Diocesan Convention Presentation

A few years ago I found myself in Houston TX for a meeting of the Young Anglicans Project.  The project is an organization that exists to advance youth ministry across North American Anglicanism. While there I got a phone call from a priest at a local church who wanted to speak to me about the future of their youth ministry.  He had no idea I was in town but then requested that we meet up. I agreed and when my meeting was over I drove to St. Martins Episcopal Church.  The place is massive! I met with the priest who had phoned me and we talked about youth ministry.  He showed me the new youth building, which cost more than a million dollars to build.  They have a youth staff of four full-time people and confirm 100 teens a year. That is not normal.  That is Texas! Apparently everything is bigger in Texas.

Why do I share that?  The reality is that the average Anglican Church in North America is between 75 and 150 on a Sunday. The mega church is rare!  The large church of 500 or more is not the norm. So, our hope has been to advance youth ministry in the smaller churches that cannot afford to hire a youth minister. How do we do that?  Well, we developed a model a few years ago to get churches engaged in a simple & sustainable approach to youth ministry. It’s a model that does not require programs or many resources even. We taught it here before our convention two years ago in Florence.  This year at The Jesus Weekend, we had several new groups attend who were there because of the simple sustainable model for ministry.  Previously, they had no ministry to teens. The model is simply to build relationships and open the Bible together.

I’ve shared this model over the past several years with people across North American Anglicanism and seen great progress. Working with others in Young Anglicans Project we launched an initiative that we call Engage.  It is the simple sustainable model we developed here. In January, Pittsburgh was our first diocese trained in the Engage model.  In a diocese of 25 parishes nearly 50 people showed up for training.  The bishop even committed to personally discipling a teenager using our approach.

Engage is about passing the faith from one generation to the next. It is about every congregation engaging every generation.  My desire is to see congregations who have no ministry to youth to begin to minister to them. We have some who have been focused on children, parents, grandparents, men and women and more. It’s all moving toward every congregation engaging every generation!

We all want to make disciples who make disciples right?  But where does that become a widespread reality? How many churches do you know where most of the congregation is discipling someone or actively sharing their faith? For most people the response is to start a program!  But who has the time, resources, staff, or money?  Big churches do, but even then we have to persuade people to come to the program.  We then seek to be attractive and run the risk of selling out. What if we stopped thinking in terms of programs and focused on people? How do we reach and disciple people? We build relationships and open the Bible! Listen to the words of Jill, a young woman who was “engaged” by an older woman.

What we do with the next generation or what we don’t do with them will impact what the church looks like tomorrow. The reality is that every congregation needs to be engaging every generation!

You might be from a church that has the resources to have a full or part time youth minister.  Praise God for that!  But there is an equal chance that you might be from a church that has not figured out how to pass the faith from one generation to the next. And you are stuck wondering how a small congregation can manage the task when the resources are so limited. The answer is simply in people investing in the lives of others by studying the Bible together and learning how to live it out. Whether it’s a random adult meeting with a young person, or a grandparent discipling his or her grandchild, or a parent ministering to their own kids, the vital part is that the faith is passed from one generation to the next. This is the task that stands before us as a church.  We don’t need more programs; we need people who will invest in the lives of others.

On behalf of all in this diocese who are engaging in ministry with youth, I thank you for your ongoing support! Let’s engage every generation by opening the Bible together!

I leave you with one last video to consider…