Church of the Younger Fellowship

Like a few posters here I have a long and comparatively storied history with these affected programs.  I have been a youth at the dawn of YRUU (and a delegate to Common Ground 2 in 1982); a local and district YRUU leader until I was about 20 (in 1986); an active leader in UUYAN during its formative years (1988-1996) on a local, district, and continental level; and an adult advisor at all those levels from about 1994-now.

What is nearest and dearest to me is the day-to-day life of the youth here in the PCD and in my own church.  I know my San Francisco youth benefit from PCD YRUU -- some dramatically -- and I'm glad this district program has not yet suffered any real effect from these continental decisions (though some district-level drama has had impact of a sort that feels similar).

I also know Continental YRUU has done a lot of good for a lot of youth who are near and dear to me.  While some of the most valuable pieces will continue (I'm a huge fan of the whole range of Chrysalis trainings), the recent changes effectively disenfranchise the YRUU identity from the top.  I felt this acutely back in February, when PCD YRUU's annual Elections Con happened just days after the announcement that the UUA would withdraw support for Continental YRUU.  The community elected a Youth Council Rep (it's in the bylaws), but the whole thing was sort of a half-hearted pro-forma effort.

Despite any delusions to the contrary, youth can tell the difference between real authority and suffrance.  They can tell the difference between a Student Council whose actions are confined to an area deemed acceptable by a school administration and a peer-led membership group that actually conducts its own business.  Not too long ago, the UUA Board treated C*YRUU as an affiliated organization, much like CUUPS or the UU Historical Society.  Lately, they treat C*YRUU as a child instead.

I dunno about elsewhere, but here in PCD our YRUU organization is no child. Although mostly run by teenagers, the organization is mature, guided by healthy traditions and a deep sense of responsibility.  It has the foibles of any volunteer organization, plus a few more -- but organizationally it is mature.  To work that metaphor a bit too far, PCD YRUU does not need to be told to bring back Dad's car clean and fueled -- it does so automatically, out of a deeply rooted sense of responsibility and politeness.

I've been an avid observer of the whole process of the Youth Consultation, as an advisor to Steering Committee around the time it started and as a participant and concerned citizen throughout, and I think its result suffers from a huge gap in institutional awareness of its bias.  As nearly as I can tell, President Sinkford personally saw a particular shortcoming of the way we care for our young people, then launched a process designed to "discover" that problem.

I think Sinkford and the Consultation have it backwards.  Our congregations do a lousy job of meaningfully supporting youth, but that's not _because_ our youth are drawn out of their congregations to participate in district and continental YRUU (an assumption I find it easy to read out of the Consultation documents).  Rather, YRUU is needed (and flourishes) because our churches fail to reach youth.

I believe the biggest divide is between the hands-on face-to-face circle worship our youth (and young adults and pagans and a few others) practice, and the sit-and-listen rectangle-worship practiced in most of our congregations.  Our youth learn to express themselves and listen to one another (and they _do_ learn that in spades), and then are dropped into congregations that generally display no interest in hearing their stories.

We sure as hell do need to make our local congregations minister better to young UUs, but I have no confidence whatsoever that driving YRUU out into the snow will advance that goal.

My tardy $0.02 worth,

E.

I've been having a difficult time trying to phrase exactly how much loss I feel from the recent decisions of the UUA. The two most important spiritual and emotional homes I've had have been in YRUU and YA groups, and the ways in which we've come together to create for ourselves the community we haven't found in the isolation of brick and mortar churches. It isn't an understatement to say these places have saved lives.

Maybe it's hard to see the importance of these organizations from the perspective of Beacon Hill, but by cutting the funding and practically all individualized support to the young people of Unitarianism, the UUA has further removed its next generation from the faith. They call it a gap for a reason, and now there really isn't anything to catch us.

My churches have been in eight different cities and three countries in the past twenty two years. My one congregation is now the wonderful CYF, but I found my community in the local and continental conferences I was lucky enough to have as the heart of my Unitarian Universalist life. I think the most important thing now is that we don't become lost from each other. I'll drive across countries, but visiting this community city by city will never take the place of worshiping together in a momentary place of our own. 

How do you feel about the current state of Youth/Young Adult ministries?

I've been to several congregations and it seems that there IS no young adult ministry.  Kids and youth programs tend to be strong, but young adults are ignore, or worse, encouraged to participant but then discounted. 

I understand that there sometime are few active young adults in each congregation, but I see that as an hurdle not a roadblock.  Adult and young adult programming tends to be the lowest rung of priorities for RE Programs, when they should be equal with children and teen programming.  Why do we nurture these humans and then make them fend for themselves?  And other than kids, what age-group is more needful of liberal spirituality than young adults? 

 My hope is that the UUA recognizes that kids, teens, young adults, and adults are very different groups.  Their programming should not be grouped together (kids with teens, teens with young adults, adults with young adults) because each gorup requires specific support.  After this recognition, I hope that each group gets that support in whatever sense it is most needed by them. 

I have been involved with YRUU and C*UUYAN for over twenty years, serving, at times, in leadership positions at the district and continental levels. I have recently moved from the Heartland district to the southernmost little sliver of the Mountain Desert district, where the closest people I know at all are many hundreds of miles away.

Over the last year I have aged out of C*UUYAN, and I now feel like a UU without a spiritual home. I do my best to find involvement at the congregational level and church can be anice thing to go to on a Sunday but it doesn't quite feel like home.

The decisions made involving Opus, ConCentric, and C*UUYAN make for a sad bridging experience indeed.

