30-somethings would be good too.
To be clear:
1) I appreciate and love my brothers and sisters in Christ of every age with whom I’ve spent literally hundreds of hours in church meetings.
2) Nobody joins a church for the meetings.
As a longtime parish pastor and now as a Presbytery staffer, I’ve sat through lots of meetings – including meetings of the wider church. One of the joys – and I mean that – of being in a connectional church is that we are indeed connected.
The hope is that we are connected by relationship more than bureaucracy. But the bureaucracy quotient increases as the size of an institution increases. Bureaucracy means meetings. Lots of meetings.
I’ve noticed – not surprisingly – that there is a dearth of human beings under the age of 40 at these meetings. Why? There are lots of reasons:
– Important meetings are often at 2:00 on a random Tuesday and the only lay leaders available are retired people.
– Evening meetings are tough for people with young children.
– Saturday meetings are tough for people with young children.
– Millennial generations have a higher propensity to consider bureaucratic meetings to be pointless, frustrating, soul-sucking, etc.
So how do we engage people younger than, say, 55 that we want them to participate in policy-writing and decision-making? I really don’t know.
Ideas?
A Church for Starving Artists 
they need to be worthwhile. our contributions need to be valued (I’m tired of going to meetings where people cluck at my outlandish ideas and shake their head at my naivete). The meeting needs to run on time and respect the time everyone spent preparing, getting there, and being there. There should be a little levity, but not time wasting. The meeting needs to not be on my day off (as a pastor). If my input and voice is desired, I need to have material for the meeting well in advance so I have time to come fully prepared–and I expect everyone else to come fully prepared too. Everyone on the committee needs to share the weight of the committee’s work, not expect one or two people to do it all. the work of the committee (in addition to the meetings) needs to be worth my time and effort.
That’s a short list of things that are hard to pull off. 🙂
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My first thought was “be willing to actually make changes”. I get tired of going to the same meetings, talking about the same things, talking about change and yet no one is willing to make changes. I am not willing to spend more time talking about (name the subject here ) unless the people that I’m talking with are ready to make some decisions and actually follow through on them….in other words, don’t waste my time.
My two cents–from a 30something. 🙂
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I am no longer young, but I do have children the same age as the young pastors/lay people do. I would happily come to a Saturday morning meeting if it
a) were early. Little kids get up at 5 or 6, so a 9:30 morning is just fine for me. 1 p.m. is really tough. 4 p.m. is impossible.
b) included AWESOME child care. I hate sticking my child in a church nursery with high school kids watching her. I LOVE sending her to a great activity with lively and engaged child care workers and a beautiful table of arts and crafts materials laid out for her to go nuts with. (Yes, one presbytery meeting I went to had such awesome child care set up that Selam begged me to stay longer. All others, not so much.)If I feel like my kid is happy and cared for, I’m happy to do a meeting on a Saturday.
c) When I was a young pastor I was on a lot of committees. I was the only pastor under 30 and one of only 2 under 40. I didn’t mind it. I felt like I was listened to and respected. But I considered meetings to be meetings. My time was (is) precious. I HATED having to start each meeting with 20 minutes of chit-chat, followed by a devotional. I could tell that these meetings were a major social outlet for several members of the committees, but as I was on 4 committees, I felt like I was stretched thin and didn’t like wasting time on social stuff. I feel that way today, as well–especially if my precious time with my kid is being usurped with idle chit chat and she is languishing in a nursery with babysitters who are playing on their iphones. Sorry if that was harsh, but it’s a hot topic for me.
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These are really good comments. Thanks and keep them coming.
