BY REGINA MCGEE

One by one they got up and spoke about what a church could be, where the church should go, how to connect with kids who are lost in a world of material plenty – who are starved for real contact with God. They were six young speakers giving the first-ever Young People’s Address at the 2008 General Assembly of the United Methodist Church (UMC) last spring in Forth Worth, Texas. The quadrennial General Conference is the UMC’s most important church-wide meeting, and these young people found themselves at the center of an conference that included the president of Liberia, Bill Gates and a host of religious leaders.

Hank Hilliard sat in the audience with tears in his eyes. UMC’s manager of youth ministry development, Hilliard had been dubbed “Hank the Bank” by the speakers, whose care had been entrusted to him during the conference. “I was moved by their sincerity. They just poured out their hearts up there.” Hilliard, 37, is in the early planning stages of Youth 2011, the church’s triennial U.S. event for middle schoolers and teens. He is part of a wave of youth workers and youth conference planners dedicated to reaching out in new, more effective ways to bring youth back to the fold.

“In many churches, the traditional ways of doing youth ministry has been program-based,” he says. “But providing youth programs and a cool youth minister with a goatee who plays guitar is a kind of ‘if you build it, they will come’ thinking that isn’t working,” Hilliard contends. “We need to shift our thinking from building programs to building relationships with kids.”
With sharp increases in the number of young adults leaving the churches they grew up in, much is riding on the youth outreach efforts of faith groups like UMC.

Youth in the Spotlight

Research in recent years shows that young adults are turning away from institutional churches in record numbers. Based on interviews with 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, the Pew Forum’s 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that 28 percent of Americans have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion – or no religion at all.

A Barna Group survey revealed that 61 percent of people ages 21-29 had participated in church activities as teens but are now disengaged. Lifeway Research in 2007 found more than two-thirds of young adults who attend church stopped attending regularly for at least a year between the ages of 18-22. In response to findings like these, faith groups are making structural changes and creating more effective youth outreach programs. Some examples:

Two reports within the Unitarian Universalist Association, culminating four years of research, recommend decentralizing youth outreach efforts by creating five regional youth ministry offices. They call for a culture change that puts “serving the religious needs of teenagers and young adults at the hear of each congregation’s mission.”

Messengers (delegates) to last year’s Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting asked for more child-friendly and family-oriented events at the annual meetings, with the result that at this year’s annual meeting in June in Louisville, Ky., there will be a new daily camp experience for youth put on by Lifeway’s Centrifuge.

The Catholic Diocese of South New Jersey has embarked on an ambitious plan of new initiatives focused on youth, including a youth congress and a variety of retreat experiences and community service projects.

Despite painful cutbacks and layoffs caused by the economic crisis resulting in a 26 percent net reduction in UMC assets, top executives of UMC agencies announced in May that they are moving ahead with plans to hold a global event for young people in Germany next year. The church has also launched a new campaign to reach 18-34 year olds, featuring the new 10thousanddoors.org Web site.

“Reaching youth is not a new issue, but now people are looking at it as a real problem, because the data is causing us to look at what’s driving the fall-out,” says Mark Matlock, vice president of event content for Youth Ministries, an event management and publishing company focused on Christian youth services. He adds that it’s an “extreme oversimplification to say that kids are walking away from their faith. Their choosing not to go to church when they get older doesn’t mean their faith is dead.”

Youth 2011: Come as You Are

In 2011, for the first time in its history, UMC’s triennial U.S. youth conference will be held in two venues: Indiana’s Purdue University, July 13-17, and California’s Sacramento Convention Center, July 27-31. With the dual location, says Hank Hilliard, the church is hoping more people will be able to attend. “We had a woman who drove a bus from Portland to attend the ’08 conference in Greensboro, North Carolina,” Hilliard recalls. “She was thrilled to learn we were going to have a West Coast conference this year.” The 2008 conference drew some 6,500 participants, down from a high of 10,000 in the 1990s.

To get the ball rolling on the 2011 meeting, Hilliard decided to try something new. He set up a weekend Dream Retreat, inviting 12 young people and 12 adults to come to Nashville (UMC headquarters) to engage “in deeper, more difficult questions [than trying to determine a logo, speakers or bands]. What are the real needs of youth? What is the real purpose of this event?” Hilliard says. The retreat laid the foundation for the design team, a planning group of 24 people, half of them church youth, including one young person from the Philippines, which, along with Africa, is where the United Methodist Church is growing the fastest.

Hilliard is psyched to try a variety of new approaches at the 2011 conference. He’s eager to experiment with Twitter, texting and social media to encourage youth interaction and involvement. He’s considering replacing the daily newspaper with daily video or texted updates. He’s thinking hard about ways to involve youth, to get them not just to attend but to participate. One plan revolves around praise bands. “Our hope is identify bands from around the country through video submissions posted on our Web site. We would select a few to perform at the conference, and possibly send a resource person to work with each band to prep them for the conference.” he says. “Developing them as leaders – think what that can do for them and their churches back home.” Hilliard hopes to create a range of experiences for youth at the event, to reach every kind of kid. “Maybe it’s Ultimate Frisbee, maybe it’s connecting with community and God in a mosh pit,” he says. “Bands are really important. Some kids really connect with God and community when they’re screaming and clapping during a performance.”

