To Engage, Empower and Retain:
Young adult thoughts for the Mennonite Church and a proposal for this summer’s convention
This document is a young adult call to the Mennonite Church. Over the past couple of months, young Mennonites have been talking seriously (amongst themselves and with many of you) about our own church involvement. Many US and Canadian young adults are ready, now, to engage, more fully, in the institutional church. This statement lays out some of our thoughts and concerns as we begin this engagement. From the Mennonite church, it asks for concrete cooperation and specific commitments. Our statement is completely wrapped up in our appreciation for the way the Mennonite church has provoked our interest. We regard those of you who are reading this document with the deepest respect as church leaders, pastors, professors, mentors and other integral members of the Mennonite church that have encouraged us and have been incredible examples for us as we have grown to be the people that we are today. Your thoughts and queries, as our religious leaders and mentors of faith, have given us crucial questions with which to grapple and, we believe, to more responsibly undertake our own commitment to Christ and the church. These, your questions, are the medium through which we have chosen to order our challenges and affirmations.
Read the longer version in Word format
Read the shorter version in Word format
I. Why do our young voices deserve your ears?
We recognize, and trust that you do as well, the tendency of adults to discount or at least second guess idealistic youth and young adults. We house no illusions that this tendency is unfounded or irrational. Young adults are generally less experienced and may often overlook pragmatic concerns. We understand that someday, we’ll hold that same intuitive aversion to what seems too idealistic; the tendency is not invalid. On the contrary, we want to challenge this initial inclination.
First, considering the history of the Anabaptist and Mennonite church, we find examples of young adults initiating dynamic movements and raising essential questions that are retrospectively regarded as integral turning points for positive change in church’s trajectory. The shapers of the early Anabaptist movement were young men that challenged the way that Zurich approached Protestantism. In 1920 MCC, an institution that the Mennonite church has come to work closely with and commit substantial time and energy to, was envisioned by idealistic young adults who felt that North American Mennonites needed to respond directly to suffering overseas. World War Two spotlighted young Mennonites as many of them chose to object conscientiously to participating in the war effort. Those who did alternative service in mental hospitals quickly engaged in an idealistic quest to transform the way patients were treated in those institutions. Mental hospitals in America have not been the same since. In the early fifties, young American Mennonites living in Europe, gathered their thoughts and ideas into a series of pamphlets which they entitled Concern: A Pamphlet Series for Questions of Christian Renewal. These young adults, part of what Mennonite history would dub the Concern Movement, positively challenged the church to remember its radical and faithful roots. These are a few instances in which the idealistic energies of young adults have managed to responsibly transform a part of, or the entire, Mennonite church. These historical allusions are not referenced to immediately validate our concerns as dynamic ones of potential transformation for the Mennonite trajectory, but to pose a challenge to the widely shared tendency to invalidate the voice of young adults as simply too idealistic. In light of these historical instances, when young adults had to find alternative modes of communication and alternative foundations for respect, we think that an incredible step could be made if the Mennonite church could establish more structural plug-ins specifically for its young adults to have a constantly recognized voice.
Second, we are baptized members of the believing body of Christ. Historically the Mennonite church has espoused an ecclesiastical vision that the church is a community of believers who collectively seek to discern truth. If any part of the church is silenced, or any part prioritized, we risk losing essential contributions and compromising our integrity as a collective community of truth-seekers. We contend that young adults are a part of the church now; we have an historic responsibility and right to have our voices heard. We recognize that many of our suggestions and opinions may be uninformed or reveal inexperience. We may, indeed, be the most conscious of that reality. However, should the Mennonite church risk silencing prophetic voices because those voices might naively push buttons or immaturely demand controversial deliberation? We hope that a church rooted in the button-pushing Radical Reformation and laced with controversial hermeneutics like pacifism will not avoid, but actively seek structural space for the voice of young adults. We hope that our ideas, however idealistic and however controversial, can be seen as essential contributions to the honest discernment of truth in which we (adults and young adults alike), as members of the body of Christ, are called to engage.
II. How does the church go about implementing change?
Are there ways in which we, as a church, can work to more deeply engage – in a structural sense – young adults? We recognize that this is a question that the Mennonite church has been taking very seriously for some time now. What if this question were to become an initial converging point for young adults and adult members of the church? Structural plug-ins for young adults are widely supported, but almost impossible to imagine and practice. Many young adults leave home after completing high school. We are transplanted to a new philosophical, social and geographical setting. Whether it’s a construction job a mile down the road, a university one thousand miles away or a VS position in another country, young adults are customarily uprooted from the communities where we grew up. Many of us feel disconnected from the broader Mennonite church because we are disconnected from our home congregations. Lots of us remember making decisions about what we wanted to do after high school and how we wanted to shape our quickly approaching adulthood based on (yes, our parents’ wisdom and our church communities’ influences, but also on) our peers’ decisions and advice. But as we think back, we feel very lucky that we had an opportunity to talk with our friends, who were usually only a couple years older, after they had left our community. Would it be possible to think congregationally and more broadly about young adult-mentor and youth-mentee relationships – be it in person or simply by phone, snail mail or e-mail?
