Looking to Our Past to Find Our Future: Foundations of Unitarian Universalist Youth Ministry
by Tera Little"Youth empowerment is…about
building the courage to announce to the world what is right and what is wrong."
—Anonymous Youth
(Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Youth Office, 2001)
"Youth empowerment is…providing
youth a chance to participate in the discussions that impact their own
experiences."
—Anonymous Youth
(UUA Youth Office, 2001)
Our Unitarian Universalist youth group meeting rooms are filled with it. So are district and continental youth conferences, events, and meetings. Youth Empowerment is the foundational philosophy of our youth ministries for ages fourteen to twenty. But if you ask ten or twenty or one hundred people the definition of youth empowerment, you are just as likely to receive that many differing answers. Considering the theological diversity in our congregations, that may not be surprising, but it is necessary for our adult and youth leaders to have a similar grounding in the foundation of the reason we do youth ministry the way we do it if they are to effectively minister to and with one another and pass along the torch of our faith. There are three essential elements within youth empowerment: Freedom with responsibility, leadership development, and the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This is not to say that other fundamentals are not existent in our youth ministry programs, things like deepening spirituality and caring for one another, and obviously those are crucial within any ministry; however, they exist in ministries that do not also claim youth empowerment as a building block. This paper will trace some of the theological beliefs from early Unitarians in order to see the solid ground on which our theology of youth empowerment stands so that we might better look ahead to our future.
Since its birth in 1982 with Common Ground, a continental-wide two-year process that examined the then-current structure of Unitarian Universalist youth ministry, Liberal Religious Youth, Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) have heralded youth empowerment as fundamental to youth ministry and that belief is at the core of continental and district trainings in leadership, spirituality, and social action. It is important to note that youth empowerment does not equal adult abandonment or adult disempowerment. As its simplest, youth empowerment means youth and adults working together in partnership, within established boundaries, to accomplish mutually agreed upon goals. As of this date, there is no published definition within our movement about what youth empowerment means to us or how to effectively live it out within our churches; hence, the confusion that often abounds when it comes to doing youth work. However, a goal of the Consultation on Ministry to and with Youth, a major initiative of President Bill Sinkford and the UUA Board of Trustees, is to come away with a definition as part of the two-year process of re-examining and re-visioning youth ministry services to our congregations.
So, how did we get to youth empowerment? One can look to William Ellery Channing and find direct links to our current belief system. When he publicly gave his sermon "Self-Culture" in 1838 as part of the Franklin Lectures in Boston, Channing used this an opportunity to speak directly to trades people, regular folk who might not otherwise be in a place to hear his ideas (Channing, 1838). Even this simple act of preparing words meant for manual laborers is relevant in the exploration of youth ministry; never will you hear of someone stating that our youth ministry programs are too complex or intellectual for some youth too attend. The goal is a creation of a youth program that garners the maximum participation of every person, regardless of intellectual or economic background.
In "Self-Culture," Channing is arguing that people do have the power to shape themselves, and a belief in God demands that each person takes the time for self-betterment. This was among the more radical ideas of his time and was in direct opposition to the Calvinistic view of pre-determination. It required personal responsibility (the freedom with responsibility in youth empowerment) and assumed that each person has the right to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning (again, a tenant of youth empowerment). Channing states, "One of the chief arts of self-culture is to unite the childlike teachableness, which gratefully welcomes light from every human being who can give it…" (Channing, 1838). In our youth ministry programs, each young person is seen as having wisdom and truth, and with youth empowerment each person's voice is drawn into the collective in order to achieve a greater understanding of the topic at hand, whether it is local politics, world religions, human sexuality, spirituality, or the myriad of topics in between. There can be no greater learning at times than the simple truths spoken by our young people. When they are in a safe space, in which they know their opinions and viewpoints are honored and celebrated, they are able to reach great depths on complex topics and their lights shine on each other.
The use of the democratic process also figured heavily into the realization of Channing's self-culture. He notes that self-culture is found "in our free government, in our political relations and duties... they do much to awaken and keep in action a nation's mind, … (and) a republic is a powerful means of educating the multitude (Channing, 1838). Freedom with responsibility and leadership development in youth ministry programs connect here with his thought. While there are parameters set by adult advisors, youth are given the amazing challenge of making decisions and creating programming for each other. In order to accomplish this they must learn appropriate skills such as meeting facilitation, decision-making processes, avenues toward building community, and use of rituals. In 1997, a young man from our youth group who was sixteen years old, traveled east to Washington D.C. to participate in a national Social Justice Youth Conference. The whole congregation was excited about his participation, and they had given money and encouragement for his trip. Upon his return, the young man, Gavin, exclaimed, "I feel like I can move mountains now!" (Gavin Smith, personal communication, March 1997). He had experienced the power of being part of the political process, of having his voice heard, of understanding how our governmental structures function and the ways in which citizens can voice their opinion and organize for social change. In our churches, our youth are given a microcosm of that experience when they are encouraged to become members of the congregation, hold a seat on the Board or religious education or some other committee, when they actively engage in church meetings, and when they are given control of their own monetary budgets. The words of Channing ring out clearly from the pages of our hymnal, "The great end of religious education...is not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own" (UUA, 1993). Our philosophy of youth empowerment demands that youth do just that, and the job of the adult advisors is to give them the tools and support necessary to do that, while maintaining the appropriate boundaries and giving redirection as needed.
