Teaching New Dogs Old Tricks

When we arrived on Sunday night for Montreat Youth Conference (#myc16), our first adventure was worship in Anderson Auditorium at 7:30. As we finished eating dinner at 6:30, I vocally expressed my relief that we had a whole hour of relaxation to get settled into our space before worship began. My students gave me the kind of look that teenagers give when you are seriously socially disturbed:

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"Miss Lindsay, we need to stand outside the auditorium like now, so that we can make sure we get our pew."

I responded with the look only a bewildered youth leader can give:

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An hour before worship?? Really?

So we stood on the steps by the auditorium for an hour {or what seemed like 4 hours} surrounded by sweaty strangers, like lions poised for the kill. As the doors opened, 1200 students {and seriously deranged adults} ran like wildebeests into the auditorium to claim their seats. As we sat in our beloved pews, I was even more confused. They were not even the best pews in the auditorium; we were right next to the organ and not right in front of the speaker. My youth told me stories of years when people had pushed each other to the ground in order to get the pew they wanted.

I chuckled to myself: how many generations of Presbyterians have been fighting for "their" pews? Our youth, who have fresh, new, vibrant ideas and who don't want to be stuck in old ways, these same youth are married to a particular seat in an auditorium where all seats are good seats. Ironic.

It didn't end there. The music leader sang old hymns with a new tempo on the guitar (like "All Creatures of our God and King" and "Come Thou Fount" and "My Shepherd Will Supply My Need"), and our youth responded by saying,

"We just wish he'd sing the old hymns the way we know them."

It seems as though a week cannot go by without an adult in the congregation asking me about contemporary worship in our community. "It's what the kids want, after all," they say with a twinkle of fear in their eyes. The older we get, the more anxious we become that we are losing our relevance with our youth. Just this week, a student sent me a screen shot of some posts he found, and I asked, "Is this Twitter?" He responded, "No, it's Yik-Yak." I am 30 years old, and I am exceptionally behind on the social media bandwagon. Later that evening I described the food in the cafeteria as "ballin'" only to be greeted with a roar of laughter from the youth. Apparently, "ballin" is not cool anymore...or it's not on fleek...or something like that. I myself worry from time to time that my youth will be turned off by my lack of relevance or my ignorance of technology. With each passing year, I get further and further away from my high school experience, and I am more and more unfamiliar with the technological, high-pressured lives that our youth lead.

And yet this past week at Montreat taught me a few things:

#1: Some things never change

When I attended Trinity Youth Conference in high school (and band camp...and mission trips...), we would eat about 3,000 snacks and stay up until 2:00 in the morning every night. Some kids had this unique ability to wear a lanyard and carry a nalgene and wear birkenstocks and still look cool. Thursday was the night you dressed up for communion (or whatever the occasion). Girls would spend hours preparing and the air in the bathroom was sticky with hair spray and perfume. We would bring this big box of Kleenex, and we'd sit there after worship and cry and talk about how much God and each other meant to us.

Montreat this past week was not so different. Somehow Chacos and Birks and bright orange wristbands were a mark of coolness, and teenagers can subsist off of 4 hours of sleep. Somehow emotions come to a head after worship and tears overflow as we talk of our lives and our priorities. Somehow we meet 1200 strangers and magically become family. Some things never change.

The Holy Spirit never ceases to show up at these conferences and events, and never ceases to suprise us. I am grateful that the same Spirit that moved some of the saints of our church 60+ years ago, the same Spirit who moved the parents of our youth, the same Spirit who moved me 15 years ago - that same Spirit moves our youth today, to be challenged, to be followers of Jesus in their everyday lives, and to love one another with integrity and compassion.

#2: Tradition is connective

One of the more amazing moments to me was when Loli, our worship leader, came to the baptismal font for the Assurance of Pardon. She began to sing "Jesus Loves Me" in her native language of Spanish. As she sang, the crowd of 1200+ students began to sing in English. There were no words printed on the screen or in a bulletin. There was no prompt; no forewarning.

Rather, when Loli began to sing, the song is one that connected each of us to our childhood. We know the words like they are a part of our bone marrow, and singing it together somehow united all of us in a new and special way. It's the type of connectedness that transcends ethnic, racial, and social backgrounds: whether you know it in Spanish or English or Swahili, whether you were rich or poor growing up, even whether you were a church goer or an irregular worshiper, the chances are you know "Jesus Loves Me" and, well, that's one thing we've all got. That's one thing we all have in common.

#3: The Communion of Saints

Each week we confess that we believe in the "communion of saints," but I'm not sure if we know what that means. We believe that each of us who are saved are saints of the church; we do not believe that some are better than others, but that all of those who came before us and those who come after us are all connected by the Holy Spirit. We are all a part of the family of God; we all live in our Father's house.

We are making a huge mistake if we think that youth and millennials just want to be entertained. Of course, our kids responded positively to the parading of worship banners, to the loudness of the music, and to the skits and art that accompanied worship. But the things they cite as moving for them were sermons and liturgy and hymns. Why? Because millennials and post-millennials long to be connected to something that is bigger than themselves, something global and timeless. Something big. Something that links humanity. Something that expands over time. I mean, aren't they really just looking to be a part of the church? Isn't that how we believe the Holy Spirit works in the institution of the church over time?

There was a great moment when one of the youth stood up to talk about her faith journey. She concluded her talk with this sentence:

"We aren't the future of the church; we are the church."

I am so proud to have taken a group of youth to Montreat this week who feel decidedly connected to the church as a whole. I am grateful for youth who want to be active in their membership in the church of Jesus Christ. 

The question is: how will we, as adults, make an effort to connect with these youth? How will we, as adults, allow our youth to have a voice in our community? How will we ensure the future of our church by investing in the millennials and post-millennials who have chosen Unity Presbyterian Church to be their home? How will we teach some new dogs old tricks?