Compared to the youth in our churches, young adults are not involved. There is a clear gap between the youth who belong and adult members of the church. We are astonished as we see this reflected almost across the board. We do not, though, suddenly become disinterested in the church. The church is what has shaped us. If you would have asked us, when we graduated from high school, how we identified ourselves, many of us would have included Mennonite in our response. Considering this gap with the understanding that many young adults are interested in the church, we should ask ourselves a few questions. What opportunities can we use to encourage, and make it easier for, our young adults to remain engaged? What if congregations worked to finance young adults to attend Conventions? We imagine part of this gap to be a responsible “letting-go” by adults in the church. Historically, we have entrusted the decision, to engage or not to engage in the church, to the individual. Anabaptists broke from the Protestant reformation because they supported believer’s baptism. But, is there a way that we can integrate the questioning and the almost inevitable, temporary departure, which accompanies young adulthood – into the Mennonite church? It seems almost dangerous, and certainly not constructive, to assume that individuals will question everything for a while and then return to the church with a religious fervor. Besides, many of us question the church as a relevant institution when we see the church struggling to engage the broader culture – is that not a question that the church wants to deal with as well? Is there a way that the church could structurally recognize that questioning as healthy and even encourage it as part of what it means to be in a community of believers, so that this stage could be seen as engaging in the church instead of separating from it? Subsequently, in today’s context, this question may be a crucial piece in answering the age-old question of young adult retention.
What about national conventions? Let us illustrate a disconnect: At the delegate sessions, adults and a few token young adults, take part in serious, committed discussion about issues that the church is facing or needs to deal with. At the young adult sessions, young adults chat over tea and network with each other. Why is there not a more serious approach to the young adult conference? We contend that young adults have much to say about church related issues. Our concern is that this disconnect is helping to disempower, disengage and disillusion young adults within the church.
III. Could something happen this summer in Charlotte?
We have been in contact with the young adult convention planners in hopes of proactively tackling our concerns with the young adult convention. Out of a twofold vision of furthering current conversation and instigating a paradigmatic shift in subsequent years’ conventions, we have developed a concrete proposal for this summer’s young adult convention. We are asking to facilitate at least two sessions that would each last at least an hour. Our primary concern is continuing the conversation about young adult involvement with other young adults. Our secondary hope is to facilitate a forum in which we, as young adults, will grapple with our own concerns for the Mennonite church – from a specifically young adult perspective. To specify in more detail we have listed some questions and points that we hope to address in each session below.
1. During the first session, we hope to facilitate an open discussion about the involvement and role of young adults in the Mennonite church. We hope to ask questions that address these issues historically and push us toward talking about the future. What were our experiences of being involved in the church during high school? What changed as our communities of nurture shifted or were left? To what degree do we still feel involved in those communities? Where do we go from here? What needs to change within the structure of the church to empower us to more committed involvement? What can we do, as young adult members of the Mennonite church, to empower ourselves and commit ourselves, more fully, to this faith tradition?
2. During the second session, we hope to present some points for discussion centered on concerns we have for the Mennonite church. There are many issues that we would like to see the church take more seriously, handle more respectfully, not worry so much about, etc. – what are they? Some ideas are listed below:
A. Wanting to be faithful to the revelation of Jesus in all aspects of our lives. We are uncomfortable with the way politics polarizes and divides the church. B. Challenging the Mennonite Church to actively engage our history. We want to know how our origins in the Radical Reformation contribute to the present activities of the church in the world. C. Bringing community, intimacy and accountability to the forefront of our relationships with each other. D. Recognizing an active peace witness as integral to who we are. E. Retaining and involving young adults who have grown up in the church. F. Changing the “Mennonite game” from an exploration of ethnicity to one which respects varieties of ethnicities, as we share instead, our faith journeys.
We hope to instigate a paradigmatic shift in subsequent young adult conventions. We believe that young adults, if given the opportunity, will whole-heartedly tackle church issues as responsible members of the body of Christ. We anxiously await times to relax together and network with young adults from all over the US and Canada, but we are more excited about discussing the future of the church with each other. The opportunity to see young faces leading those sessions will be empowering for us. Maybe our friends have things that they want the church to address, but have not found the voice in their home congregations to raise their concerns – hopefully young adult convention can provide that space. We believe that if we can lead a few successful sessions this summer, the trend will catch on and maybe by next convention there can be a more formalized, issue-based structure to these sessions.
