I Love My Presbytery

Two posts in one night! Either I am trying to make up for all of the times I forgot to blog or I really don't want to finish my exegesis...probably that latter.

I just wanted to say how much I love my Presbytery! That's really random, I know. People often talk about how much they love their church, which I do, but I also love my Presbytery.

• I love when they nominate me to do things (like be a Synod Commissioner) even though in church standards I am crazy young (average age of a Presbyterian is 61). 
• I love how welcoming and embracing they are.
• I love that the vast majority of people who attend presbytery meetings know who I am.
• I love that CPM (Committee on Preparation for Ministry) is super easy to work with. 
• I love that there are so many people in my presbytery that are supportive of me and willing to talk to me and help me along the path toward ministry. 
• I love that we care about rights and put a lot of attention into civil rights and issues that concern the members of our Presbytery. 
• I love that we have a transgender woman as a candidate and that tonight my dear friend and mentor, who is openly gay, became a candidate as well.

I cannot wait to be able to be ordained in the Presbytery of Boston.

I love my Presbytery!

Date Night Conversation

This weekend I had the joy of attending yet another meeting where I was the youngest person in attendance. This time around, I was the youngest person by at least 35 years. When I first started attending Synod and Synod type meetings it bothered me that I was the only young person there. Now, however, it fuels me in a way. As the only young person in attendance I am the only voice for the "youth" of the church that they here.

The Moderator Elect of the Synod of the Northeast is in my Presbytery Partnership Group (PPG). She has some big changes in mind for the Synod Assemblies once she is installed in October. She was telling me about some of the changes she wants to make and I am a huge fan of all of them. I also voiced my opinions on some aspects of Synod and she listened to me. As I have voiced before, I often feel that the young adults of the church go overlooked. But in this meeting everything I had to say was listened to and unlike the actual Synod meeting, in the PPG, I have voice AND vote.

After the New England Presbytery Partnership Group meeting, I went out to dinner with my boyfriend. Considering we are total dorks we don't have normal dinner conversation. Add to the fact that we are religious dorks and it gets worse. David is a religious studies major. He has a minor in Christian-Jewish-Muslim Relations and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies. Yeah, he is pretty amazing. I'm a religion major but I study theology whereas he studies different religions. David plans to be a professor. I plan to be a minister of the Word and Sacrament. So our dinner conversation covers different theological ideas, classes, current events, the future, acpocalypse, and any number of topics that would be unusual for any other dinner couple.

Talking about the PPG meeting led us into talking about the future. I am a church geek. More specifically, I am a Presbyterian Church Geek. I am a Presbygeek. I hope you figured that much out at this point. I enjoy polity. I read the Book of Order for fun. I am a geek. I recently added a new item to my lsit of life goals: become the youngest Moderator of the General Assembly. The role of the youth in the church and the voice of the youth in the church. I have about 17 years to complete this goal.

20-Somethings in the PCUSA

Something that has been on my mind rather frequently is the role of young adults in the church. I wrote a bit about it in my post about the TAMFS webinar, but it continues to be on my mind so I will focus on it for this post. This topic is regularly on my mind because it affects me a great deal. Being twenty-two years old, in the church, contemplating my future as a possible pastor within the church brings the issue to the forefront of my attention. Additionally, I have been reading Jim Kitchens' book The Postmodern Parish, which I highly recommend and a quote from it has continued my thinking about young adults in the church. Kitchens writes, "We puzzle over why older members want to hold on to forms of church life that may have inspired them when they were young, but that do not meet the needs of today's 20-somethings." I find this to be very true, at least in my area. There are programs for the youth but once you hit a certain age, usually somewhere in the sphere of 20, it is difficult to find a place to belong within the church.


For the children there are Sunday school classes catered to their age level. For the youth there is youth group. For the adults of the church, they have their own Sunday School class and gender specific meetings (at my church [Clinton Presbyterian Church] it is Men's Breakfast and Ladies' Lunch Bunch). But what is there for those that fall in between. Those of us that are too old for a youth group and yet feel to young to be in the same Sunday school class as our 70 year old members? Outside of my congregation is exists as well. There are summer camps and youth retreats for those in middle school and high school, but what of those in college? When there appear to be no interest paid to this range of members how are we to feel?


The more I think about this gap within the church, the more I pay attention to the different things I attend. Yesterday, at church, I looked around the sanctuary and saw three people under the age of 35. If we raise the age to 40, it only grew be a very small number, which included The Pastor! This is not in just our congregation, according to Presbyterian Research Services, 8 in 10 worshipers in PC(USA) pews are aged 45 or older. I go to Presbytery meetings and look around and I am almost always the youngest person and unless their are seminarians present, the only one under 35. If I take a look at our Middle Governing Bodies, it is the same story. At the Synod of the Northeast meeting back in October, I was the only YAD. No other Presbytery sent a Youth Advisory Delegate, and for some presbyteries it was because they did not bother to ask a youth. At the meeting I stood up and asked who in meeting was under the age of 40. There were two people at the entire Synod meeting...myself and my pastor (Rev. Cindy Kohlmann).


I think it is time for the PCUSA to realize the role that the young adult members are capable of playing. Both the median and mean age of PCUSA members is 60 years old. I am a little over 1/3 of the age of the majority of our members. I wonder if we found a way to include those in that 20-somethings category, if that statistic would change? The Youth are the future of the church and we need a voice in the church. Furthermore, I believe that the Youth of the church need to have a voice and representation. From the chances I have had I have been able to meet people from all over the country. Attending Synod meetings and conferences has allowed me to meet amazing people within the church (like our Former Moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow and Vice-Moderator Byron Wade). The young adults of today are the future leaders of our church and I think it is time that the 20-somethings have a chance to show their potential.

*My experience pertains to The Presbytery of Boston and the Synod of the Northeast. For those Presbyteries and Synods that have opportunities for the 20-somethings, that find ways to keep the 20-Somethings involved in church and have found a way to minster directly to them, I applaud you.*