Youth Ministries Committee
Meeting Minutes
February 10-12, 2006
Present: Jean-Marie Prestwidge Barch, Marian Beane
(ex officio), Bruce Birchard (FGC staff), Kri Burkander, Elizabeth Duthinh,
Robin Greenler (clerk), Maia Carter Hallward, Kody Gabriel Hirsch, Zac Moon,
Margaret Obermeyer, Christina Repoley, Joe Rogers, Aliyah Shanti, Emily Stewart
(FGC staff), Rick Townsend
Regrets: Margaret Hart, Rachel Stacy
Friday
Friday night we gathered together at FGC offices in Philadelphia. After dinner we spent time getting to know each other and reflecting on the
work of the committee. The discussion touched on several key themes, including
the importance of discernment; the history of the Youth Ministries Committee
and the priorities discerned by the Ad Hoc Discernment Committee; the parallels
between the Youth Ministries Committee (YMC) and the Committee for Ministry on
Racism (CMR) regarding the quest for deep diversity, inclusion and naming of
gifts; and the need for holding up the three threads of ministry by, for and
with youth.
Saturday
After a period of worship, the committee spent time
reviewing the priorities suggested by the Ad Hoc Youth Ministries Discernment
Committee (YMDC) and discerning what we as a committee felt led to do in the
short term (1 ½ years) and the longer term (3 ½ years).
We began by reviewing where others had
already been led. Below is that list and a brief summary of the discussion of
each item
Recommendations from YMDC:
1. Educate
and support Monthly Meetings (MMs), Quarterly Meetings (QMs), and Yearly
Meetings (YMs) to strengthen intergenerational communities
o
Travel to meetings—supporting those who carry the concern of
youth—educate and support in different Quaker contexts (outreach); slightly
more formal, workshops, led discussion, written materials that might be
distributed/shared
o
Support ministries of young people—process of naming of gifts,
bring people into the fold (in-reach), gathering in people and their
gifts—should happen at monthly meeting level
o
Support intervisitation across MM/YM by individuals and
groups—more informal, ties into other initiatives, activities, as well.
o
Develop and provide resources that nurture and support
intergenerational community/relationships at the monthly meeting level
Themes/Issues: Connection
and relationship with Traveling Ministries Committee expected and desired; idea
of sending intergenerational teams of people to travel. Often meetings contact
FGC staff (Deborah Fisch) about a desire/need of the meeting. She discerns
about who to send, requests someone with matching gifts and a companion to join
them. This committee has been interested in work with youth and supporting
youth traveling in the ministry. Often people travel among Friends with
specific concerns, but also travel with a concern for building relationships
among Friends. People from the YMC could travel with a concern for what happens
at the Monthly Meeting level in terms of working on spiritual friendships,
supporting (and naming) youth gifts, helping develop or provide guidance for
conferences for Ministry and Worship committees at the Monthly Meeting level.
In this line, YMC could work on writing and publishing resources on this topic
to assist Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings.
2. Expand participation
o
Quaker youth workers conference/consultation (fall 2006?)—this
concern is percolating up from a variety of places, including Pendle Hill,
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (if priority, issue of how to collaborate with
other groups, finding contacts above/below radar screen); YouthQuake is not
happening this year but instead is considering having
a youth workers conference in winter 2006-07; FGC Religious Education (RE)
committee is planning a training for youth workers/FAPs at Pendle Hill in
Spring 2007; we are talking about those who work with youth, not just paid
youth workers
o
Small conference 2007 focus on young people/youth (high school
and young adult friends)—consultation is invited (50 people), conference takes
1 ½ years of planning, open to all
o
Explore other possible events—regional events, Young Adult
Friends (YAF), Young Friends (YF), 3 day weekends—support, create, hold any of
these?
Themes/Issues: Be sure we
think beyond the Philadelphia region and resources; avoid the “everything cool
happens in Philly”; many youth workers want to be involved in this work and the
discernment of the committee; many groups are thinking about this kind of
concern, ways to work in partnership. A conference would take serious planning
with other committees not to overload the bigger picture (CMR also planning a
conference in 2007)
3. Connect with other events
- Our participation ranges from taking over some of the work
from other committees to supporting their work, to everything in between;
Young Quakes (2006,2007) has been discussed about being handed over from
RE - Young Quakes—annual conference designed in part to help prepare FGC youth for attending
YouthQuake (evangelical roots and very challenging experience for FGC
youth who did not know what to expect). RE currently runs this program;
October 2006 in Little Rock, AR; expensive to plan; this conference makes
more sense to be housed with this committee (RE focus is curriculum, First Day school, etc) - YouthQuake involvement—not sure what this would entail;
need to mend some of the relationships within the broader Quaker family
before deciding how to proceed with it—someone on this committee would be
a representative on the YouthQuake planning committee and we would do
discernment around this concern.