IV. What are some long-term hopes and goals?
Our most concrete goal has to do with future conventions. It is not empowering to sit and drink coffee with other young adults around the country who passively identify themselves as Mennonites. Neither is it enough to sing hymns and worship together. Networking is important and exciting, especially for young adults who are often nervously watching the hands of time tick away their most marriageable years. If the church is seriously interested, though, in empowering young adults toward commitment to the Mennonite church, we challenge you to share some responsibility with us.
We recognize, and appreciate, the efforts over that past few years to get young adults involved in the delegate process. At the same time, we wonder why that respect and responsibility is not extended into the young adult convention. As we work this summer, and in the following years, to promote a shift in the prevailing paradigm of young adult convention, we look toward a more concrete, and rewarding, goal. We have received word that this summer, for the first time, a small group of youth delegates will gather to develop a statement which they will then present to the delegates. That is a progressive step that we, as young people, commend our convention planners and sisters and brothers for instigating. We hope that it is a positive experience for all and that the youth feel respected and listened to. This is a further illustration, however, of the gap between youth and adults in the church. It is unfortunate that a similar step was not taken for young adults. We are convinced that young adults have a unique perspective to offer to the church and it concerns us that there is no space for a young adult delegation to present to the delegates. Our first hope, then, is that during the delegate sessions at the 2007 convention, young adults will have an opportunity to report, from a young adult perspective, to the delegates. As we strive to transform the model of young adult convention, we hope that the adult convention can begin to respect us as an essential contributor to the gathered truth-seeking church.
Reaching this goal will require dedication from everyone. Convention planners will have to think about how young adult sessions could possibly gain a more respected status. As it is now, young adults are on an obscure schedule because they are delegates and youth sponsors. Our hope is that, as a church, we can begin to shift our mentality as we imagine what young adult convention is. If it becomes, indeed, an essential contributor to the discerning process of the church, then we will find time to schedule young adult sessions as seriously as we have been scheduling youth and adult sessions for some time now. Also, there are very few young adults that attend convention for its young adult dimension. Part of the responsibility of the church lies in it considering, how much encouragement we give to our youth to attend convention and how little, financial and other support, to our young adults. There is a vicious cycle at work here, though. Our churches do little to encourage their young adults to attend the young adult convention, because young adults seem uninterested. Young adults are uninterested because the portion of the convention designated to them seems to lack importance and empowers no one. And as we have noted above, this is because not many people take young adult convention seriously because very few young adults attend. And the cycle continues. However, we are a church that likes to challenge cycles. The cycle of violence is our favorite, but don’t overlook the largely accepted social cycles of sectarian groups and cycles of acculturating people groups. The point is that if we collectively work on the issue of young adult convention – working to make it more empowering, more encouraged and more attended – we have an opportunity to revive a significant part of our discerning voice that lies, largely, dormant.
V. Concluding Remarks
We hope these words illustrate a constituency of young adults who feel a significant connection to the Mennonite church and are ultimately interested in our own substantial involvement and commitment to that institution. We have aspirations of changing the trajectory of the young adult convention and challenging the way adults and young adults in the Mennonite church have historically communicated, or have not. But we harbor no illusions that these dreams were a discovery of, should be shaped by and should be realized for – only young adults. We submit this document to you and the Mennonite church, more broadly, so that consciousness can be raised and consciences can be nudged concerning young adult perspectives in the Mennonite church today. We ask for your voices to help guide us as we all continue to wrestle with these questions. We want you to know that we are sincerely grateful for your attention to young adult perspectives to this point. We recognize, and are grateful for, the initiative that has taken place over the past couple of years to involve more young adults in delegate sessions. We recognize that efforts are being made to engage and empower young adults. Many congregations have Sunday school classes especially for young adults. We affirm gatherings like the annual Young Adult Fellowship event that is put on by MC USA and MC Canada. We thank the many congregations all over Canada and the US who are taking young adult issues seriously and trying, more intentional to involve us – through young adult social gatherings and simply by encouraging us in our endeavors. We look forward to engaging in the church as members. We look forward to furthering these conversations in Charlotte and in conferences and congregational meetings beyond this summer. We are empowered when we are respectfully listened to – not as token young adult enthusiasts, but as equal members of the discerning body – and we thank you for your intentional efforts toward our more regular and systematic inclusion in that regard. Ultimately we are excited about relating to the broader Mennonite church and reclaiming a spiritual and lifelong commitment to a faith tradition which embodies, for many of us, our ethnic heritage and connection, the nurturing cradle of our discovered individual personhood and the medium through which our deepest needs and desires seem satiable.
Nicole Cober Bauman (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario)
Adam Friesen (Henderson, NE)
Laura Leischner (Harrisonburg, VA)
Anna Mast (Scottdale, PA)
M. Elizabeth Miller (State College, PA)
Tim Showalter (Harrisonburg, VA)
Matt Troyer (Shickley, NE)
(and many other concerned young adults)