Episcopal Press and News
Dioceses Test the Waters of Youth Involvement
Episcopal News Service. December 14, 1994 [94206]
Recent attempts to involve youth in the decision making councils of the church have exposed both strengths and complications. While General Convention has endorsed youth participation in church affairs, the hard work of integrating the youth is already being undertaken in a number of dioceses, but not without some tension.
Sheryl Kujawa, director of Youth Ministries for the Episcopal Church, said that her office was assembling data from the dioceses about youth involvement, to get a sense of what was working. "There is an increased interest in youth participation in diocesan decision making bodies and it can be very effective. But there's a danger that it can also end up being mere tokenism."
In the Diocese of Massachusetts, the search process that resulted in the election of Bishop Thomas Shaw in March 1994, included two youth on the search committee. Elizabeth Gill, one of the youth, said her job was to "keep reminding the adults that the person should have youth issues in mind." Ben Strohecker, a businessman who also served on the search committee, said that the strategy had a large influence. "Nobody else would have thought about where the candidates stood on youth issues," he said. "Eventually, I even found myself asking, 'Is this someone who will appeal to the youth, is this someone they will find special?"'
In the Diocese of Kentucky, five youth were given the vote at a special convention that resulted in the election of Bishop Ted Gulick in November 1993.
In the original text of the resolution that the Kentucky youth put forward to gain the vote, they sought one delegate from each parish, approximately 39 delegates, but a compromise of five votes was settled on. Critics of the higher number were wary because the granting of the voting privilege to youth gave disproportionate influence to a group that did not have majority status among congregants.
Another concern that delegates expressed was that the youth would vote as a bloc. Amanda Noon, one of the youth voters, said that this didn't happen. The youth who voted in the Kentucky election "held completely different outlooks that reflected the diversity of our backgrounds," she said. "We didn't have the same feelings and we didn't vote for the same person."
According to Chaplain Helen Jones of St. Matthew's in Louisville, even with five votes, "The youth were very vocal on the floor of convention. And we ended up with the most youth-oriented bishop I've ever seen."
Strong gains in youth representation were made at last summer's General Convention with the passage of two resolutions. One of the resolutions gave two persons between the ages of 16-21 seat, voice and vote on the Joint Nominating Committee for the Election of the Presiding Bishop (House of Deputies President Pamela Chinnis recently named these two youth committee members: Jorge Meza, of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, and Elizabeth Brians, of Miami, Oklahoma). The other resolution gave seat and voice to the youth presence that attends each General Convention.
Charles Crump, chair of the committee on church structure that passed the resolutions, said the request by the youth for voting privileges at General Convention was removed from the final resolution because they already possessed that right. "They already have the right to vote," he said. "There's nothing in the constitution that says the youth can't serve as delegates to the convention. What we did was grant them special privileges when we agreed to give them seat and voice as youth." Crump maintained that by giving youth the vote at convention, the balance of delegates representing dioceses at convention would be thrown off.
Questions of balance and representation arose in the Diocese of Arkansas when the vote on a proposal on diocesan funding was taken by orders. The diocese's youth and college student delegates were each given one-third vote, the same as that held by each of the diocese's missions. When the proposal failed to pass in the lay order because the vote was tied, it was noted that the youth groups, according to the constitution, were due one vote each. Before the vote was taken again, however, a motion to table the proposal until the February 1994 convention was passed.
"I don't think things will change for the youth," said Ken Parks, Arkansas' former director of diocesan youth ministries. "It was an unusual situation -- a vote by orders happens about once every 12 years. But we'll have to wait for the February convention to see."
Kujawa continues to gather information from the dioceses on what she feels is an overall trend in the church. "And the question is, what will the effect of youth involvement be? Now that we have youth who are on the committee to nominate the next presiding bishop, what if they play a major role in deciding who that will be? And I think they will."