The Flame in Our Hands:
Creating and Sustaining a Young Adult Program for
Unitarian Universalists Ages 18-35*
May 15, 1995
Senior Paper
Section Leader: Clarissa Atkinson
Second Reader: The Rev. Thomas Mikelson
*Presented here is an abbreviated version of the senior thesis for Harvard Divinity School, written by Mark Guttag, on how he created the UU Young Adult Group (YAG) @ First Parish in Cambridge during his two year internship at First Parish (1993-1995). The most salient and directly relevant to First Parish portions are included below. The full version is 40 pages, and contains additional interesting background material related to Mark’s observations on the state of UU young adult participation in churches (in 1995) and his experience growing up UU. It is available for any who are interested, from the YAG electronic files or by contacting Mark @ mguttag@erols.com. Mark cites success of the group formation with the fortune of the emergence of energetic leaders who also acted as founders, such as Meg Muckenhoupt (also was C*UUYAN leader), Rob Schwartz, Jonathan Whitcomb and Hank Peirce (now minister of Medford church).
After finishing Divinity School, Mark decided to return to his previous profession, law. He also started another young adult group in Arlington, Virginia.
If you want to skip the intro you can jump to the First Parish section.
I. Introduction
When
I rejoined the church of my birth,
…[Portion
edited out]…
For
the last two years I have been the student minister of the First Parish in
Traditionally,
young adult leaders and the Young Adult Ministry Office have emphasized the
need for young adults to "do it all themselves" when it came to
creating and sustaining young adult programs. A recent publication of the Young
Adult Ministries Office listed the following as one of the "Five Pitfalls
to Avoid" in starting a young adult group:
Pitfall #2: Leadership. It's fine to have professional advice and
guidance in starting a young adult group, but if you're a minister (including
interns), avoid letting the group depend on you for leadership. Recruit and
train leaders; give the ministry away.[1]
Although I agree that it is important for a
minister to give away the leadership of a young adult group, I do not think it
is wise for a young adult group to operate totally independently of professional
leadership.
First,
unless you are starting a young adult group at one of the largest congregations
in the UUA or your congregation is located immediately adjacent to a campus, it
is unlikely that there will ever be enough young adults around on a consistent
basis to sustain a stable group on their own. From my own and other people's
experience, it seems to take about 6-10 people showing up at a weekly meeting
for a group to have a "critical mass" which will allow it to sustain
itself. I think it is no accident that the most successful young adult groups
have grown up at some of our largest UU congregations with 600 or more members.
At such a large congregation, it is possible to have 6-10 young adults show up
every week by accident. However, in smaller congregations (under 600 members),
which make up about 90% of the UUA's congregations, it is unlikely that this
many young adults will be present on a weekly basis without help from a
minister. There may well be over a dozen young adults who show up at a church
of even 300 members during the course of the year, but without a minister's
help, they may not ever link up with each other.
Secondly,
one of the keys to recruiting new members to a young adult group is to be able
to connect young adult visitors to the church with the young adult group every
week. From my experience, it is unreasonable to ask a young adult leader or
even two leaders to be responsible for organizing and leading a meeting every
week, especially in the early stages of building a group. It takes an unusual
amount of determination for a young adult (or anyone) to attend a meeting week
after week when there are only one or two other people at each of the meetings.
Most of the young adults I know who have been this determined have gone onto
train for the ministry or to become national leaders. However, I don't think it
is wise to expect that such a unusually determined person already exists at
your church. I have talked to a number of young adult leaders who gave up their
groups when faced with the situation of having to be the sole leader for their
group. When the leaders do not receive support from a minister, I think many of
they have been abandoned by their church.
Young adult leaders who do not receive support
from a minister, I think there is a tendency to feel abandoned by their church.
Thirdly,
to expect a young adult program to run itself successfully without professional
support is inconsistent with our expectations with respect to other successful
programs. Would any of us expect a church to have a well attended worship
service or good quality Religious Education program without professional
support? Yet, when it comes to young adult programming we expect the
participants to "do it all on their own." Like youth groups who are
often given little if any support by the professional staff of a church, the
young adults are "left to try to boil music out of a tennis shoe."
That some young adults have been able to produce whole symphonies out of their
Nikes is a great credit to their leaders, but making such groups solely the
responsibility of lay young adults is not generally desirable. Successful young
adult programming, like successful youth programming, children's religious
education programming, adult religious education programming or worship
services, greatly benefit from professional leadership and support.
Fourthly,
school and work commitments often prevent young adults from carrying out the
administrative tasks necessary to keep a program going. When papers are due or
finals approach, it is difficult for students to keep up with administrative
tasks required such as keeping a database, publishing a newsletter, attending
meetings, and preparing for upcoming events. During such times they need
support from the church; they don't need to be supporting a young adult group.
