Engaging the Present and Envisioning the Future: Leadership Development in an Urban Youth Seminary

• In Event: Leadership Development in Primary and Secondary School Settings

Short Description

This paper describes lessons learned from a multi-year study still in progress led by an intergenerational, intercultural team in a grassroots urban seminary in New York City. The presenter will share the vision for a longitudinal, intergenerational, learning community for youth leadership development in the formation of a youth seminary.

Detailed Abstract

Introduction
The challenge of developing resilient and wise cross-cultural youth leaders during times of turbulence and change resonates for those in urban recent immigrant and more established Christian faith communities and families (Bengston & Putney, 2013). In the face of the complexities of politics, societal pressures, and their immediate cultural milieu, how can young people make sense of their faith and live with integrity? What draws young people to not only remain in church, but to serve in leadership in their present capacity as well as envision their future potential?

Further, what leadership skills do they need as they engage across cultures and generations, negotiating the nuances of politics, language, and tradition in their faith communities? What does, or can, leadership development, vocational discernment, and spiritual formation look like for them? This paper describes lessons learned from a multi-year study still in progress led by an intergenerational, intercultural team in a grassroots urban seminary in New York City that seeks to serve families and generations of the church, and envisions a longitudinal, intergenerational learning community for youth leadership development.

Context
Smith and Denton’s (2005) landmark study describes a trend of young people in North American churches (predominantly from White and suburban backgrounds) leaving the church, and embracing a “moralistic therapeutic deism,” a combination of moral statutes not particular to any of the major world religion (Clark, 2004). For some in predominantly urban immigrant congregations (in this case, East Asian communities), a “silent exodus” of the second generation has been followed by a “boomerang effect” of their return (Lee, 1996, 2014). Intergenerational and intercultural tensions underlay spiritual, social, and community formation. First generation leaders struggle with a foreign context, the desire to uphold tradition and preserve cultural heritage while trying to transmit and model a faith that is relevant across culture and geography. Second generation leaders struggle with lack of voice and power in often hierarchical structures around language, worship expression, and space to translate culture and faith. In this context, what is the future of young people in the church, and indeed, youth leaders?

City Seminary of New York, a grassroots urban theological learning community, has been asking this very question but pushing it further: How can a seminary best serve the church by providing time, space and structure for intergenerational learning across church traditions and cultures, allowing for the possibility of something new to arise from the mixing of communities? What would a youth seminary look like? Who would be involved? What would it mean for the future of these youth leaders? As they consider what leadership means and how they are formed in their faith, vocation is also a key factor. As Clydesdale’s (2015) comparative study of students engaged in college vocational programs reveals, attending to vocation and calling is critical to how present and future decisions are made, and impact on future quality of life. What if this question of vocational discernment came earlier, in high school?

Theoretical Framework
Drawing from a positive youth leadership development perspective (MacNeil, 2006), the emphasis here is not on a deficit model addressing risky behavior, but rather seeing and building on the potential of youth to make valuable contributions to the world, and indeed their immediate community, with supportive relationships and opportunities to see and be seen as being assets (p. 31). Further, framing “effective leadership” (MacNeil, 2006, p. 35) more closely to a shared power and collective action model, rather than a hierarchical leadership structure, this study provides space for intergenerational leverage.

In building bridges across generations, which can be a challenge within church structures that are typically hierarchical by age, this approach to collaborative leadership for youth, rather than fixating leadership in the individual, can provide an alternative vision for engagement, and implies also the need for strategies for adult allies to support the work of youth leaders. Hence, a youth seminary that equips youth leaders and those who support them will cross many lines in order to make space for a diverse learning community that grows with time. As Zeldin and Camino (1999) suggest, young people ought not to just learn about leadership but be engaged in the practice in order to make significant contributions to their communities. Thinking more broadly and contextually about youth leadership, rather than clinging to a linear age-based model of development, will serve the planning team well.

Methodology
Building on earlier ethnographic research on church congregations throughout New York City and two pilot weekend youth ministry programs in 2013 and 2014, this paper proposes to ask and answer the questions of approach, content, format, and audience for a youth seminary initiative through a survey, two seminar panel conversations, interviews and observational notes done by an intergenerational, intercultural working group of six, two faculty and four faculty interns representing diverse perspectives on youth ministry and leadership. While initial meetings for this phase of work began in the summer of 2016, a pilot in the spring of 2017 will take place in order to design a fuller and more extensive program for leadership development, vocational discernment, and spiritual formation.

Conclusion
While this project has taken many years of research, discovery, and prototyping, the need for a youth seminary that addresses the intercultural and intergenerational challenges of an increasingly diverse and urban society presses the work forward. Because much of prior research on youth ministry has focused on “inner city” or White and suburban youth, the implications of this work will be more relevant application for youth leaders in a diverse urban setting, and possibilities for adaptation elsewhere.

Participants

• Maria Liu Wong, City Seminary of New York

• Geomon George, City Seminary of New York

• Miluska Aquije, City Seminary of New York