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I think 20 and 30 somethings aren’t as anti-meeting/bureaucracy/policy-development as it appears; I believe it has more to do with our ideas and opinions not being respected or taken as seriously as the older members. One of my friends was on a PNC for our church. She’s in her mid-20’s, has a Masters degree, owns her own business, and is the handbell choir director, yet she and another member (who is in his early 30’s) were constantly referred to as “kids” (“Well, what do the kids think?”) etc. I know I have found frustration when I sit in on policy-making bodies at school as a student representative because I seem to start with equal footing (probably because I look almost 40), lose footing when I it inevitably comes up I am a “student representative”, and have to gain ground back through being willing to challenge or comment on ideas/positions of faculty. I think to get the Generation X and Millennial members involved we have to change the way in which we are viewed. Even if Elder Calvin watched us grow up in the church, he needs to be able to view us as adults with valid ideas and clear vision. I’m sure this isn’t a problem everywhere, but I think in small towns this is a big issue.
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Mike – such good points. I remember being called “the young Turks” (rather than “the kids”) and I can see how that’s annoying/dismissive. I find that there is some basic distrust and insecurities in these institutions that seems to be bigger issues than age.
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Hmmm
One issue is that in a large (100+) congregations the workload of a committee like COM is huge. It might be an argument for smaller presbyteries.
It’s not just hard to get younger members it looks like it is hard to get pastors and elder from the more vibrant congregations to serve. And some of the folks attracted to serve on a powerful committee may be there for the wrong reasons.
The COM in my neck of woods meets once a month for most of the day.
I imagine at any one time there are 15-20 congregations somewhere in the search process. And probably that many that have some sort of issue calling for intervention or consultation with the COM. So every member of the committee has to serve as a COM liaison to a session that is in an interim/search time. Others have to serve on teams that meet with sessions and pastors that are having issues.
I would not be surprised if the the chair and co-chairs of COM devoted the equivilent of 1 day a week to the work of the committee.
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oops that should be large presbyteries not congregations
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I’m getting pretty close to your 40-year cutoff. I have two young children, and I agree with everything Susan said re: quality childcare at meetings.
I want to leave a meeting feeling like we have accomplished something, especially if I have to travel very far to get there (I’m in a very large–numbers wise and geography wise) presbytery.
And what I think the others are saying is that we don’t like being the token young(ish) person on the committee.
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I’m old, but I’m still sometimes the youngest person in a committee meeting at 52. I can’t stand it when the prompt are not rewarded. (Please begin meetings on time!) I want meetings to move us forward (nothing says waste of time like building the agenda in the meeting or re-tilling already plowed ground.)
I want the leader to be a good steward of everyone’s time. I can’t stand it when people read things that are already printed (literacy really should be a prerequisite for service). To that end, omnibus motions are some of my favorites. Subcommittees really should be trusted to work and recommend, or better yet, be given permission to act. Yikes!
I appreciate conference calls and skype meetings as ways to include people of all ages.
I’ve been treated like a second class citizen first for being young and always for being female and creative for nearly thirty years now. It’s nothing new. It’s reprehensible, but with humor and the promise never to sin as one has been sinned against, I keep on accepting invitations to serve.
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As moderator of the CPM, I know I’ve spent one day a week doing that committee’s work for the past two years. The moderator of the COM is a friend of mine (a retired elder) and she spends about half of every weekday doing committee work. It’s huge. Too huge. I don’t know how to solve that problem, but it definitely means that younger people won’t be taking that level of responsibility very often, because we also have to do our regular jobs, and try to have a life…a lot of the time, it feels like the only way to do a good enough job is to be retired.
I want desperately to run my meetings on time. As moderator, I’m in the building 15 minutes before the start of the meeting. I’m often still the only one in the building 15 minutes after the start of the meeting. We are not allowed to begin until there is a quorum of the committee–and no matter how many times I have reiterated that we need to start on time, it doesn’t seem to matter. I don’t know if someone else (aka not a young woman) would have better luck convincing people to be on time. I understand that everyone drives a long way to come to the meeting…so do I. but I plan for that. I also understand that road construction or accidents or traffic happen. That’s what cell phones are for. Just waltzing in half an hour late because you didn’t get up on time and didn’t bother to call or text or email to let anyone know? sigh.
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Hmmm. I may have seriously underestimated how much time the chair of COM spends on that committee’s work down here.
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