I think of the concept of "bridging"---the term refers largely to the process of becoming too old to attend a type of UU con intended for a certain age group. In my early days of involvement with organized, non-congregational Young Adult activities, there was a lot of talk about people leaving Unitarian Universalism when they went from being youth to being young adults, thus the need for something similar for young adults: something at the other end of the bridge.

Now it appears that the same thing is happening with people as they reach the age where they bridge out of UU young adult programming, and that fact gives me a very specific impression: that there are UU people of all ages who love their faith but are having---or have had---experiences within congregations, which are less than satisfying on a spiritual level. 

 The truth is that after many years of congregations that don't really reach out to or satisfy the needs of youth and young adults, and congregations that only reach out to/satisfy the needs of youth or young adults, there are now two UUisms on this continent.

I love my old congregation in Detroit, but one of the biggest flaws there (and one which I've observed to some degree in other congregations) is that there is definitely an insular, provincial, "us and them" mentality when it comes to any kind of UU groups which may exist outside of the four walls of that particular church. I would show up on Sunday and talk with people just as UU as I am and attempt to tell them about my experiences at youth, and later, young adult conferences and it felt like I was explaining an alien culture. Maybe I was.

My hopes for the future not just for UU youth and young adults but for UUs of ALL ages...for the survival of UUism itself:

 That somehow, the congregational culture and the conference culture are able to meet each other halfway. That somebody of any age can go to church on Sunday and get to have an experience like the ones I've had at all the cons I've been to. That there is ONE UU community that has room in it for everybody, no matter what age they are.

I gave thirteen years of volunteer service to building youth and young adult ministries for the UUA, and I am in my third year as an employee of Prairie Star District. I should mention that I am not writing this as an employee of PSD, but only speaking for myself... I just mean to describe where I'm coming from.

Everywhere I have worked, I have consistently found that local congregations have no idea how to reach out to youth and young adults, so the thought that kept me going was that the UUA got it, YRUU and C*UUYAN were there for us to provide guidance and the belief in a movement larger than ourselves.

I understand that both those institutions had become undependable and even dysfunctional.  But there is no excuse for pulling support without having another structure in place, with the unfounded hope that congregations will fill in while the UUA gets its act together -- congregations don't know how to do it! They have never known, at least not in my lifetime.  As dysfunctional as they may have been, YRUU and C*UUYAN were the life support for local groups.

I understand that there are larger trends at work.  Our district YAC is floundering for similar reasons, and the district UUYAN has struggled in and out of existence for a decade.  But I cannot believe that pulling support, without offering a better alternative, is the answer.  This work is too important for that.  If the UUA does not believe that, then everything else they say is suspect.

I can only assume that the people who made these decisions did not know that they were discarding decades of work by thousands of volunteers.  If they knew that, they would get down on their knees at this year's GA and beg forgiveness.  That's really what I need if I am going to trust the continental UUA again.  I need a public, heartfelt apology from everyone involved.  And then a real plan for a structure that will replace the one that has been destroyed -- the trust that has been destr

Unless our congregations one day find the calling to expand their spiritual reach far beyond our quaint, Protestant-style Sunday morning services -- services that are tailor-made for older white adults who were NOT raised in the UU faith -- our congregations will never be truly welcoming homes for new generations of Unitarian Universalists.  When will we realize that, in order to achieve the fullness of our potential for growth and diversity, we will need to reach out and take some risks?

I'm tired of congregations that are so preoccupied with "comforting the comfortable" on Sunday mornings and locking their doors throughout the rest of the week.  When will each one of our congregations reach out to youth and young adults through the work of professional ministers, like the Evangelical Christians do every day?  When will each of our congregations offer worship services in a diversity of styles honoring the many sources of our UU faith, at different times throughout the week?  When will each of our congregations make sure that it's accessible to people who choose to live without cars, or who cannot drive due to financial means or disability?  When will each of our congregations take real, sacrificial action to enhance the lives of those who face oppression in our own communities?

My point is this: as long as our congregations retain their steadfast focus on serving the needs of upper-middle-class white people who came to UUism from other faiths, that's who we'll see in our congregations.  Is this really what we want?  If not, then we need fundamental change, not just a new look at youth and young adult ministry.

For the past 7 years of my life, I have devoted most of my volunteer and profesional life to the Young Adult movement. I have started two Campus ministry groups, worked in the Young Adult Office, been District Young Adult Staff, served on the C*UUYAN Steering Committee, been Opus and ConCentric Staff, Regional Organizing Consultant for 4 Districts, Started FUUSE.COM, helped to found the CYF, served on the Campus Ministry Advisory Committee, built the current ConnectUU.com, been dean of Radius, and have earnestly believed in this work.

The Young Adult movement on the local, district and Continental level has helped me become whole, and I have witnessed it save lives. but over the past year, I have had to watch in pain as nearly all the programs and ministries I have helped to build have been unilaterally ended. The effects of the cancellation of all continental programing have caused devastating aftershocks at all levels, from districts to congregational groups. To illustrate; the MDD has collapsed and no longer has any young adult programming or community.

I have always pushed for growth and change, but ending funding and support for these programs without any plan for new ministry to replace, constitutes terrible judgement and an ignorance of how this movement continually touched so many lives.

I have been a lifelong Unitarian Universalist, and the seeming deaf ears of the staff at the UUA and lack of caring for young adult ministry causes me to daily question my faith.

Its time for major change. We can not afford another "interim" year as the administration has labeled last year AND this coming year, deciding not to hire new staff.

I fear that two entire generations of UUs have been hurt and lost to UUism forever.