Some kids seek quiet. A lot of kids, actually. At the ’08 youth conference, Hilliard says hundreds of kids lined up down the hall to enter the Prayer Room, where they found low-lighting, a prayer labyrinth, contemplative music, candles, a chance to step out of the every day throb of distraction. Hilliard’s eager to offer this kind of quiet space at the 2011 conference. For him, it’s all about engagement, being at eye level with kids. “You can’t entertain kids into the church,” he says. “They carry entertainment in their pockets. You can’t program the problem away. Kids are so busy these days. This is a great opportunity, almost freeing. Let’s throw out the old model, roll up our sleeves.”

Focusing on Youth & Youth Workers

If there is one organization that has come to epitomize, embrace and reflect all the swirling currents around youth ministry today, it’s Youth Specialties.

YS grew out of the efforts of Mike Yaconelli and Wayne Rice, who borrowed money from their in-laws to produce a publication about how churches could work with youth, which they self-published on a press in their garage and sold for $5 as they drove around giving seminars for youth workers.

The first annual YS National Youth Workers Convention was held in 1970 and YS has been growing ever since, with new publishing ventures and new events, including Latin American and Canadian versions of the National Youth Workers Convention. In 2006, YS took over the management of DCLA, a popular student convention held annually in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. And in 2007, the Christian media company Zondervan acquired YS, with a commitment to support and maintain YS’s offbeat culture and approach.

Mark Matlock, YS’s vice president of event content, says culture, families and churches too often marginalize teens, who yearn to be heard. He says DCLA aims to let student voices emerge by structuring the conference togive students both a personal and collective experience. All attendees meet at the start of the day in the Big Room for group teachings and programs. Afterwards they break into labs for small-group discussions and individualized experiences. Evening programs focus on Bible lessons told through different mediums, such as drama, comic book art and music.

Accommodating teens’ biorhythms means starting morning sessions around 10:30 and letting kids stay up later, says Matlock. “It fits into their summer rhythm.” Having volunteers staying at each of the hotels where DCLA attendees are staying helps “keep the hotel under control and makes a huge difference,” Matlock says. “Setting up expectations before youth arrive on site is important. Kids get missional if you cast them in that light, and a little positive peer pressure goes a long way,” he says. “I’ve always been impressed with how our youth behave at all our events.”

Illustrating the difficult currents in today’s youth workers world, YS will be making some dramatic shifts in its National Youth Workers Convention, which draws thousands of youth workers across a spectrum of Christian faiths. Speakers for the main sessions will focus on “things that bring us together rather than divide us,” said Mark Oestreicher, YS president, in a Webcast in May. The change is a result of feedback from previous conventions in which attendees complained that YS was seemingly pushing an agenda by focusing in the general sessions on such hot-button issues as homosexuality and youth.

Oestreicher said that YS is trying to choose speakers who are “not there to push buttons or raise issues so much as speak to your soul as a youth worker.” The 2009 National Youth Workers Convention will be held in Los Angeles, Cincinnati and Atlanta beginning in September, with more than 3,000 people expected at each event.

Youth Specialties (youthspecialties.com) offers free resources for youth workers, including how-to articles, programming resources and podcast interviews with YS authors and speakers.

By Regina McGee

Sitting in her office on the sixth floor of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s headquarters office in downtown Boston, Janiece Sneegas, director, General Assembly and Conference Services, recalls her first year with the UUA. It was 2002 and the country was still recovering from 9/11 and a recession that had severely curtailed travel. Hotels were hurting for business and heavily discounting rates.

“We had signed a contract [four years earlier] for a $189 room rate for a meeting here in Boston in 2003, but you could go to hotel.com and get a very good room across the street for $129,” she explains. The upshot? The UUA was looking at attrition penalties topping $1 million, with hotels unwilling for the most part to work with the UUA to renegotiate rates. Ultimately, the association ended up owing between $300,000 and $400,000, most of which was paid off through agreements to book future meetings.

“That meeting made a very significant impression on me,” Sneegas says. “I have worked very hard not to sign contracts so far out that we get caught in an economic crunch.” Now the UUA tries to sign contracts two years out from its General Assembly date instead of four or five, but the economy has a way of catching everyone by surprise, as recent months have shown.

Recession Far Reaching

The sharp economic downturn in the last quarter of 2008 has affected a wide swath of businesses and organizations—including many churches and denominations that have seen their investment portfolios suffer and contributions decline. In March, UUA leadership announced plans to address expected budget shortfalls for 2010, including staff and travel cutbacks, merging departments, a salary and hiring freeze, and moving some print publications to digital versions.

Sneegas says a the General Assembly department (Sneegas and three assistants) is likely to morph into the Office of Conferences, which would handle the negotiations and logistics of most off-site meetings. “We’ve been moving in that direction for some time. There are a lot of variables to consider,” she explains, adding that the association has undertaken a survey to find out more accurately “what the universe of UUA meetings is, because we don’t even know.”

