Youth Committee at General Assembly

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm in San Jose, CA for the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). From Sunday evening through yesterday evening (or in some cases, this morning), the business of the Assembly was discussed and acted on in various committees. Right now, as I type this post, the Assembly is meeting as a whole to discuss and vote on the issues that the committees worked on earlier in the week.

This year the General Assembly added a new committee on youth. This was a slightly different committee because it didn't have overtures or other business to consider. It was intended to be more creative and generative. It was a discussion among GA commissioners about issues related to youth and youth ministry. After their work, the committee was given the option to propose business for the Assembly to consider (which is actually happening right now).

I observed some of those discussions and spoke at an open hearing on "What Youth Believe" about my desire for a national conversation about confirmation. Throughout these meetings and conversations they watched a documentary called Soul Searching, based on a book of the same name by the National Study of Youth & Religion (I have this film and will probably be using it with youth leaders and the Youth Ministry Committee sometime soon).

For the most part, what I saw was a good conversation about youth and youth ministry in our church. There are some things I would have liked to come out of this discussion that didn't, and I was a little dubious about randomly assigned commissioners that may or may not know much about youth ministry talking about something so important to me. But overall, I appreciate their work. And I think it is awesome that the Assembly is talking about youth ministry on the floor right now...with many young voices participating in that discussion.

Since the Youth Committee recommendations are currently being discussed and voted on as I write, I'll wait until tomorrow to report on what the committed suggested and what the Assembly approves.