More Reflections while sitting in LAX

One of the comments that was made at one of the sessions at Iona was from a Church of Scotland minister. She had worked as a University chaplain for a while. In the session she talked about how she had brought students up to Iona and the profound affect that experience had on them. Her comment was that they now lived out that experience in their lives as Doctors and Lawyers and business leaders etc… It reinforced some of my previous reflections on the importance of what we do among young people, and also made me realise that we have nothing like Iona. I am hoping to bring some young adults to Israel and Taize in 2007, and I would hope that that would have a similar affect. The trouble is that it is so expensive and such a long distance. But it does confirm this growing conviction that has stirred in me over this last two month.

On the day before Bonnie arrived, I spent the day with Peter Ball, my equivalent for the Church of England. Our conversation ranged over many things. Two interesting issues was the youth council they have created which meets residentially three (or two) times a year, and spends a big chunk of its time addressing the issues being discussed by the wider church. This does two things. First it allows for a “youth or young adult” response to these issues to be heard by the decision makers. In fact as I understand it several of the youth council attend their General Synod, which meets two (at least) times a year). The other is that at least this group is aware of what is happening, and develop the skills to engage in the wider discussions. As this group takes more responsibility for their life as a committee the skill level in this group grows enormously. Bonnie and I saw this with the group of young people we worked with in Wellington so many years ago. All that goes back to my initial comment about what we offer the young people we do work with. A different way of seeing the world and what their lives are about, and the skills to live it.

The other issue Peter and I talked about is the “Mission Shaped Church” initiative. I do need to say that Peter was not negative about this at all, but he did observe that much of what is being said by the mission shaped church people has been said by those working in youth ministry for a large number of years. But because it is only youth workers saying it, it has not has been taken very seriously. The other observation is that the group who have created the document and term are very keeping control of the whole initiative really although it does release people to be much more creative and look for discontinuous change initiatives. The role of youth ministry within this is still very limited. That makes me worry that again we are just trying to do new things with the age groups that are already part of our aging churches, and not addressing the fact that we are aging.