Similarly, young adults with jobs often have work commitments that makes it
difficult for them to commit to any task which requires a regularly weekly or
even monthly commitment. As people's work lives become more complicated, this
situation with respect to regular weekly or monthly commitments to church is
not unique to young adults. Fewer and fewer volunteers can commit themselves to
be part of activities which require a year long commitment. For example, churches
which may have once been able to recruit Sunday School teachers for an entire
year now find themselves recruiting Sunday School teachers for half a year or
even 6 weeks. A young adult program faces a similar situation with respect to
leadership for the group on a regular basis. Like an RE Director who must now
constantly recruit teachers and provide continuity to the RE program, I believe
that a successful young adult program needs a minister to help recruit young
adults to lead events and to provide continuity to the program.
Fifthly,
as has been often pointed out by the leaders themselves and by the Young Adult
Ministry Office, young adults are mobile. I would add that not only are they
geographically mobile, they are mobile with respect to their relationship to a
group at church. Young adults move between being merely participants in the
group and being leaders during the course of a year, as their outside
commitments change. For example, as young adults form significant relationships
with boyfriends/girlfriends, partners, fiancé/fiancées, husbands/wives and
children, their participation in the young adult group may lessen. In addition,
as young adults approach the upper end of the age range, they may feel that
they no longer fit in with the younger members of the group; they feel they are
at a different stage in their life. For all these reasons, young adult groups
are always in the process of losing people and leaders. Therefore, in order to
maintain a program, I believe it is necessary to be constantly recruiting new
people and nourishing new leaders. This task of recruiting newcomers and
nourishing leaders is an appropriate task for a minister, as is evidenced by
the fact that young adult groups which are entirely self-run tend to decline
after their first leaders leave the group. I believe that a minister whose
tenure at a church can outlast the "lifespan" of a young adult leader
can play an important role in helping leadership to be transferred within the
young adult program from one generation to the next. Religious education
programs outlast the terms of office of
the members of the RE committee in part because there is a Religious Education
Director or Minister who supplies continuity to the RE program. Worship
services outlast the terms of office of the members of the worship committee,
in part because there is a minister to give continuity to the worship services.
A minister can provide a similar continuity to a young adult program.
…[portion
edited out]…
III. Starting and Sustaining a Young Adult
Program in
A. The situation when I began
The
First Parish in Cambridge (UU) is a church of about 200-250 members. Its
average attendance at worship on Sunday is between 120 and 140. The church is
located across the street from Harvard University and adjacent to the Harvard
Square subway station. When I began at First Parish, the parish minister,
Thomas Mikelson was beginning his fifth year at the church. The Minister of
Religious Education (MRE), Polly Leland-Mayer, was beginning the first of a
two-year half-time interim ministry.
The
previous MRE had started a young adult group called Two Circles with a $5,000
grant from the Young Adult Ministries Office. When I first encountered the
group in the winter of 1993, Two Circles was meeting once a month on Saturday
nights for a potluck. Advertisements for the group would periodically appear in
First Parish's biweekly newsletter, which I received as a UU student at Harvard
Divinity School. At the event I attended, there didn't seem to be anyone in
charge of the group and it was not obvious to me what connection Two Circles
had with the church beyond using its meeting space and including one or two
people who attended the church on Sundays. At the potluck, I found out that the
person who had been the principal leader of the group was moving out of the
area.
In
the winter of 1993 I was participating in a class co-taught by Thomas Mikelson,
the parish minister at First Parish. At the time I was editing C*UUYAN's
newsletter The Connexion, and I gave
copies to Thomas in the hopes that they would find their way into the
appropriate hands at First Parish. Thomas decided to create a second internship
site so that he could ask me to be a student minister who would have as one of
my responsibilities the creation of a young adult program at First Parish.
Additionally, he offered me the opportunity to be a summer preacher at First
Parish in the summer of 1993. Given the possibilities I saw at First Parish for
starting a young adult program and the fact that I would have to wait for
several months to hear from the other internship sites I had applied to in the
Boston area, it was an offer I could not refuse.
B. Preparing
for the first year of the young adult program
One
advantage of being a summer preacher at First Parish is that I could start
recruiting young adults during July and August. After each service, I invited
all of the people between the ages of 18 and 35 to go out to lunch with me.
During the summer, I would ask young adults to write down their names and
addresses on a piece of paper I carried with me each Sunday. Typically, there
were anywhere from 2 to 4 young adults at each of the summer services who could
join me for lunch. Unfortunately, some of the young adults I met were only in
Cambridge for the summer. However, if I knew about a young adult group in the
city to which they were returning or moving, I tried to put them in contact
with it.
During
August, I began planning for the coming church year. Originally, I decided to
try forming two young adult groups: The Eliot Club for 18-25 year olds and U2T2
(Unitarian Universalists Twenties and Thirties) for 22-35 year olds. Each group
would meet one Sunday per month and one weeknight per month. The two groups
would share a newsletter, and the members of both groups would go out to lunch
together at noon after the 10:30 AM worship service. I prepared a brochure for
each of the groups, Eliot Club in yellow and U2T2 in red. Inserted in each of
the brochures was a form for filling in a young adult's name, address,
telephone number and birthdate.
