideas for small groups, mentorship
programs, leading, learning and teaching programs,
coffee house socials, moms and tots yoga, walking,
running, biking and book clubs, singles nights, debate
evenings with scholars, musicians, artists and ministers,
Christian art and music events. We're redesigning
our church's website so that we will have a functional,
up-to-date calendar, blogs, message boards, opportunities
to download our minister's sermons, direction to
educational and pastoral resources, up to date pictures
and movies. And for goodness sake, we are a generation
that finds a good deal of our contacts and information
via the internet. For those churches that don't yet
understand this or think it unimportant, please,
understand the opportunity you miss out on to reach
the youth of your community and beyond.
It
will take far more than just education or a curriculum
to ensure the future of the Anglican church. The
sustainability of the church will require a commitment
from clergy to creating a community where young people
can experience Christ, can feel safe, comfortable
and excited in learning, expressing and growing in
their Christianity. But that commitment from clergy
must be met by elders willing to stretch their comfort
zone a bit to grow out of staid traditions, middle
agers willing to serve as mentors and guides for
young adults, young adults willing to be mentors
and guides for teenagers while learning about the
traditions and ceremony of the elders and finally,
teenagers willing to be mentors and guides to the
little ones.
Christianity
grew because Christ reached out to people and met
them in their place of need and understanding. These
people gathered into communities that provided an
authentic experience of love, support, worship, and
growth. I think in some cases, members within the
Anglican church have become so set in their traditions
and liturgical procedure, that they forget Who it
is these traditions are about.
Katie
Silcox
Trinity Church
Cambridge, Ontario, CANADA
ksilcox@sfu.ca
19 May 2006
You
asked about what life is like "in
the trenches." I am a Director of Children's Ministries and
have been in Christian Education for almost ten years.
The
problem does not lie in making the Church relevant
to our children. The challenge is to bring their
parents to a mature understanding of the faith. The
parents I know are loving and want the best for their
children, but they lack confidence that they can
model the faith and train their children in it. The
Church's emphasis and ministry should focus here
first, on providing community and nurture (spiritual,
moral, and intellectual) for parents whose own faith
background was sketchy or nonexistent. Christian
parents transmit the faith to their children daily,
in ways the institutional Church cannot.
Parents
also tend to see church as one activity among many,
all of which are necessary for a well-rounded child
to experience. So if the family is over-scheduled,
church often gets crowded out. It will be there when
parents have time for it. And if their children are
not "entertained" by church, clearly that means that
church is dull and irrelevant, and the solution is
to spice it up a bit. But I suspect that children
imitate the attitudes that their parents model. They
see their parents making time for church as a sometimes
tiresome duty, not as a life-giving community of
love and service to others. My own experience with
teaching children in a church setting is that, if
the teacher finds the faith relevant, the children
will, too, but if the teacher sees her job as providing "Christian
activities" for children, they will know the difference
and resent it. So the activity can be a Godly Play
story or a morning spent cleaning the church; children
will recognize the genuine and respond to it.
Church
is not always fun. And, yes, the people you encounter
there are sometimes annoying, old-fashioned, or unsympathetic.
But the meaning of our baptism is that, in Christ,
we are one. This is our primary identity — we
are Christians. Only the Church offers us the chance
to grow to be like Christ, because only the Church
offers us other Christians as brothers and sisters
to teach us what life in Christ is about.
Emily
Guerry
Grace Episcopal Church
Charleston, South Carolina, USA
ehgreads@bellsouth.net
15 May 2006
I
write in response to
your very good points raised in the current AO. I surely
do not have the answer to all the challenges raised about
generation Y; however, I do offer what our parish does with
young children as a wonderful program, responsible for the
continual addition of parishioners in the form of young families.
As
my vestry points out, our numbers don't grow (at
least not substantially), but in a highly transient
but high income neighborhood of a major city, we
have high turnover every year yet keep attracting
young families. We are a Catechesis of the Good Shepherd
parish; indeed we hold training sessions in that
curriculum as well since some of our catechists are
trained to train. We also have a fabulous high-school
group.
These
are at least two things we do remarkably well, and
it is a cause for rejoicing. Be in touch if you want
more information. Our website, though a beginning
is, alas, too out of date. How many parishes could
get in that line?
Thank
you for your continued thoughtful and hopeful website.
The
Reverence Linda Packard
Church of Our Saviour [www.coschurch.org]
Chicago, Illinois, USA
15 May 2006
In
our parish, volunteers lead the
Sunday school. The program is overseen by a Discipleship
Steward that reports to the Rector, Associate Rector, and
Vestry. Training is available to new teachers. We use a curricula
that encourages using different methods of teaching and response
so all learning and teaching styles get accommodated (eventually).
Youth move into the Journey to Adulthood curricula where
they can learn to express themselves with faith no matter
what the circumstance. Children, youth, middlers, elderly,
families, everyone is encouraged to live their faith in ministry,
in service within the parish and to the larger community
in some way.
On
a larger note some of us have participated in a Diocesan
conference that encouraged family and inter-generational
learning. The conference is available worldwide by
rhe Youth and Family Institute located in Minnesota.
They are Lutheran-based — but don't let that
hold you up, they are ecumenical and offer what is
needed to help pass along the faith to the next generation.
If you want the younger folks to claim their faith,
tap in to what rhe Youth and Family Institute have
to offer.
On
a local note (and yes, we travel to other diocese)
I belong to Sacred Joy, we facilitate workshops
and training for those facilitating (teaching) all
ages. We also offer parish retreats which encourage
faith conversations within the home and within the
generations. Interestingly enough, our facilitators
training is entitled: Faith Is Caught More Than
It Is Taught, A Teacher's Guide to Sharing the
Faith. Our parish retreats are intended to make faith
alive within the home and not just what is done on
Sundays.
Can
the church survive the next generation? Yes, if we
live our faith in this generation and not just give
it Sunday service.
Krisan
Lamberti
St. Stephen's Episcopal Parish, Coconut Grove
Miami, Florida, USA
19 May 2006