There has been commentary in recent years that congregations "ghettoize" their youth groups when the youth do not participate in adult worship services. There is great value in the entire church community, children, youth, young adults, families, singles, and elders, worshipping and touching the divine together. It is also important to worship together within peer groups, which helps gives shape to what Channing called "free spiritual powers" of human beings, that ability to nurture and bring forth the sacred from within to touch the holy (Channing, 1838). Each age group is at a different stage along the path in faith development, and worship experiences will hold a different meaning and vitality depending upon the age group and worship style. An area that needs to be strengthened in many youth groups is the worship element, and more time and training needs to be given to this because it is through worship that some of the most powerful searches for truth and meaning can take place. Through the quiet of meditation, or through joyful expressions of dance in youth worship, young people can connect with the divine and with each other in ways that bring out the power from within and create personal transformation. Without giving form and substance to the spiritual self then a full realization of one's self-culture cannot take place.
The inner light continued to shine brightly when Emerson wrote these words in his famous essay, "Self Reliance": "Nothing is sacred except the integrity of your own mind" (Emerson, 1841). Again, here we see the early identification of our building blocks of freedom with responsibility and our search for truth and meaning. If the most sacred is the integrity of individual minds, then it stands to reason we would put much effort and importance in developing the minds of our young people and entrusting in them decisions crucial to their programs, in accordance to where the young people are developmentally. With a younger youth group, more direction is needed on the part of the adult advisors, and as the youth group grows older and has more experience in leading programs, the advisors can step back into more supportive roles. Learning leadership skills and practicing them on a weekly basis is great exercise for the mind, and the leadership skills learned in our youth groups have a lifelong impact. Marissa Guitierrez, a former Pacific Southwest District youth leader and current employee of the Unitarian Universalist Association, shared that she took the skills she learned in youth group into a volunteer coordinator position at the University of Southern California. While there, she worked with an adult advisor who exemplified, in her eyes, an adult modeling youth empowerment. On one of their projects together, he would affirm what she was doing right, and gently redirect her in areas that needed more attention. Afterwards, Marissa realized she was able to head up a complicated project and carry it out to the end, and if she could do it there she could do it anywhere, throughout her life (Marissa Guitierrez, personal communication, December 2005). Those are the sacred skills that get continual playback in one's lifetime. In Gavin's words, it is the realization that mountains can be moved (Smith, 1997).
Clearly, our current model of youth ministry is built on a firm theological foundation, a gift from Channing and Emerson that lives on. What, if anything, does this say about our future? Does it mean our youth ministry is static or unchanging? It means that with our solid ground, we are free to explore deeper meanings and iterations of youth empowerment. We must be diligent and ensure our youth ministry programs are places where dialogue and learning take place, they cannot only be a comfortable room in which to hang out during the church service. It means that to realize the self culture and self reliance encouraged by Channing and Emerson, respectively, the adults and youth leaders take on roles of pushing the comfort areas of the youth enabling them to grow and expand. Jesse Jaeger, UUA Youth Programs Director, tells of two young women in leadership positions, both of whom did not come into the position with strong facilitation skills. By the end of their first year, through direction and experience, these two came to be the co-facilitators for one of the most complicated national youth discussions in recent years, whether or not to instigate a Common Ground III. These young women, in the midst of a passionate, potentially explosive, conversation among forty-plus youth leaders, as Jesse put it "centered the volcano of emotion." (Jesse Jaeger, personal communication, December 2005). They moved a mountain, not just for them, but for a whole continent of Unitarian Universalist youth.
The future of our youth movement demands a cadre of well-trained, committed youth advisors who can do more than just open the door for youth on Sunday mornings. We need advisors who can be the stable partners in this ministry, who can help them reach Channing's goals of self-culture and Emerson's hope of self-reliance by honoring each voice in the group, encouraging the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, giving freedom with responsibility, and teaching leadership skills and then stepping back and letting the youth use them. The future of this movement also depends upon religious professionals who can understand the unique characteristics of a vibrant youth ministry and who can nurture the process rather than stand in its way. This is necessary if we are to completely honor the foundations of our youth ministry.
Bibliography
Channing, William Ellery (1838). Self Culture [Electronic Version]. Retrieved December 6, 2005, from American Unitarian Conference website.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1841). Self Reliance. [Electronic Version]. Retrieved December 7, 2005, from USInfo.state.gov website.
Unitarian Universalist Association (1993). Singing the Living Tradition. Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association.
UUA Youth Office (2001). Youth Empowerment Is … Retrieved December 7, 2005, from Unitarian Universalist Association, Board of Trustees, Youth Consultation, website.
For more information contact youth @ uua.org.
Last updated on Saturday, April 19, 2008.
