By Kevin Witt, Director of Growing Spiritual Transformational Leaders
& Kim Shockley, Coordinator for Pathways of Spiritual Leadership
The collaborative work of the Young People’s Ministry Council (YPMC), Growing Spiritual Transformational Leaders (GSTL), and the Young Clergy Initiative (YCI) is offering new and exciting opportunities for young people to experience leadership and grow as leaders. Each of these experiences is designed because we believe that young people ARE leaders now. Every young person who lives into their leadership will be a blessing to the church of today and tomorrow!
YPMC in cooperation with GSTL is offering two events for young people in 2020! The first is a leadership retreat, April 24-26, 2020 at Wesley Forest. The theme for the weekend is Lead from Your Strengths! We will be looking at four areas of leadership strength (based on the Strengths Finders research):
- How to make things happen - executing
- How to help your team reach more people - influencing
- How to hold your group together – relationship building
- How to stay focused on purpose – strategic thinking
The retreat experience will offer large and small group team building, worship, Bible study, 4 interactive workshops, and games appropriate for young people ages 14-18. We want to particularly invite those who are serving as student leaders of their local youth groups!
More information about registration and costs will be coming to you soon. A registration form will be available on www.igniteyoungpeople.org by January 15, 2020.
The second event with YPMC is the Susquehanna Annual Conference, which will be May 27-30 at the Hershey Lodge. Young people in grades 7 – 12 are invited to participate as youth lay members-at-large in this leadership experience! Each young person who attends as a lay member-at-large pays just $100 and is encouraged to participate in all the activities and responsibilities of fund-raising for the Youth Service Fund. Interest Forms for young people to attend AC 2020 were due on January 6 (www.igniteyoungpeople.org), but if you are still interested, please contact Kim Shockley at KShockley@susumc.org or Mollye Inners at MInners@susumc.org as soon as possible. The Annual Conference experience for young people is instrumental for discerning God’s call upon their lives as active leaders within the United Methodist Church!
The third event is being developed collaboratively with YCI and GSTL. The Change Makers Immersion for young people ages 14-18 will be at Wesley Forest from June 28 – July 3, 2020. This experience is designed for young people to learn more about how they are wired for leadership and help each one design a leadership initiative experience to take back to their local church and community. YCI is working with Ministry Incubators to design this exciting and creative opportunity for our young people!
A special covenant between the young people, their congregation, and the YCI will be in place to support the participants through the Change Makers event and the follow-up leadership initiative. Local United Methodist congregations are being asked to recruit one or two young people who exhibit leadership potential for this experience. The expectation will be that the church will pay $300 for each participant. The young people will contribute $50, and the Young Clergy Initiative will support the rest of the experience. This immersion experience is being designed intentionally as an annual event because we recognize that:
- Less than 7% of the ordained elders throughout the United Methodist Church are now considered “young” – under the age of 35 (5% in the Susquehanna Conference)…
- The United States population is far younger than the population of our congregations…
- Younger people expect to see people their own age in leadership roles at all levels of congregational life…
- We must work intentionally to develop younger people as leaders and opportunities for them to lead!
Please contact either Kim Shockley (KShockley@susumc.org) or Kevin Witt (KWitt@susumc.org) for more information and an application. You will also be provided with the supportive covenant that will undergird this experience between the young person and their local congregation.
We look forward to working with the local churches of the Susquehanna Conference to develop their young people into called leaders!
