Hope for an Aging Church

On Sunday the Child & Youth Worker from my previous congregation came to worship with two of her daughters. It was a delight to see the three of them and have a chin-wag afterward. Laura and Amy were soon on their way to Rendezvous, the national youth event in Winnipeg, along with others from that congregation.

The next day I heard from another colleague in ministry who was on the Pilgrimage Bus to the same event and had been in conversation with a teen whose family was active in a congregation I served. This colleague was a 12-year-old in the youth group of my first pastoral charge in Newfoundland back in the early 80's. We have been friends with her family ever since. and we see Andrea and her husband and son at least once a year.

Yesterday I touched base with another colleague, a former co-worker, who is a leader at the Bridge St. Kid's Camp. Cathy was also a Child and Youth Worker in a congregation I served -- there is a theme here! Our son Isaac is a United Church minister whose role is Children, Youth, and Families in his London congregation.

Not only was it good to spend time with all four in recent days, they are a reminder that there is still youth ministry happening in our aging denomination. It is also evidence that not all United Church ministers are over fifty, or sixty, or...Three of these four are in their forties, so well under the average age of creaky clergy like me. Isaac is thirty-two and amongst the younger ministers of the UCC. It's encouraging that younger women and men are pursuing vocations for ministry in the United Church.

Wait, there's more! Our nephew Michael has recently completed his academic studies for ministry and will begin his placement leading to ordination, and he too is in his thirties. Today I have two meetings with Bridge St. members who are exploring ministry in the United Church, one in his thirties and the other teetering on the brink of forty. We have no guarantees about our denominational future, but there is still some life in these aging bones!

God's world does need leaders of all ages.

Do you find this hopeful? Are you surprised?