Category: 3Generate Manifesto: children and youth

Instead of speaking for young people, the Methodist Church continues to enable their voice to be heard; a subtle but significant difference. Yesterday, I attended a meeting of the Eastern Central Regional Development and Learning Forum. My role is to serve as an advocate for the network, and it has been great to hear about all the good work that the team are doing across the Lincolnshire, Northampton, and Nottingham and Derbyshire Districts. One area where I was especially encouraged, was in how the Methodist Church is continuing to develop 3Generate, a weekend of action-packed and inspiring events that allow fun, faith and friendship to combine, whilst taking seriously what children and young people have to say about what they think the Church should be like. Oh. And here’s the really penetrating bit. The children and young people are not just talking about what the Church should be like for them. They are talking about their vision of what the Church should be – for everyone.

In 2016, 3 Generate welcomed over 600 young people, ranging from the ages of 8 to 23. I find this material inspiring and I am encouraging my own circuit to consider what might be the best way of incorporating these themes into our worship, preaching, and mission. The 8-11’s steam in particular long for a Wonderful Church, filled with Wonderful People, who speak in a Wonderfully Prophetic way to create a Wonderful World. The 11-18’s raise the profile of poverty, mental health, school life (pointing to how the pressure to achieve is suffocating their ability to become their true selves), extremism, and how the Methodist Church responds to the needs of refugees. The 18-23’s call for the Church to understand young people better, to enable them to witness more effectively through acts of mercy, to recognise that all people – not only ministers – are called by God, and, once again, to find ways in which the Church can encourage more openness and constructive dialogue about mental health issues.

The great thing about this manifesto is that it enables the voice of young people to be heard in contexts where they are not present. It is a tool against insularity, and a means by which the Methodist Church can remain true to its roots in asserting that no congregation ever exists in isolation: we are all connected to each other. The Apostle Paul reminds us that in Christ we are all one body and that we should think carefully about how we see ourselves in comparison with others. We all have different gifts. We all have a function and – by proxy – if one part of the body does not function, we all suffer. The 3Generate manifesto reminds us that young people are not the junior part of the Church who we should appease by breaking our cycle of ‘adult’ worship for a ‘children’s’ or a ‘family service’. Neither should young people be attended to because they are the Church of tomorrow – rather, young people are the Church of today, valid, and bringing a perspective that we need to take seriously. The 3Generate manifestos are a prophetic call to action.

So praise God for the Methodist Church in how they have avoided the elephant trap of speaking on behalf young people and ensuring that the focus, instead, is on enabling young peoples’ voices to be heard.

There are some observations that I would like to make about the MET weekend, as well as saying a big word of thanks to all those who were involved in its organisation, and to Brookside and Southside for hosting. First, on the run up to the weekend, Owen reminded me of a quote from Gandhi who is reputed to have said, ‘“You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilisation to pieces, turn the world upside down and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.” (Strangely – and I think I mean Holy Spirit strangely – both Owen and I had referred to Gandhi in our Sunday services before the weekend. As I listened to Paul, and his exposition on Ezekiel, I began to revisit this question, raised by an outsider to Christianity. I found myself asking, ‘Was Gandhi right?’ Have we downgraded the Bible? Do we take what the Bible says seriously, and engage with it honestly, or do we sometimes shirk this challenge?

 

The second thing that struck me is the difference between reading a story and living it for ourselves, so the story defines us, so we become the next chapter in the story. The story of Ezekiel and the valley of the dry bones coming to live is not just a historical/metaphorical account of renewal of how God brought new life to the remnant that remained, having lived through a period of judgment. It is offered to us as something that can become our story for today. We are called to live faithfully despite the ungodliness which surrounds us. Even though we may feel like dry bones, and even though we may be a remnant of what once was, God can bring renewal – and more than that resurrection. In our circuit, we have and are seeing dry bones come to life, as people allow themselves to believe in the possibility that God can do more than what our limited imagination might predict, and that if we take God’s hand, we can find hope, strength, the giftings that we need, and a sense of fulfilment that is beyond words.