I
decided to divide the young adult programs into two sub-groups, because I
thought that the proximity of Harvard and MIT to First Parish would give us the
opportunity to form a campus-age group. From my experience, the difference
between 19 year old college students and 33 year old working people can be
significant. Also, it is usually the case that church-based young adult groups
consist mainly of people 25 years or older, and was concerned that the college
students would be intimidated by being in a group in which most of the people
were 5 or more years older. Some people in their late teens and early twenties
feel comfortable in groups of older young adults, but others prefer to be with
people closer to their own age. I chose 25 for the upper end of the younger age
range, because it has been increasingly recognized by the Young Adult
Ministries Office and C*UUYAN as a distinct sub-group. There is now even a
separate continental young adult newsletter Spring
Chickens for this age group.
At
the end of August, I became involved with the United Ministry of Harvard, the
organization for the chaplains serving the students at Harvard University. At
Freshman registration, Undergraduate registration and Graduate registration at
Harvard, the United Ministry has a table staffed by the chaplains representing
each of the chaplaincies at Harvard. At this table, the chaplaincies display
their literature. In addition, included with registration is a religious
preference card which allows students to indicate the denominations from which
they would like to received literature. These cards are collected by the United
Ministry Office and distributed to the appropriate chaplains.
I
volunteered to spend a considerable amount of time staffing the United Ministry
table at each of the registrations. However, I met at best half a dozen people
who wanted information about Unitarian Universalist groups on campus. Although
I am glad I had the experience of staffing the United Ministry Table at
registration, in retrospect it was probably not the best use of my time.
Although it was only proper that I put in my fair share of time staffing the
table, there were relatively few people from any denomination, with the
possible exception of the Catholics, who stopped at the United Ministry table
during registration. From this experience at registration, I began to see some
of the difficulties I would have in trying to start a college-age group in
September or October. I really needed the names of college students during the
summer, so I could make contact with them before they started school in the
fall. Although I eventually received over 100 religious interest cards filled
out during registration, by the time I contacted the students in late September
about First Parish's college-age group, they were already busy with other
activities at school.
While
I was involved with registration at Harvard, I was also preparing for the start
of First Parish's church year on the Sunday after Labor Day. Based on my
experience with young adult groups in Washington, D.C., I created a newsletter
for the two young adult groups I was starting at First Parish. I also started a
database for the young adult groups based on the forms I collected from young
adults on Sunday, and eventually from the Harvard students who indicated an
interest in Unitarian Universalism on their religious interest forms. During
September, after I had collected most of the religious interest survey forms, I
sent out the newsletter to the entire mailing list. I also called each of the
young adults who had checked off "Unitarian Universalism" on their
religious interest surveys.
C. The
First Evening Events
The
18-25 Group, the Eliot Club, had its first evening worship service October 3rd
from 7-8 pm. In addition to myself, only two people came to the service. I made
a decision that evening to fold the 18-25 group and expand the age-range of
U2T2 to 18-35. Eliot Club also had an Ice Cream Break scheduled for Thursday,
October 21 from 7-8 pm which no one besides me attended.
U2T2's
Evening Worship Service was much better attended, with 7 or 8 people besides
myself. In order to boost attendance at this first worship service, I invited a
couple of my friends at the Divinity School. The Ice Cream Break I scheduled
for Thursday, October 28th for U2T2 was only attended by two people besides me.
After October 28th I abandoned the idea of sponsoring weeknight events for the
rest of the 1993-1994 church year.
D. The
Weekly Lunch Meetings
From
the beginning, the one thing I was absolutely committed to doing was going out
to lunch with the young adults at noon after church. In the first few months,
there might be 1 or 2 people or as many as 6. However, by the spring of 1994 we
were regularly attracting 6 to 10 people for lunch. By December of 1994, we
were regularly attracting 15 or more to the weekly lunch meeting, and for a
special young adult lunch at the minister's house, we had 21.
I
think a weekly meeting of some sort is absolutely essential to grow and sustain
a church-based young adult group. The most successful church-based young adult
groups such as those in Dallas, Atlanta and Richmond have been built around
their weekly meetings. Although Dallas was successful in holding its weekly
meeting on Tuesday nights at a pizza restaurant, I think the best time to hold
the weekly meeting is right after church on Sunday, as the Atlanta and Richmond
groups have done. First Parish was particularly well-situated for having a
weekly Sunday lunch meeting, because there are a variety of restaurants within
two blocks of the church.
I
think a weekly meeting is much better than a monthly meeting, because a weekly
meeting allows a minister to connect new people with the young adult group
right away. Even if a newcomer cannot join the group the first Sunday they come
to church, because they didn't anticipate the possibility, they know they can
join the group the following week. In contrast, a group which meets monthly
depends on newcomers happening to come on the right Sunday for the group's
meeting, otherwise, the newcomer may have to wait several weeks for a meeting.
This is just one more obstacle to a newcomer becoming connected with a group.
I
also greatly favor the idea of meeting directly after church to some other time
during the week. A newcomer might be busy on a weeknight, but the fact that he
or she came to church indicates a good possibility that the person is probably
free for the early afternoon. Even if a newcomer can only attend the lunch for
a half hour, at least he or she has had the chance to become acquainted with
the members of the group.
