By
Marraine Kettell
As
the call “Come to the Feast” went out to churches in the Massachusetts
Conference, organizers expected no more than 15 people from the state
to go. Amazingly, 27 of our own young adults attended this ecumenical
Protestant young adult conference in San Diego this past Memorial Day
weekend. Come to the Feast is a biennial conference coordinated
by the Young Adult Ministry team of the National Council of Churches.
By far the largest group in the entire conference, our posse arrived
a day early for a mission project in Tijuana, Mexico. Working as a group
gave us a chance to bond with other young adults from the state while
doing much needed repairs on a community center high in the hills of
the city.
Our keynote speaker Rodger Nishioka, who spoke on three occasions, was
one of the major highlights of the weekend. Besides teaching at Columbia
Theological Seminary, Rodger, an ordained Presbyterian, promotes young
adult ministry through motivational speaking as well as authoring several
books.
The
conference also included workshops covering four main themes: How
to Build Young Adult Ministry; Young Adults and Social Justice;
Ecumenical and Inter-faith Learning; and Spirituality and
Self-Care. As clergy, lay-leaders and congregants we all returned
from these workshops as well as from our discussions with other attendees
with new ideas for our own individual churches.
Overall it was a wonderful opportunity to network with other young adults
and discuss different approaches to young adult ministry. As a generation
we learn things differently, experience things differently and approach
things differently. Therefore the approach to young adult ministry needs
to reflect this. More than once it was stated that this must be an ecumenical
and not necessarily a denominational movement. The wealth of talent,
faith and energy in our group alone gave witness to a hunger to belong
to the greater faith community.
Marraine
Kettell is a member of Old South
Church in Boston.
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