It’s time to get the dust off the wings of the BLOGFORCE! Here’s a question brought up by the Acts8 Core Committee:
“According the Pew Research, adult GenXers and Millennials now outnumber Baby Boomers by nearly 2 to 1, but when we look at General Convention the statistics don’t match up. In what ways can the Church create opportunities to lift up younger leaders, lay and ordained, to serve as Deputies to General Convention?“
Anyone can participate in the BLOGFORCE! Responses and abstracts are due by 5PM Central Time on Sunday the 29th of May and the roundup will be posted on the 30th.
David Simmons
Acts8 BLOGFORCE Wing Commander
How do I participate in the BLOGFORCE?
Simply blog your answer on your own site, then:
1. Paste the code you can find at the bottom of your post – note that it is code so you will probably need to switch to HTML view in your blog editor. It should look like this on your blog when posted or previewed:
2. Send the permanent link and a 120 word or less abstract to . This should be done by no later than 5PM Central Time on Sunday the 29th of May. On Monday, the abstracts will be re-posted with links. At that point, the provided code will point to the round-up page instead of here.
The editorial board of Acts8 reserves the right to decline submissions that are deemed offensive or do not uphold the .
In general, younger people are not leaders because they have few if any to lead. Some few lead teams to feed the homeless in some churches, with their parents’ guidance, but in general TEC itself does not have venues for younger people to lead, and that is reflected throughout the church; and vice versa. If we have ways to raise up leaders in our parishes, then we might find ways to raise up leaders in our dioceses, and thus for TEC. In general the leadership process has worked through the ordination process, and has omitted other access to potential leadership. So we thus need to find non-ordination ways of raising up young leaders. To wait until someone is a success in business, or has become a lawyer or accountant or doctor is to stymie young leadership. To seat a young person on a Vestry often omits the need to have people of substance and generosity in those seats, as younger people usually do not have earning power, jobs, or experience. And if they begin an endeavor right after highschool, they are generally consumed by that. So the challenge is to find young entrepreneurs, self-starters. They will have a different orientation to the church as it exists, however, so learning how to guide a great ship with little ship experience is the challenge. We face the problem of putting new wine in old wineskins. So TEC needs to found new wineskins in order to nurture new wine. We need new parishes to be formed even if there are old ones still there. Opportunities need to be discerned in order to begin a process of producing new wine skins who will nurture new wine.
The Rev. Joe Parrish, Diocese of New Jersey
May 23, 2016