I
have found during the past year that the choice of where to go to lunch is more
important than I originally thought. At first, I thought it would be a great
idea if we rotated the lunch site, because we had so many restaurants in
Harvard Square from which to choose. However, we now meet for lunch at only two
locations: an outdoor café for good weather and an indoor pizza restaurant for
bad weather. One of the earliest recommendations I ever heard at a leadership
training program run by C*UUYAN is that it is best for a young adult group to
meet at the same place and time every week, and my experience with the First
Parish group bears this out. By limiting our place to just two places, those
who are late to lunch because they missed church or because they are Sunday
school teachers who meet with their fellow teachers after class know where to
look for the group. If it's good weather, latecomers know to go to the café, if
it is bad weather, they know to go to the pizza restaurant.
Other
key factors in choosing the weekly lunch location are its location, its
expense, the ability for each person to pay for his/her own meal, and the
ability to move tables together. With respect to location, the closer the
restaurant, the more likely it is that people who can only stay for a half hour
will be able to attend. With respect to the expense, the more expensive, the less
likely that students or young adults on limited incomes will feel comfortable
attending. It is also greatly preferable the restaurant be a place where each
person places his/her own order; trying to split a check after some people have
already left can be awkward and often results in the last people to leave
paying an unfair portion of the bill. Finally, with respect to the table
arrangements, young adults, like many social groups, like to sit together at
meals. Even as the group has expanded to having 15 or more people at lunch, we
still make the effort to try to seat everyone at a number of tables moved
adjacent to each other to form one long table.
E. The
role of the minister during the weekly lunch meetings
After
the church service ends, as the student minister I begin scouting for newcomers
who look like they may be the right age for the young adult group. As the young
adult group has grown more established, the leaders of the group also look for
young adult newcomers. To each person I approach I hand a copy of the young
adult group's brochure and a pen so that they can fill out the name and address
form inserted in the brochure. I try to get the young adults to fill out the
form that day so that I can add them to the mailing list, make nametags for
them, and have a number that I can reach them at before the next Sunday. Since
the beginning, I have made orange nametags for the group to wear on Sundays so
that they stand out during coffee hour. The orange nametags may seem hokey, but
they make it easier for the young adults, particularly newcomers, to find each
other at coffee hour. And, amazingly enough, most of the young adults actually
wear their orange nametags at coffee hour. Also, for about the last year, I
have printed all of the young adult brochures and flyers in orange.
Even
as the young adults have taken a greater role in arranging the weekly Sunday
lunches and approaching newcomers, I still think it is important that a student
minister be involved in talking with new young adults. I want to have the
opportunity to find out what brought the young adult to church and what their
needs are. I also want to make sure that the new person's name is added to our
database. In the beginning, when there were relatively few young adults in the
group, I tried to go to lunch with them every week I could for morale reasons
if nothing else; having been in the situation myself, I know that it can be
demoralizing to attend a young adult meeting that only has two people. Now that
the weekly meetings are larger, I just try to make sure they are announced each
week and attend the meetings often enough that the young adults know that I am
there to support them. Although I still attend most of the lunch meetings, I
now often leave them after a half hour, and most of my time is spent talking
with newcomers at lunch. Through my activities at coffee hour and through word
of mouth, the mailing list for the young adult program as of February 1995
includes the names of 75 young adults, over 40 of whom first visited the church
in the last 12 months.
F. Publicity
In
the beginning, I spent a great deal of time preparing and sending out the first
young adult newsletter for the First Parish young adult program's newsletter.
However, the number of people we attracted to events solely from the newsletter
was two at best, despite the fact that we sent out over a hundred newsletters.
We received similar results from two later mailings where we just sent out a
flyer for a young adult event.
Because
of the lack of results from our mailings, I decided to abandon them as a means
of publicity and focus my time and energy on making personal contact with young
adults at church, calling the members of the group periodically and making
flyers to be posted at church and handed out on Sundays. From my experiences at
First Parish, I have formed the opinion that newsletters and mailed flyers are
generally not great ways to attract new members to a young adult group. People
these days receive a lot of mail, and newsletters and flyers often get lost
among the mass of junk mail. Also, reminders in person or over the phone by the
student minister and other members of the young adult group seem to attract
more people to events than mailings do.
Another
problem with newsletters in particular is that they require people to plan
events relatively far in advance. In general, in order to appear in a
newsletter, a person has to commit to leading an event at least twice as far in
advance as the frequency of the newsletter. For example, for a monthly newsletter,
people need to be able to commit to leading an event two months in advance.
This can often be a difficult commitment to make for a minister, much less a
lay leader. Therefore, I have generally relied on individual flyers for each of
the young adult events at First Parish; the weekly lunch meetings are mentioned
at the bottom of each of the flyers. Unlike a monthly newsletter, I can change
flyers right up until the week before an event. Posting 6 or more orange flyers
for young adult group events on one of the bulletin boards at church also makes
an impressive display.
In
February of 1995, one of the young adults started publishing a newsletter, but
stopped doing so by April. I think there is some value to a newsletter in terms
of informing people already in the group about what has been happening.
