402 - Youths Role In the Church: A Dialogue

Youths Role In the Church: A Dialogue
With N. Bruce McLeod

McLeod: Young people have said to me: "Why doesn't the church do this or that? Then we'd be interested." Then I say to them: "You're the church. Why don't you do it?" They tell me that their ministers or parents discourage them. But I say it's because they're not rude enough. They're scared. They're politically naive. They like singsongs and where roasts, and they think that's young people's work in the church.

Harry Stinson: I don't know any young people who think that. If there were a singsong or a weiner roast, it probably would be sponsored by some older group trying to get young people into the church, and they'd be amazed that it was packed. What bothers me is the feeling that people are trying very hard to get you in. They say: "We'll put you on the official board," and as soon as they do, the board becomes meaningless and they set up another subcommittee to deal with the nuts and bolts. I found when I got on the session that they'd just have reports which everyone would unanimously adopt.

McLeod: Why didn't you stand up and move that the report be thrown out?

Harry: There was nothing to throw out. They would just say: "We met at Dr. so and so's house, and it was a fine meeting, and the committee is to be congratulated on its work." At the end of the meeting someone would say: "It was a good meeting. We got a lot done."

McLeod: So what do you do? Do you abandon ship?

Harry: It's bard to reform a body that doesn't want to be reformed. Even if it were reformed, it would probably be just the

This exchange is reprinted with permission from The United Church Observer, Nov. 1972, Toronto, Ontario. Bruce McLeod, recently elected Moderator of the United Church of Canada and the youngest in its history, is the pastor of the Bloor Street United Church in Toronto. A graduate of the University of Toronto and of Emmanuel College, he took his doctorate at Union Theological Seminary, New York, where he served as student assistant to the late Paul E. Scherer.

403 - Youths Role In the Church: A Dialogue

same people. If they have a radical new committee to drive us forward and revitalize the congregation, Ws always the usual Dr. Johnson, Mr. Smith, and his wife, the hard-working committee lady.

Nancy Scott: Most of the people who are on committees year after year are perfectly happy where the church is and don't see any need for reform.

McLeod: Are you happy with it?

Nancy: Some; some I'm not. I try to get in my two cents worth. They accept what I have to say, but then they go on and it just blows over.

McLeod: I wonder if you back away too soon. Have you tried phoning people up before the meeting and saying: "I'm going to propose this motion, and I want you to back me, but don't speak up first; let someone oppose me and then you react to them." Then phone a third person and have them be the third speaker. Plan it as a political event rather than just wistfully saying your bit and watching them ignore it. That's naive. I know-I've done the same thing. But young people have not taken such a resigned position in other areas-in the universities, in civil rights-I don't know why they do it in the church.

Paul Foley: Young people don't see any potential for change in the church.

Nancy: It's something that is built into you since you were a little kid. You sit quietly in church, and you don't say anything, and you just follow along.

McLeod: I think that's opposite of what is required I'm sure it was no coincidence that Jesus never was as old as I am. His disciples were closer to your age than to mine. Why didn't he pick old guys? Was it just chance? I don't know.

Paul: Revolution runs in the young.

McLeod: So why in the church do we cap it by producing polite young people?

Susan Butler: There are so few other young people in the church. Most of them sit back and let someone else try everything. You get very little encouragement.

Ian Jay: When I went to Sunday School, we had forty people in the class. Now if you see five, that's fantastic. And out of that five you won't find more than one taking part in our church. I'm the one; I'm in the choir. That's total youth involvement in our church.

McLeod: Why did they drop out?

Ian: First, their parents didn't make them come. I guess you're not supposed to make kids do anything.

Sean Boyce: But getting parents to drag kids out, making them go to church, is again pushing them into this do-as-we-say situa-

404 - Youths Role In the Church: A Dialogue

tion. Only when there is an interest will kids want to make changes. I dropped out of Sunday School. I couldn't hack it . . . .

McLeod: I did too.

Sean: . . . but if I had continued, chances are that I wouldn't have wanted to do anything about changing things or take any responsibility.

Paul: I think anybody's involvement in the church is lacking if it only includes Sunday morning. If youth have been brought up to believe that church is one hour and that's it, I don't blame them for not wanting to go. There are lots of other things to do now. But if the church means more to them than an hour in a stuffy building, there shouldn't be any problem about getting them involved.