Themes/Issues: If
YouthQuake does not occur, Young Quakes is still needed; YouthQuake planning
committee could not bring people together from all flavors of Quakerism and so
it would not meet the needs of all Quaker young people. Working to bring
together youth workers from across the spectrum to explore the issues and what
can be done to revitalize YouthQuake and keep
it going. Young Quakes gives ideas and materials and issues that they do not
get exposed to in their MMs; have evangelical/programmed presenters, show youth
the diversity of Friends; difference between Young Quakes and regional
conferences and question about the relationship and flow between them. Young
Quakes takes a lot of staff time and travel, large undertaking, 1 ½ year
planning time, whether to support it instead of taking it on, etc. If we wish
to take this on, we would need to start planning for 2007 almost immediately.
4. Information clearing house
Themes/Issues: Lots of information around that could
be used; database of Young Friends, housing opportunities, connect to Quaker Information Center, funding opportunities, list serve, traveling resource directory,
housing, developing a website that could support some of this. We could have a
page off of the FGC website for Youth Ministries that we could do, post events
for other groups, dialogues/discussions, inform others about what we are doing.
There are endless possibilities. A website can be a more stable resource than a
listserv for people whose addresses are often changing. Majority of the work
for this one would largely fall on staff person (maintenance work, etc). How
can we communicate out to other meetings? Newsletter, etc…traveling ministries
can also be a part of this outreach work.
Other Ideas that have emerged:
o Liaison to Committee for Ministry on Racism (CMR)
o CMR conference 2007 or 2008
Themes/Issues: Concern of CMR that they are not doing
what they wish in terms of youth and particularly in terms of youth of color.
In 5 year plan, CMR has a focus on ways of better meeting the needs of youth of
color. Wants to further this goal in cooperation with Youth Ministries
Committee (YMC). Idea for conference emerged out of the concerns about youth
arising from discussion around the Quaker Sweat Lodge. How can we begin to
address the vacuum of opportunities for youth and the most appropriate way to
address the spiritual needs of Quaker youth? Look either at what are some
alternatives, and/or what is the felt need; how do we tease out the purpose
that the Sweat Lodge was serving so that we can look at more fundamentally what
the religious/community need is that is not being addressed. Need to be under
the weight of planning something that deals with these issues and needs to be
carefully planned to address the fundamentals of these issues. Desire for broad
planning process and wants more than just CMR planning it alone. The issue of
the Quaker Sweat Lodge is not just about racism, but also about youth and both
pieces of this concern need to be lifted up carefully. “Meeting the spiritual
needs of our youth”—find a name that goes beyond the QSL debates that continue
to be rehashed
o Internships
Themes/Issues: Many strong internship programs at
different places in Quaker organizations: AFSC/Davis House, FCNL, William Penn
House. Pendle Hill has also had an internship program, but currently these
programs are on hold/in limbo in part due to
the financial situation of Pendle Hill. Possibility of a Pendle Hill intern
being at FGC if group and staff were convinced that having an intern would be a
good potential to pursue. Having an intern at FGC could also gain extra
staffing time for moving forward with the work of the Youth Ministries
Committee. Database for internships; William Penn House, Quaker Info Center
information on internships; think about ways to coordinate if we do a resource
database.
o Pendle Hill Collaboration
Themes/Issues: Pendle Hill has summer programs and
also 10-month internships. Many of the youth at these summer programs are
non-Quaker. How can we help raise the Quaker participation, improve
communication of those events that are already being held but that others are
not aware of, etc. Nancy Diaz and Blake Lipsett work on these programs at
Pendle Hill. How can we serve as information clearing house, and how can we
help amplify the work of other organizations/groups working on these issues.
o PYM Internship house
Themes/Issues: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting work camp
program has been halted as it was and is soliciting new ways to use the house
that has been used by the work camp program. There is a concern for using it in
connection with youth and urban ministries. Idea of having an internship house
for Young Adult Friends, 6-8 people living in community and doing internships
or service work in different Quaker or like-minded organizations. This would
ideally be linked to a Meeting, with intention of building intergenerational
community. A similar proposal is moving forward in the Berkeley meeting. How
could we support this type of house and program as a committee?