However, I still don't think it is a good idea to depend on a newsletter
published by a lay young adult as the sole source of information about upcoming
events for the group. From my experience, it is a rare person who can commit
the time to publishing a newsletter on a regular basis. Therefore, I think a
minister has to make sure that the events are publicized in case there is no
lay young adult who can publish a newsletter. Newsletters are no substitute for
personal contact among the young adults and between the minister and the young
adults. I think the young adult group's weekly lunch meetings remain the best
place for people to find out about what the young adult group is doing.
G. Young
Adult Worship Services/Sunday Evening Events
The
idea of a regular young adult worship service originated with the First Parish
young adult group's namesake (U2T2) in Washington state. U2T2 is a young adult
group which includes people from the 8 UU churches in the metro-Seattle area.
Each month, U2T2 holds a Friday night young adult worship service at one of the
eight churches. Having heard how successful U2T2 has been from some of its
leaders and having seen one of their worship services on the videotape, Right Here, Right Now, I decided to
sponsor one worship services a month for each of the two young adult groups at
First Parish. After I decided to fold the Eliot Club, I sponsored two worship
services a month for the young adult group U2T2 at First Parish.
I
chose to hold the worship services on Sunday evening from 7-8:30 pm, because my
experience with my young adult group at my home church in Bethesda, Maryland
told me that Sunday evening was a good time for most young adults; at the first
meeting of my home church's group in 1989, we found out that most people
preferred Sunday evening as a meeting time; Saturday night is "date
night" for many people, and getting people to come to church on a
weeknight following a day of work or school is difficult. First Parish's largest
meeting space outside of the sanctuary was also available almost every Sunday.
For
about the first year and a half, I asked the young adults for topic suggestions
for the worship services and I planned services around them. In addition, one
of the worship services each six months was what I called a "musical
potluck." At a musical potluck, each participant brings a song on tape or
CD having personal meaning to him/her, plays the song for the group, and
explains why it is significant for him/her. The musical potluck Sundays were
particularly well attended, drawing 10 or more people each time. In general
worship services attracted from 6 to 15 people during the first year and a half
when I led them.
When
I led the worship services, the basic format was as follows: Everyone was
seated in a circle around a table on which there was placed a chalice
surrounded by a number of candles. At the beginning of the service, one of the
young adults would light the chalice and say "chalice lighting words"
chosen by that person from the UU hymnal (It is tradition for UUs to light a
chalice, generally a candle placed in wide-mouthed cup or dish). I tried when
possible to let a newcomer to the group be the chalice lighter for the service.
After the chalice was lit, we sang the chant "Gathered Here in the Mystery
of the Hour." Then, we did a "check-in," with each person taking
a turn lighting a candle and saying how he/she was doing that evening. After
the check-in, I would make a presentation on the topic we were discussing that
night and the rest of the evening was spent discussing. At around 8:30, we
would end the discussion, sing the closing song "Go Now in Peace,"
and join hands as we collectively blew out all of the candles and the chalice.
Starting in October of 1995, I experimented
with holding a worship service every Sunday evening, because I thought there
were enough people in the group to support a weekly Sunday evening activity.
When we drew 8 or more people to each service, I knew that we did indeed have
enough interest for a weekly Sunday evening event. Also, starting in October of
1995, the young adults began to take a more active role in creating the worship
service, and after a number of the leaders and I went on a leadership retreat
in November, we decided that it was now time to form a worship sub-committee
for the group. In addition we decided that there would be a weekly event of
some sort each Sunday night, starting in November, and that approximately 2 of
the Sunday evening events a month would be an "evening service," a
name that the participants preferred to the term "worship service."
At the leadership retreat, we planned Sunday evening activities from December
through February; each of the young adults who wished to volunteered to be the
leader for one or more of the events. The variety of events which the group
have created is truly amazing. During one three month period the events
included evening services entitled "Images of death", "Make a
Joyful Noise", and "Conscience", a candlelight carolling
service, a love feast service, a games night and a presentation on the Dead Sea
Scrolls. In February, the group had a business meeting after lunch at which
they planned Sunday evening events from February to April. From December to
April, I have only led one evening event. However, these events are now so
well-established that attendance remains high and seems to be increasing.
H. Non-Sunday
Events
As
of yet, I have not been able to successfully plan a weeknight event for the
young adults at church. In January of 1995 I tried to offer a monthly course
for the young adults on Our Theology and Star Trek[2] on
Thursday nights. However, even this course, based on films popular with young
adults only drew 4 people to the first session. Therefore, I tend to agree with
Pitfall #5 from "How to Start a Young Adult Group": "It may be a
mistake to offer an adult religious education "for young adults."[3]
Many young adults cannot or do not want to commit to regularly attending a
religious education course which meets over a period of weeks or months. Young
adults tend to prefer programs, such as the Sunday night events, which they can
choose to attend when it is convenient for them and which do not require a
regular commitment. From my experiences with the First Parish group, one reason
young adults shy away from making regular commitments is that they have jobs
which require a great deal of work some months and less work other months.
Also, the changing nature of their relationships with people outside the group
cause their schedules to vary throughout the year.