It’s not a great time for any meeting planner to be worrying about attrition penalties, but for Sneegas there is the comfort of having instituted changes since 2002 to help with that concern. For one thing, the group tries to negotiate the most favorable attrition clauses possible, asking for 25 or 30 percent slippage. For another, UUA hotel contracts for upcoming General Assembly meetings include a clause that ties the negotiated group rate to rate trends prior to the meeting.

So far, registration for the UUA’s 2009 General Assembly meeting in June in Salt Lake City is healthy, Sneegas reports. The meeting will involve election of the new UUA president, as well as a review of the organization’s core beliefs (its Seven Principles and Purposes) — both of which will help drive attendance, she believes.

Cost-cutting steps already taken include big savings in printing and paper by eliminating paper usage wherever possible. Marketing has also been trimmed and the childcare program has been reduced by a day. The UUA is also offering a very affordable option of dorm rooms at the University of Utah, where individuals can stay for $225 for five days.

“We’re always very conservative about our room block. And we’re doing every thing we can to keep the meeting affordable and trim costs,” Sneegas says. A big part of that effort is tied into the UUA’s green meeting practices.

Committed to Green

When it comes to green meetings, the UUA has been a leader not just among faith groups but within the wider world of meetings. Last year the UUA won the silver Green Meetings Award for its 2007 General Assembly meeting in Portland, Oregon. The prestigious international award is given by IMEX, the International Hotels Environment Initiative, Oceans Blue Foundation, and the Green Meetings Industry Council to organizations and meetings groups that have demonstrated a commitment to sustainable practices.

“I wasn’t excited about green meetings at first. Like many religious conference planners, I felt that we had our work cut out for us in just
negotiating an affordable meeting.” But the UUA Ministry for Earth (as it is now called) convinced her that “we need to be walking the talk,” that green meetings are part of the UUA’s core beliefs, specifically the group’s Seventh Principle, which talks about the inter-related nature of all of creation. The UUA worked with Meeting Strategies Worldwide to put their faith into action.

Today Sneegas serves on the board of the Green Meetings Council and on the Convention Industry Council’s APEX commission charged with developing sweeping standards for green meetings. She believes there is both a business case and a mission-based case to be made for why faith-based groups need to start making changes that will result in meetings that are more environmentally friendly.

“Smart meeting planners know that thousands of dollars can be saved by instituting green meeting practices to cut waste and consumption,” she says, noting that the UUA has cut is printing budget for the General Assembly by a third. “Many convention venues and hotels are also aggressively pushing recycling and energy-savings initiatives, as well.”

But the recession is going to impact how cities and venues can maintain these practices. “It’s hard to imagine that the economy won’t affect sustainable efforts in some form,” acknowledges Sneegas. “We’re hearing, for instance, that Salt Lake City doesn’t do glass recycling anymore. We’re still in negotiations about that.” (The city will continue glass recycling, Rejuvenate learned at press time.)

For faith-based groups, Sneegas believes the obligation to go green is much deeper than simply good business practice. “Every world religion has within their mission something that has to do with their relationship to the earth, something that says we are stewards of the earth. Go back to your core beliefs. This is the right thing to do.”

A passionate involvement in social-justice issues has  always marked the Unitarian and Universalist churches (which united in 1961 to form the Unitarian Universalist Association). It’s also true that the UUA’s being on the forefront of many liberal social issues can present meeting planning challenges. One example: At last year’s General Assembly meeting in Fort Lauderdale attendees were required to show government-issued identification to be admitted to convention center. (The building is located in the Port of Fort Lauderdale and thus is required to follow Federal security guidelines.)

Some UUA members objected in principle to the requirement to show government-issued ID, saying it would discourage anyone without such ID, such as undocumented workers, from attending the event. Attendance at the General Assembly dropped significantly from the year before, in part as a result of the ID policy.

“UUA members are a passionate, educated, socially conscious group of people,” Sneegas says.  “So saying, we better practice what we believe when it comes to our meetings.”

Pendulum Swings

The upside of the recession for faith-based groups is that their meeting business is being  pursued with a new enthusiasm. “We’re getting cold calls from destinations and hotels all around the country,” says Sneegas.

“There is more interest because they know that religious groups are by and large mandated to meet by their bylaws,” she continues. “And another piece of it is that with religious meetings, people come together to support one another and to lift each other up in difficult times, so religious meetings are going to happen in a weak economy whereas corporate meetings may not.”

She is particularly impressed with the new advisory board for faith-based meeting planners formed by the Greater Phoenix CVB. The advisory board met for the first time in October. Focusing in this way on the religious conference market is a great strategy, Sneegas maintains.

“One of the things I realized at the advisory board is that faith-based meeting groups tend to follow each other around the country—to destinations that have the facilities we need and that are attuned to things most important to us.” She adds that religious conference managers are invaluable resources for each other.

“Planners have long memories. We share stories with each other, and if something happens in a city that is negative or that is wonderful, word gets around.”

Photography by Jenn Gyles