McLeod: Isn't part of the problem that you feel it's somebody else's show? If it's interesting for a while, OK. If it isn't you don't feel a great responsibility to change it. Maybe you've put your finger on it, Paul; maybe young people feel the university is a strategic thing to change, but not the church.

Harry: I think the big problem is in the Sunday School. It seems to me that the people who teach tend to be the martyr type. They're the wrong sort. If they offer to teach, whether they are qualified or not, they are popped into a class immediately.

Nancy: How important is Sunday School as far as what you learn? The amount you pick up about Christianity in your younger years isn't that great. I think what's more important is the atmosphere-that it's a place where people love you and where there are other kids like you and where you can get along with people. The teachers make the kids feel wanted and they go because they want to.

McLeod: What about the person who comes into a church that is thirteenth century architecture, and he hears us singing in Elizabethan English, and praying in the past tense: "O, God who did that, way back when"? It seems to imply that God is dead today, but was alive back then. But really there is a whole other theological approach that finds God not in the past at all, but in this moment and in the future, dragging the world to some kind of unity and harmony. Has that ever occurred to you in church?

Ian: But people ask: "Why? How can it be proved?" And then you have to go to the past, don't you?

McLeod: You can't prove it. The great and exciting thing about faith is that you might be wrong. You take a risk, and you only prove a risk by taking another one. That's more exciting to me than getting the rock-ribbed certainty, and the rules for living, and never having to think again-what a bore!

Harry: I don't think many young people want to be set apart, but that's what happens. When we have a youth service, its

405 - Youths Role In the Church: A Dialogue

maybe Sunday evening, or perhaps some Sunday in August----that wouldn't affect the collection too much." When they finally come up with an obscure date, lo and behold, there's no young people there, so "it didn't work because the young people didn't have the commitment."

But what I've enjoyed more, and what seems to bring some of the young people into our church-and there are few enough of them-is working with other groups, of no particular age. We had a big arts and music festival called Dayspring and with everybody working together we probably learned more about human relations-which is what the church is supposed to be about, I think.

Sean: Sure, there are changes we all would like to make. But tradition is important too. And you need leadership, not necessarily from your peer group, because your peer group does not always have the knowledge or training.

McLeod: That scares me. I don't believe that I and my contemporaries do have the knowledge and experience to tell you what the tradition is. You have to help us. I believe the true tradition of the church is one of continual openness to change and readiness to take risks. The reason there's still a church today is that down the centuries there somehow has been in this unwieldy body a thread of people who have been willing to risk, to stick their necks out. Often, they've been young. I'm not convinced, Sean, that only the leaders have the competence. We need you to help us know what risk to take.

Sean: We have to change ourselves before we can start changing anything else. We have to be prepared to take a risk-and I don't figure that many young people in the church are prepared to.

Ian: We've always been told to sit there and be quiet. We've lost a lot of people. There are people still left who want to get up and get rolling. But you can't ask for leadership if it isn't there.

McLeod: All we have is us.

Paul: Right. But I think we've never made enough use of us.

McLeod: I agree.

Paul: Unfortunately, in order to get people involved you have to get them interested. To get them interested you have to get them motivated. To get them motivated you have to be able to speak to them. And to speak to them they have to be there. They're not.

Nancy: That's why I would like to see a lot more interesting progressive things in the church to draw the people in. And hopefully if the right person is there at the right time with the right words, that new person who was drawn in can be interested in the church.

406 - Youths Role In the Church: A Dialogue

McLeod: I wonder if sometimes we get off the track by aiming to interest people. It's like sitting down and saying, "How am I going to be happy?" Happiness comes as a by-product when you are involved.

Nancy: But we're not getting people involved because there's nothing that interests people.

McLeod: Maybe that's the thing. Maybe if the church were involved in enough imaginative, exciting things on its street, people would see what's happening and say, "Hey, what's going on? How do I join?" And instead of saying, "I've got you on a list," we'd say: "Listen, I've hardly time to talk now. Just lend a hand say: here for a minute, and maybe in three weeks we'll have a chance to talk and I'll get your name and address." In other words, the task of the church would be such a compelling thing in itself that people would be drawn to do that, and you'd have your people.

Harry: Any activity I've really enjoyed has been something not necessarily related to the church but which has drawn in people I've never seen in church before.

McLeod: Like Dayspring?