With
respect to other non-Sunday events, the most successful ones have been parties
or potlucks at people's homes. For example, the holiday party drew 21 people to
one of the young adults' homes and the group now has a monthly potluck at
someone's home on a Saturday evening; they decided that holding the potluck on
Saturday gives people time to make a dish from scratch. Also, there have been a
number of planning meetings held on Thursday nights at peoples' homes. Outdoor
events, such as apple picking on a Saturday afternoon in the fall, and evening
events away from the church, such as Monday night swing dancing biweekly at a
club, have drawn a handful of people each time.
I. Young
Adult Retreats
During
my first year at First Parish, I met with a number of other UU student
ministers in order to plan a Spring retreat for the young adults in the Greater
Boston Area. Traditionally, hosting a retreat has been fun and a unifying
activity for young adult groups such as those in Atlanta, Richmond, Washington,
D.C., Philadelphia and the Bay Area of California. Although we were able to
plan the retreat, arrange for a site and food, and publicize the retreat, we
didn't receive enough registrations to insure we would break even, and we
cancelled the retreat.
However,
during the 1994-1995 church year, I prepared a grant application to the Mass
Bay District Extension Committee which included a budget which could be
allocated to helping to secure a retreat site for a retreat in the Spring of
1995. At the end of the summer of 1995, we received 2/3 of the grant we
requested, so I was able to allocate at least $400 towards the Spring retreat.
Because most retreat centers require a deposit up front, it is important to
have money available to secure a site before the retreat organizers have
collected any money from registrations. Having $400 available for the retreat
also gave us a cushion against any losses the retreat might incur if attendance
is not as good as we expect.
At
the young adult leadership retreat in November of 1994, I formally suggested
the idea of a weekend retreat in the Spring of 1995 and explained about the
money we had available to help fund it. In January of 1995, the young adults
organized a business meeting on a Sunday after lunch in order to decide on a
theme for the retreat and to divide up tasks, such as deciding who would select
the site, do publicity, handle registration, organize meals, etc. After this
meeting, the young adults put together a retreat for the weekend of May 5-7 and
sent out registration forms and publicized the retreat to UU churches
throughout Eastern Massachusetts. The retreat was a success, drawing over two
dozen people.
J. Integrating
the young adults into the congregation
With
respect to integrating the young adults into the congregation, I mainly try to
serve as an information conduit about volunteer opportunities at the church and
upcoming all-church events. I seldom specifically recruit young adults for
tasks or positions at the church. I never "volunteer" the young adult
group for anything, unless the group has given me permission to do so. From my
experience, there is an unfortunate tendency among many church leaders to look
at a young adult group (or youth group) as a bunch of people who can be easily
recruited as a group for scut work or for social action projects that the other
members of the church are unwilling to do. Therefore, when a chairperson of a
committee at church asks me about volunteers from the young adult group, I
suggest that the chair attend one of the young adult lunches and make a request
for volunteers in person. Meeting with the young adults at lunch also serves to
let the chairpersons to get to know the young adults as individuals, not simply
as members of a monolithic group. I also think that letting the chairperson
make the request for volunteers is more effective than me making the request;
the chairperson is more invested in the activity he/she is requesting
volunteers for and knows more about it than I do.
The
degree to which the young adults have become integrated into church activities
has been amazing. There are currently a number of young adult Sunday School
teachers and youth group advisors. There are also young adults on the Standing
Committee (the church's board), the Music Committee, the Building and Grounds
Committee and the Religious Education Committee, and a leader of the young
adult group was also appointed as clerk of the church. The young adults are
also some of the most regular church-goers on Sunday and many of them are now
making annual pledges to the church despite the fact that many of them have
been attending church services at First Parish for less than a year.
In
April of 1995, the young adult group is doing a group activity for the church
which I suggested and to which they responded enthusiastically: an
Intergenerational Passover Seder. The Young Adults, with my help, will be
planning and hosting the Seder, which will involve people from all ages as
volunteers and participants. I thought it would be a good idea if the young
adults could host a least one major event for the rest of the church this year,
but only if they felt that it was an event they wanted to do and for which they
could be the leaders.
K. Funding/Money
Suzelle
Lynch in her pamphlet "How to Start a Young Adult Group" provides a
useful list of the five common ways that young adult groups raise funds:
1. Requesting a donation or budget item from
the society, usually under the life for adult religious education or
programming.
2. Passing the hat for donations at meetings
or events.
3. Paying for things out of pocket (usually
leaders get stuck with this, and it contributes to burnout).
4. Holding an event, either for the group or
society, and charging admission.
5. Holding garage sales, car washes, or
selling T-shirts, bumper stickers and other fund raising items.[4]
In my opinion, the principal funding for the young
adult program should come from the general budget of the church. There may be
situations, such as food for parties for the young adult group, where it is
fair to ask for a special donation from the young adults, but in general a
young adult program should receive the bulk of its funding from the church. At
a typical UU church, including First Parish, parents with children in the
Religious Education program are not required to pay a fee for Sunday School,
and the general collection at Sunday morning worship does not pay for all of
the expenses of maintaining the building or paying the minister's salary.
