Reflections of an Aging Youth 

Rev. Ron Sala

Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford

November 3, 2002 

I went to my ten-year college reunion recently. There were some changes in my classmates. Most were married. Many had a kid or two. One woman I remember as bright-eyed youngster now has five children of her own. Even though it had only been a decade since we were carefree students, we had all been subtly changed.

Someone once came up with a checklist of when you’re not a kid anymore. Some of the items include: 

Driving a car doesn't always sound like fun.

Being bad is no longer cool.

Your parents' jokes are now funny.

You actually buy scarves, gloves, and sunscreen.

And…You look in the surveillance camera monitor at the convenience store, wonder who that guy is standing at the counter with the bald spot, and then realize it is a shot of you from behind….

That last one hurts!

Also this fall, I had a meeting with our teenagers about this year’s Coming of Age Program. As old I might feel, I’m sure they see me as much older! And yet they and I mark the edges of The Gap. The Gap I’m talking about is not a clothing chain with dubious labor practices but the age gap in our UU congregations. What age gap? About 90% of adult UU’s were not raised in our denomination. That would be wonderful news if we had ten times the number of people we had before. In fact, we UU’s have only grown modestly compared to 40 years ago.1 The negative side of this fact that 90% of adult UU’s are not native to us is that a similar number of people were raised in our faith as children and youth and have not continued into adulthood.

Sometimes we tell ourselves that it’s somehow human nature for the young to lose interest in their faith as a teenagers or college students and come back at some hypothetical time “when they have children.”

Well, not everybody has children. And just because they do doesn’t mean its going to propel them back to the UU faith of their youth. In fact, the odds are against it. The Rev. Terry Sweetser did a survey of lifelong UU’s—people who had been raised in our congregations and were now adult members.2 Fewer than one in five surveyed said they had left the faith for some time. Most of our “birthright” UU’s are with us now because they never left. And the sad fact is that the vast majority of those raised UU leave and never come back.

If you or I took a test and only got ten or 15% of the answers correct, we’d fail the test, right? Well, as a denomination, we’re failing our young people. When only ten or 15% of our own kids choose to be a part of us when they grow up, something is very wrong.

Of course, as we all believe in individual freedom of choice, we would expect some of our young people to make choices to follow some other religious path or to lead an unaffiliated existence. But hardly the majority!

Another disturbing statistic: 90% of UU congregations have no or very few young adults.3 The age of the average UU is over 50.4 The age of the average American is 35.5 Can the 50-year-old UUs get along with the 35 year old Americans? How about those who are as far from the 35-year-old average as the 50-year-olds, in other words, the 20-year-old college-age folks? Those 20-year-olds are the ones who so often leave us, or who never hear of us at all, or who come but don’t see anyone their own age and leave? Or how about the 14-year-olds who arrive at the awakening of their budding adult consciousness and start to form the opinion that there’s nothing happening in church for them?

These ages, 14, 20, and 35, form the approximate boundaries of the age groups we’re holding up this morning. Our denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, defines as “youth” people who are 14-20 and as “young adults” people who are 18-35. Yes, there’s an overlap there from 18-20, the age most young people are going off to college. That means that the young person is invited to either youth activities or young adult activities or both. Also, the beginning and ending ages of this Youth and Young Adult period of life is often flexible. A common phrase is “age-centered but not age exclusive.” We UU’s love a choice!

The planners of this Youth and Young Adult Sunday campaign clarify the logic of these age categories and their usefulness:

Our society makes a distinction between children, youth, young adults and adults.... Acknowledging that these groups have needs that differ from older adults -- or from children -- is the first step in ministering to thhem and retaining them as vital members of our community.

Over many years, the transitional period between childhood and adulthood has grown. Young people are no longer "settled" by the time they are 16, 18, or even 25. Often, young adults cycle through jobs and move frequently before ending up in a stable career and living situation. How many congregations will you be a member of in your lifetime? If you are a young adult -- between the ages of 18 and 35 -- the answer is likely to be "many." If our congregations were better equipped to reach out to you and offer an active ministry for young adults, our membership would almost certainly be stronger and richer in terms of interests and diversity. Many young adults are searching for a spiritual home -- we are called to welcome them as they are, with or without children. Doing so will enrich us all!6

So, how do we do this? How do we retain our own young people and attract others who may not have a congregational home or are dissatisfied with the one they have?

I was saddened to learn several days ago that this very morning Connecticut’s Roman Catholic churches are circulating a petition in opposition to the right of gay and lesbian persons to marry the people they love. Not only how many gay and lesbian young people, but how many fair minded straight young people are longing for the type of acceptance we UU’s can offer, if only they could find a home with us here?

Two weeks ago, Catherine Torpey was a guest in this pulpit. She spoke of the harrowing experience she had with a cult that tried to recruit the college students she teaches.

Stifled by the confines of one fundamentalism or another or led by our lonely and divided society to believe that there is little more to life than greed, lust, and despair, the young people of our nation need to hear our message, find shelter in our love, and go forth to save our dying world.

So, how?

Well, it doesn’t mean having to install an arcade machine in the social room, serving latte in the coffee hour, or inviting Marilyn Manson as a guest musician—though that would be interesting!

Instead, the answer is pretty simple: treat youth and young adults as equal, valuable human beings while attending to their special needs. That means involving them integrally in the life of the congregation while giving them opportunities to be with people like them and to develop themselves in their own stage of life.

Some ways congregations do this is to:

And there are many other ways, limited only by imagination and resources.

It makes sense to tackle the problem of scarce youth and young adults as a whole Unitarian Universalist community. The young are extremely mobile and are apt to live in many different communities at one time or another. We need to be prepared by equipping our congregations to welcome them wherever they may find themselves.

Youth and Young Adult Sundays like this one are being held to spark discussion and to start and strengthen programs like the one I just mentioned. The offering later on will go to a special account of the Fund for Unitarian Universalism. Six million dollars are being raised to benefit programs for our young people, which breaks down to: two million for children, two million for youth, and two million for young adults. The hope is to raise two million dollars of this money during congregations’ Youth and Young Adult Sundays this fall. The organizers would like to see an average gift of $50 per member to show our firm commitment to young people. Those funds will make possible grants to districts and congregations—in other words money we and other UU’s like us can apply for to fund programs these worship services help to inspire.

Not all of us are young. But we can all be young at heart, generous, and creative. And we can all help in keeping our chosen faith young too.

Amen.



1 http://www.adherents.com/Na_623.html



2 Survey of Lifelong UUs by the Rev. Terry Sweetser (in PDF format, 3 pgs, 1758KB) [http://dev.uua.org/sunday2002/lifelonguu.pdf].



3 Delegates Deliver a Mandate by   C H R I S T O P H E R   L.   W A L T O N. UU World, S e p t e m b e r / O c t o b e r   2 0 0 1 [http://www.uua.org/world/2001/04/feature4.html].



4 “The Post High School Survival Kit,” Produced by the Youth Office at the UUA.. http://www.uua.org/YRUU/resources/posthi.html



5 U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce. Profiles of General Demographic Characteristics: 2000. 2000 Census of Population and Housing, United States. Washington, D.C.: Author, 2000. 9 pages. [http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/dp1/2kh00.pdf]



6 http://dev.uua.org/sunday2002/faq.html#5



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