Harry: That was fantastic. The official reason given to the congregation was to draw people. But for the people involved, it was just a people thing. It drew, in the end, hundreds of people, and the experience of just working together was, I thought, what the church is for-drawing people out of their shells. If the church doesn't do anything else, if it doesn't convert anybody, but has still drawn John Q. Something-or-other out of his shell for three weeks, given him something to remember, gotten him involved with other things, it's succeeded. But a lot of people seem to think that if the same fellow comes to church regularly and he sits in a pew and he puts some money in the plate and he's seen regularly at the coffee hour, therefore we have succeeded.

McLeod: How do you know when the church has succeeded? What are the signs? More people in the youth groups?

Susan: More happy people. More things going on. The church open so you can go in and say, "Hi, what's going on tonight?" and make yourself a cup of coffee if you want to.

McLeod: Sort of a center of warmth and happiness? There are very few other organizations in the community-are there any?---that can put together people of all ages in one room as a kind of family group and create this sort of warmth. We don't always manage it either, but surely this is a potential.

Harry: Yes, as long as you don't get the feeling that you have to go to a reception desk first, or get on the janitor's good side to be allowed in. I used to feel so much at home in the church; this is my church, I'm wanted here, I'm a member. Then the janitor

407 - Youths Role In the Church: A Dialogue

comes thumping out and looks at you hostilely, as if to say, "What are you doing in the building while I am trying to clean the floor?"

McLeod: I wonder if it's enough to say that the sign of success is a happy and warm feeling in the church. Maybe the church needs to be creating happiness, warmth, humanness on the streets around it so when you remove the church from the community somehow all the streets sag a bit.

Susan: I think if the people in the church are getting along great and relating to each other, it doesn't just leave you when you go outside. You might start singing to yourself or smiling at people.

Sean: One of the changes I'd like to see in the church is more openness. But you can't pass a law that everybody has to be more open.

McLeod: That would be silly; but you could pass a law that in the interests of openness on one Sunday a month we do away with the printed order of service. Orders of service set down on Tuesday what everybody has to do on Sunday, whether people feel like it or not.

Ian: I read a piece in The Observer about this guy who went to Africa and he was so surprised at the openness and friendliness of strangers. He seemed to sense it was related to their Christian faith. Maybe what we need is our old explorer-missionaries to come and tell us again what we're supposed to be doing and liven us up a bit.

Nancy: Yes, where's that early church enthusiasm that the apostles had and got everyone so excited? My problem is that we get together on Sunday morning for worship but I don't feel any more fellowship with a bunch of people sitting in rows than I do with the people walking down the street with me.

Paul: That's because all you see is the backs of their heads.

Nancy: We should all feel as one because of the beliefs that we share. I think it would be a lot more valuable to sit around on the floor, just to be there together, and be able to say, "Something's bugging me about the Bible; there's a contradiction I don't understand," or that I'm really upset, or just to break down and cry.

McLeod: And it wouldn't have to be just young people?

Nancy: No, anyone. But people will back away from that and say, "Uh, uh, that's dangerous. They're cutting down my walls. I wouldn't be safe if I went there."

McLeod: You'd never get 400. You might get 50, maybe 25.

Nancy: I'm planning to bring it up with my minister. He's fantastic. Anything we think of in the youth group he really pushes for us.

McLeod: You're very fortunate. All ministers are not automatically backing young people.

408 - Youths Role In the Church: A Dialogue

Paul: I think too much of the worship service takes place up front, like a stage. I'd like to see people come from the audience and add to the service perhaps by reading a poem or singing a song they had written. Instead, we say, "Now we're going to get people involved," and they can be involved by (a) reading the lesson, (b) taking collection, (c) taking collection, (d) taking collection. . . .

Nancy: I think at the same time as you are involving people you have to keep the Bible as your main source. Otherwise you're just getting personal views.

Sean: When you read the Bible, you get a certain meaning from it. Another person may get a different meaning. Any learning process involves taking an idea, studying it, and changing it. I don't think you should stand still and say, "I believe in this interpretation and this only." I think you should say, "I believe in this but I want to hear what you think about it and then possibly I'll change."

Paul: Something I'd like to see is one minister talking to the people and one wandering around talking to a person. He'd say, "Okay, let's discuss what he said," right there in the church. It should be come to church and teach, as well as come to church and learn.

McLeod: There are fifty-two Sundays in a year. Surely there's a chance for a little variety.

Susan: Yes, but they're not putting in any variety. Every week it's the same thing.