Therefore, it is unfair to ask young adults to pay an additional fee for
programming that meets their needs. Furthermore, trying to make the young adult
group "self-funding" makes the young adults in the group feel that
their group is an entity more or less independent from the church, an
undesirable situation.
In
general I have tried to emphasize to the young adults at First Parish that
their program is a part of the church. As a result, they have been willing to
participate in the committees of the church, volunteer as Sunday school
teachers and make pledges to the church, just like other members and friends of
the church (and often, to a greater extent than most members and friends of the
church). Therefore, it is only fair that the young adults have their
programming needs funded by the church, just like the programs for other
members and friends of the church.
Funding
the young adult program from the general church budget was somewhat complicated
during my first year at First Parish, because we had no formal line item in the
church budget for our young adult program. This was a less than satisfactory
state of affairs, because it meant that every time I wanted to spend money for
a mailing or worship supplies, I had to discuss with the staff, and ultimately,
the Finance Committee, where I could obtain the money. Therefore, I felt severely limited in what I could spend on
publicity and worship materials, including such things as candles. During my
first year at First Parish, I missed having the kind of budget I had for my
young adult group at my home church in
In
1995, First Parish received a grant from the Mass Bay Extension Committee which
allowed me to allocate $800 toward the young adult budget. This has been
relatively adequate for our expenses; it has even allowed us to pay for snacks
after some of our evening worship services. Our budget has also allowed us to
guarantee that we will be able to have a Spring Retreat in 1995 and we will
hopefully recoup the money spent on housing for a Spring Retreat in 1996.
Although I think that it is possible to support a young adult program on a
fairly modest budget, $500 to $1000
does not seem unreasonable for a young adult program which regularly serves 15
or more people each Sunday and probably over 50 people for some event
throughout the church year.
L. Where
to go from here (Spring of 1995)
One
of the most exciting things that has happened since November of 1994 is that
the most of the leadership responsibilities for the group have passed from me
to the young adults themselves. Although I still recruit, act as a source of
information about what is going on at the church, attend business meetings and
lead an occasional evening service, almost all of the events and meetings are
planned and led by the young adults. I now act as more of a consultant, which
is as it should be at this point. Before I leave First Parish in June of 1995,
I want to build a program that another student minister or minister could
easily support and I think the First Parish young adult program has been at
that stage since January of 1995.
If
someone were to ask me, when did I know it was time to "give the
reins" of the group over to the leaders, I would reply, "when they
are invested enough in the group to ask for them." Since December of 1994,
there has been a distinct change in my relationship with the young adult group.
Unlike in 1993-94, the young adult leaders no longer wait around for me to
propose an idea or ask them for their ideas for evening services, business
meetings or events. Instead, they tend to tell me what they are going to do and
ask me for advice on how to do it. In many ways, the young adult group now
functions like most other healthy committees at the church which are led by the
laity and uses the minister as a consultant and resource.
Sometime
in the Spring of 1995, I anticipate that the young adult group will become a
formal committee of the church and will have authority to make decisions about
how to spend its budget of $750 for the 1995 church year. Because the young
adult group has not yet been charted as a committee of the church, I am still
basically responsible for its financial decisions. Because so many of the
members of the young adult group are newcomers to the church, and possibly to
Unitarian Universalism, I will recommend that the chairperson of the young
adult committee be a member of the church in order to insure that the young
adult program remains connected to the church (Currently, the church by-laws do
not require that committee chairs be church members).
From
now on, I would expect the young adult program to receive the same kind of
ministerial attention as any other healthy church program The program does not
need as much ministerial time as it did when I first helped to create it, but
like the religious education committee, the worship committee, the membership
committee, etc. it needs a minister who stays in touch with the program to
insure its needs are met. In the particular case of the young adults, I think a
minister needs to help them keep recruiting new people, make sure that
leadership in the group periodically rotates, make sure the group receives
publicity, insure that the Sunday evening program is maintained, make sure the
mailing list is maintained and provide the young adults with information about
what is going on throughout the church. As long as the group stays healthy, I
estimate that all of these ministerial tasks could be done with an average of
4-5 hours of ministerial time per week.
Many
of the biggest challenges facing the young adult program during the next
several years are not unique to it. Like many UU churches, First Parish has had
problems with the "caring and feeding of volunteers." Young adults,
like many newcomers, find the committee structure at First Parish less than
"user-friendly." Many committees meet irregularly and do a poor job
of publicizing their meetings and recruiting new members. Young adults often
feel they have to "fight the system" when they try want to
participate in church activities.
IV. Conclusions: The case for young adult
ministry
From
my experiences as a layperson and as a student minister, I have learned a
number of things about creating and sustaining young adult groups. However,
perhaps the most important thing I've learned echoes what President Buehrens
stated in his column about young adults: the scarcity of young adults at UU
congregations has more to do with the congregations' lack of interest in
supporting young adults than it does with young adults lack of interest in
being a part of a UU congregation. The young adults at First Parish are some of
the most active members and friends of the church. They create programming for
themselves and hold business meetings to plan the future of their program. They
also contribute their time and their money to the church as a whole. However,
until First Parish put its resources into creating a young adult program, young
adults were barely visible in their participation at the church.