All of these latter ideas seem to be specific instances of
the four general categories and general thoughts and priorities from previously
discerned priorities by the Youth Ministries Discernment Committee. Look at
these as a list of our ideas. We need to move from these broad priorities to
specifics for our 1 ½ year priority list. We need to make this smaller broad
list into a really smaller list to make a realistic action plan.
We are working at flipping what we mean by many of these
terms we use: what do we mean by ministry, by naming gifts, etc. We need
to help people realize that spiritual gifts are not age dependent. Help people
feel less frightened about the power of youth’s gifts, that ‘elders’ are not
always ‘older.’ The change we are asking for in our monthly meetings is
staggering; maybe we should consider other opportunities and avenues for
younger Friends to engage in their ministry. Recognize the challenges and
joyfully move forward.
After a break the committee spent time discerning the
specific ways in which our work could be operationalized in the short term (1 ½
years) and the longer term (3 ½ years). These two timelines are needed partly
due to budgeting processes and partly due to the time it takes to get some work
going. By articulating a vision we hope that we will draw funding through the
capital campaign. The committee spent time discerning how to go forward with
narrowing down and operationalizing time lines and action steps for the list of
priorities. We felt the work fell into three broad categories with several
cross-cutting themes. After dividing the priorities among the three categories,
we worked as a whole to give a charge to each of the subgroups that would form
around each of these categories.
We identified the following categories
and cross-cutting themes to guide us in focused discussion aimed at moving
forward in operationalizing our priorities. We drafted a ‘charge’ to each
subgroup for guiding their discernment and ensuring their work was consistent
with the broad vision of the whole group:
Categories and questions posed for small group consideration:
1. Traveling ministries
- What is our vision of collaboration with the Traveling Ministries Program?
- How much are we ourselves doing this vs facilitating it being done?
- How do we walk our talk?
- How do we support discernment around travel and the travel
itself? Facilitate opportunities for traveling in the ministry? (different
challenges, different age stages) - How do we help our monthly meetings discern spiritual gifts?
- How do we help MMs support, nurture, and receive Young Friends (traveling or in transitions)?
- Intervisitation across MMs and YMs by individuals and groups
- Travel to meetings
- Support ministries of young people
- Develop eldering skills and opportunities
- Hold these questions and have them help inform the action plan
2. Conferences and events
- CMR conference
- Conference for those working with youth
- Young Quakes? YouthQuake? Regional conferences?
- Intergenerational conference
- What is distinctly us? What are the structures that we
wish to put forward…what are our processes? What is our emphasis and
vision when we think about planning and putting on a conference? - How do we engage with other committees in going forward?
- Whether and how we build on existing models in going forward with conferences
3. Communications and resources
- What are the existing resources? Where are they?
- What are the things we are reaching out about?
- How do we reach out to Friends not known to us?
- How do we do outreach? (formats and strategies to maximize efficiency and use)
- How do we establish credibility and trust with those we
are not reaching; how do we deal with those who are isolated/not attending
meeting at present? - How do we work with the energy of people right now so as not to alienate or exclude? (outside of this committee and outside of FGC)
- What can we realistically accomplish? Vision vs. actuality
- Internships
- Information clearinghouse
- Developing mechanisms for reaching out to MMs, QMs, YMs
- Developing resources and materials
Cross-cutting themes
· Identifying and developing gifts
· Communication
·
Advocating/enhancing/Supporting/Nurturing
racial, age, gender diversity
· Mechanisms for reaching out to MMs, QMs, YMs
Each subgroup was tasked with selecting one or two of the
most important pieces from their list (see above) and then charting out what
needs to happen to make it a reality, including what resources are needed, how
many people, what timeline, who might be interested in working with us. In
short, each subgroup should identify the mechanisms for doing this work and the
timeline for going forward with it. We broke into subgroups to identify and discuss action plans and priorities for the next 1 ½
to 3 ½ years. After time in our three groups, we all came back together to
present and discuss the ideas and discern as a whole group if we were able to
move forward with an approved program of action.
Traveling Ministries Sub-group report
Zac, Jean-Marie, Margaret O., Aliyah, Kody, Rick
1 ½ year priorities
·
Need to find a way to start out: Explore possibility of a
consultation March/April 2007 working with Traveling Ministries Program (they
already have a model and a schedule; we would just ask them to consciously seek
out young ministers to include in pool of nascent ministers; intergenerational
teams). Work with them on program for nascent
ministers. Work with them to ensure they involve young people in the
consultation; bringing issues like Naming Gifts; discernment about travel,
eldering and travel companions with us. Create a community to affirm the
importance of youth traveling in the ministry and working to move this work
forward. Communicate with TMP about this.
