URC Youth Assembly (24-26 Jan)
Members of the Yorkshire Synod of the URC Youth (missing: Saskia, Nico)
(image source)
I’m going to apologize in advance for the length of this post, and feel free to skim it as needed.
Last month, I attended the United Reformed Church’s Youth Assembly (URCYA) with the other members of Peter’s House, as a representative of the churches we’re working in. On January 24th we spent the afternoon traveling to Whitemoor Lakes Activity Centre via mini-bus, Going from Hull to Leeds (to pick up more people) to Lichfield took about 4 hours. Arriving at 7:30, we quickly ate dinner and then the weekend began!
We started with some icebreakers to get to know our small “Buzz” group, who we would be discussing the panels with. The main purpose for this weekend, aside from gathering together, was to bring motions to the attention of the Youth, which, if passed, would then move on to change things for the future. The motion we started with was a mock motion, to help us understand how to vote properly and the setup of the different sections (like when to ask questions and when to discuss with your group). After the mock motion we then moved into a worship where we contemplated the things we left behind to attend (For example, I said work). The intentionality behind understanding that we had left some things behind to attend this gathering was very engaging for me, and set a good standard for how the weekend would go. Once worship was finished, we got to go to a campfire (where I broke out the graham crackers and Hershey’s chocolate that I had brought and made a s’more for myself and Ryan (another American YAGM volunteer who was there!)). Bedtime was scheduled for 1am both nights, but I was asleep no later than 11:30pm that first night.
The next morning after breakfast the first of three scheduled Panel discussions followed by a workshop started. This one focused on Politics, and a lot of the discussion circled around what is the role of religion in politics, especially given how intertwined the Church of England and the government are in the UK. Coming into this discussion as an American, I felt that I learned a lot in regards to that specific cultural difference, given that church and state are tried to keep as separate as possible (and, to be honest, my preferred method to run a country, but I’m biased). The discussion then moved over to whether we should be voting in the interest of Christian values, and how we classify what values are Christian. Following the panel discussion, the workshop I had the privilege to attend was titled “Where Would Jesus Sit Politically?” and centred around the types of policies Jesus would back or be involved in today. Some of the ideas that came up were protections for vulnerable people, advocacy for minorities, and better accessibility laws.
After that came the first business session, where the motions started. The first motion presented was to help integrate the use of an app that students can use to help find a local church while away from home, which was passed. Another motion instructed the URC to create a designated “Green Apostle” position to help with the current climate emergency and reduce the overall amount of waste and environmental footprint the URC creates. This motion also passed. After these motions, we got to have lunch within our Synod groups (that meant sitting with the Yorkshire Synod, for me), and got to get to know some of the more local URC Youth a little better.
After lunch and a brief break, we reconvened for the second panel discussion and workshop. This second discussion was on “Sex, Faith, and Relationships,” and to be honest, I was a little disappointed coming out of that panel. The main focus seemed to be on whether sex outside of marriage is fulfilling, and how everyone obviously desires to have a close, physical relationship with someone else. To me, that was exclusionary and at odds with the overall “Common Ground” theme of the assembly. There are people in the world who don’t want a physical relationship with someone else, and there’s others who won’t ever want to get married. I also think the mindset of “sex before marriage is necessarily worse than sex within marriage” is very old fashioned. The workshop I attended after that discussed Gaslighting (and if you’d like to learn more about that, please go here: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/12/19/18140830/gaslighting-relationships-politics-explained).
A short break later, and we reconvened to discuss more business. Some of these motions included the formation of a task group to look at celebrating the URC’s 50 anniversary (motion passed) and a letter written to the CTE in regards to their decision to sideline a chosen President Hannah Brock Womack due to her same-sex marriage (this motion also passed, and the letter can be found here: https://urc.org.uk/latest-news/3331-urc-youth-assembly-unanimously-condemns-cte-decision.html). After business was completed, we had dinner and then attended a sensory form of worship; we isolated our different senses to connect ourselves closer to our memories and discover different ways to engage our senses with our faith.
Once this was completed, we came back together to conduct elections (the results of which can be found in the link above). We then got to participate in a Ceilidh, which, to directly quote Google, is “a social event with Scottish or Irish folk music and singing, traditional dancing, and storytelling”. It’s fairly similar to a barn dance, and it was lots of fun. It takes a lot of effort, and I was exhausted afterwards, but getting to participate in the part of the culture here was amazing. The energy in the room the whole time was buzzing, and we ended the Ceilidh by dancing to and singing Auld Lang Syne, which is a celebration of the times we’ve enjoyed together (loosely translated from Scottish, it means [for] the sake of old times). We then proceeded to a late night communion service, which was a deep reflection and very personal. After communion, I think I stayed up almost until 2 in the morning, and most of that time was spent talking to others.
Sunday morning, after breakfast, we started in on our third (and final) panel discussion, on War and Peace. The discussion started off with a quote from a book called The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse: “One of our greatest freedoms is how we react to things”. This is something that I think most of us take for granted. People stuck in situations like dictatorship often lose that freedom first. Another discussed topic included whether it is ever justifiable to go to war, and what the line there is. Is it ethical to keep out of war for the sake of peace, when staying out of the war could mean the deaths of millions? If you look at it from a purely utilitarian standpoint, war would only be justifiable if participating means the loss of fewer lives than not participating. Someone pointed out that God is always on the side of the oppressed, in which case people should get involved on behalf of the oppressed. One other point discussed was whether we believe world peace is achievable, and it was pointed out that world peace has to be achievable, or at least believed achievable, otherwise nobody would try to work towards it. The workshop I attended Sunday was on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The workshop was lead by someone who has attended a URC lead trip where the goal was to learn more about the Palestinian perspective in order to enable a better understanding of how to help. I have a lot of thoughts on this workshop (that could probably fill another blog post, so we’ll see), but I want to say just two things: 1) the tour company they used stated that less than 1% of tourists that had used them visited the Holy Land to learn more about the Palestinian perspective. Less than one percent! 2) The person leading the workshop comes from South Africa, and he was very vocal on how similar the situation looks compared to Apartheid in South Africa.
The final part of the assembly was some final business which involved inducting the new URC Youth Executive! After this, the Assembly came to a close and everyone departed for home (although us PEter’s House members and the other TIme for God volunteers stayed at the activity centre because the Time for God BIG Conference started the next day at the same location. Finally, a big shoutout to Ryan (previously mentioned) and Aaron (one of the URCYA Yorkshire Synod attendees) for letting me bother them quite extensively so I could understand everything that was happening that weekend.
If you’ve stuck around this far, thanks for reading! That was quite a lot to write, and if you have any questions please shoot them my way.