From
my experience, the reason that there are not more young adults at UU churches
is that UU churches and ministers are unwilling to spend time and resources to
create and sustain young adult programs. In particular there are few ministers
or student ministers, who have been willing to devote the time and energy
necessary to start a young adult program. As I think I have shown from my
experiences at First Parish, starting such a program can take a considerable
amount of time and a great deal of patience; a minister often has to spend
hours meeting and talking with young adults and planning programming for them
for a year or more before the young adults in a group feel invested enough in
their program to take over most of its leadership. At a typical UU church,
where the demands on a minister's time are already great, it is easy to leave
the young adults to fend for themselves; most people don't expect young adults
to be interested in church anyway.
However,
after over a year and a half serving as the minister for a young adult program,
I can say that even from a pragmatic standpoint, the time put into creating a
group is worth it in the long run. And, once the young adults begin to run more
of the program, supporting it should take no more than 3 or 4 hours a week, not
a lot of time for a group of people who may collectively spend over 100 hours a
week participating in and planning for church-related activities. Working young
adults without children are also likely contribute more to the church in
pledges than they require from the church to support their programming.
However,
although I think there are pragmatic reasons for supporting a young adult
program at a UU church, I don't think that the energy and money that young
adult can potentially give a church is the most important reason for supporting
a young adult program. The most important reason for supporting a young adult
program was perhaps best expressed by Riley McLaughlin, the Facilitator of
C*UUYAN for 1994-1995, in an e-mail message he uploaded to the grassroots young
adult bulletin board, UUYAN-L:
UUism should include young adult ministry
because the spiritual needs we have *as young adults* are just as important as
any other, and our contributions *as young adults* are as important as any
other. We're not the future of UUism ‑we're part of its present.
I agree with Riley, the main reason for churches
supporting young adult ministry is that churches have an ethical obligation to
support the needs of young adults. As Unitarian Universalists, we covenant to
affirm and promote the "acceptance of one another and encouragement to
spiritual growth in our congregations." How can we honor this covenant and
fail to make any significant effort to address the spiritual needs of people
between the ages of 18 and 35?
Glossary
|
The Connexion |
The newsletter of the Continental UU Young Adult
Network |
|
C*UUYAN |
The Continental Unitarian Universalist Young
Adult Network. This is a grassroots group of young adults which is affiliated
with the UUA. The group was started in 1986 and has its annual meeting at a
week-long conference called Opus. At Opus, a Steering Committee of from 6 to
8 young adults is elected to carry on the business of C*UUYAN between its
annual meetings. |
|
Facilitator |
The "president" of C*UUYAN and the
chair of the C*UUYAN Steering Committee. |
|
|
|
|
First
Parish |
The First Parish in |
|
"The
Flame in Our Hands" |
The symbol on the front cover of this paper is
the symbol for the Continental UU Young Adult Network. |
|
Spring Chickens |
A newsletter for UUs ages 18-25 created by Kevin
McCulloch and Amanda Garzon using a grant from the Young Adult Ministries
Office. Since the fall of 1994, Spring
Chickens has been published as part of The Connexion. |
|
UUA |
The Unitarian Universalist Association. The
Association of the approximately 1000 Unitarian Universalist congregations.
The Headquarters of the UUA in |
|
UUYAN-L |
A free electronic bulletin board for UU young
adults run and financed by the UU young adult leader Steve Traugott. |
|
|
|
BIBLIOGRAPHY
__________, Right Here, Right Now: A Video Resource for
Young Adult Ministry (Seattle: C*UUYAN & U2T2, 1991).
Elizabeth
Brown-Lavoie, "Taking the Young to Heart" in World, Vol. V, No. 5, September/October 1991, 16.
John Buehrens,
"Horizons: Reflections from the President of the UUA" in World: The Journal of the Unitarian
Universalist Association, Vol. IX, No. 1, January/February 1995
Gerald Krick, et
al. 1987 Young Adult Ministries Task
Force Report (Boston: UUA, 1987). Describe the state of young adult
ministry in the UUA as of 1987 and makes recommendations for the actions the
UUA should take.
Gerald Krick, et
al. Young Adult Ministries Task Force
Working Papers (Boston: UUA, 1987). Provides information which underpins
the report of the Young Adult Ministries Task Force.
Suzelle Lynch,
"How to Start a Young Adult Group (Boston: Young Adult Ministries Office
of the Unitarian Universalist Association, 1993). This is a publication which
provides suggestions for starting a young adult group at a local church. When
Suzelle Lynch wrote this pamphlet for the Young Adult Ministries Office, she
was a student at the
Mary Ann Macklin. A Unitarian Universalist Campus Ministry
Manual (Boston: UUA, Young Adult Ministries Office, 1993). This publication
provides information on the history of Campus Ministry in the UUA and in other
liberal protestant denominations.
[1]Suzelle Lynch, "How to Start
a Young Adult Group" (Boston: The Young Adult Ministries Office of the
UUA, 1993), 7.