·
Importance of just starting to get around and talking to people
about the issues that we are talking about; getting others interested in
talking about the work. Do people of this committee feel led to travel under
this concern; if so, where can they travel….meeting with youth groups, other
monthly meetings, whatever context we felt led. Power of being a listening
presence and hearing the concerns of young people, hear what other youth have
to say
·
Developing queries to bring to FGC committees to have them think
about the young people on their committees and how they can integrate
consciousness about younger people, exam schedules, etc; queries to MMs about
how to be welcoming to sojourning Friends and how to stay connected to young
friends who have left physically
Potential 3 ½ year projects
· Workshop at the Gathering (2007-2008) about traveling ministries
·
Working to develop models for intervisitation; possible
curriculum for workshops
·
Document what we learn in this 1 ½ year process, not reinventing
the wheel, models that work
·
Talk with people doing communications/resources about how to
integrate what we’ve learned and putting that out for other people to use
How would we communicate with Traveling Ministries Program?
Enter into a working partnership with them. Here’s a need we see, here’s
something you are doing already, how can we dovetail these concerns? We do not
want to create two traveling ministries programs. Maybe invite someone from the
program to our meeting in June ….do this in cooperation and conjunction with
what exists. Need to have a more formal, focused discussion about how traveling
ministries works. Maybe Deborah Fisch and Elaine Emily could come to our
meeting and we could hear from their experiences.
How do we stay connected with the work that is going on? How
do we know about the work that is going on? Need to talk with TMC soon in order
to get a sense of how we are going to coordinate/track this. Make sure we do
not create a parallel program. Challenge to each of us to think about our most
immediate circles and our own contexts, how we talk to people at our monthly
meeting, etc. Something simple, like a workshop
we could do at our own meetings—begin to extend the conversation in our own circles
as an informal way of growing the circle. Listening to youth in nearby meetings
to hear what needs to be done and what their needs are. This is a major part of
TMC, they do a lot of listening ministry. Could also put this up on the
website, etc.
We decided to invite members of the
Traveling Ministries program to our June meeting
We decided to consult with Traveling
Ministries about focusing on youth ministries in an upcoming consultation and
help develop queries for assisting that process
We will begin talking about youth
ministries within our own circles of contacts and Monthly Meetings
Conferences
Kri, Elizabeth, Bruce, Maia
·
Whether we build on existing models or create new ones depends on
what types of conferences we have in mind—intergenerational models: Northern
YM, project-focused not just dialogue
·
CMR conference—role in planning it, making sure there were
intergenerational workshops, youth leaders, be part of the planning committee
·
Young Quakes—dual track conference—opportunities for inter-generational
and peer community building; interweaving the two tracks; Michael Gibson has
timeline to build on for Youth Quakes revisited in fall 2007(?); formalize the
connections and the spiritual needs of the youth workers as well as the youth;
also provide opportunities for intergenerational activities. Provide structure,
support, and intention to the youth workers. Will also mean the youth workers
do their jobs better. Maia and Kri put together a fuller, better proposal to
June YMC committee meeting in consultation with Marsha Holliday (and after the
Young Quakes/RE planning meeting in end of March)—RE intends to put together a
package of what was successful and what wasn’t
·
Regional conferences a back burner issue, but could work on
encouraging other yearly meetings, support activities already going forward
·
Bring YouthQuake representative under the care of this committee
rather than RE—talk to them about it and see what they think is happening—need
to consider that after Kri rotates off we would be responsible for putting
forward someone…it’s a bigger decision in terms of commitment
·
Support other conferences and consultations going on for youth
workers but not try to take them on directly ourselves at this point (don’t
take on more than we can successfully deliver)
We will pursue partnering with CMR on a
conference, we suggest it be spring ‘08
We will move forward with a proposal for
a modified
two-track Young Quakes conference for Fall ’07 and seek lessons learned from
the RE experience with this conference
Communications and Resources
Christina, Joe, Robin, Marian, Emily
1. Information clearing house (website)—there are not a whole lot out there
o Written materials already available
o
Events/conferences (could this show camps, retreats, what is
happening and creating space for people to see all that is going on—have a
calendar)
o Internships/service opportunities
o Blog/discussion
o Links to other Quaker organizations
Timeline: create a subcommittee, gather information on the
above this spring, to have available by July 2006; interest group or other
presence at the Gathering (communication and resources at the Gathering to get
people excited and get word out about the website)
- Next FGC Connections is about Y
