Rev. Dr. Sofia Betancourt, in her UUA Officer Report “Holding the Heart of Unitarian Universalism,” asserts that “The vision for the future of youth and emerging adult ministry is just beginning to become clearer. Knowing that we need to strengthen the containers for this ministry at the congregational and local levels…” This is challenging to achieve because the Association does not control these containers. However, the Association does control the “container” known as “Youth Caucus.” UUA Secretary John Simmonds shared that there are 6 confirmed youth in attendance - 3 online only and 3 business-only. Therefore, to achieve the goals set forth by Rev. Dr. Betancourt on behalf of the UUA, I move that the Association provide the resources to recruit, train, and cultivate youth leadership and attendance to support no fewer than 200 youth at GA 2027 in San Jose and at GA 2028 online. Our youth are our present – not our future. We are better when the “Youth” are in the “House.” Our sacred duty to our collective children is to provide the requisite skills, support, guidance, and resources so we can follow them into the future of which they dream.
Youth Caucus has long been an historic part of our GA community. Our youth led us toward consolidation, greater inclusion of their more diverse siblings, and more compassion. We are poorer as a religious community by their absence and their small, but mighty numbers at this GA (3 online only and 3 business only) is a testament of our failure as a faith to support our current and future leaders. Please join me in supporting this Responsive Resolution. You can add your name and congregation here. Where are the Youth? Responsive Resolution
It is like finding a unicorn when a youth becomes a UU Board Member. I’m lucky to know several. I thank the UUA for investing in Youth and Young Adults in the 80’s and 90’s as that investment has paid off in talent of leadership now. Lets do a UUA Facilitated Huddle to train adults to be allies of Youth and Young Adults. Lets go where they are at - and build connections. Its Grassroots connections and welcoming and a huddle structure with improv training and youth in leadership. I have met people that obstruct Youth due to fear and a lack of trust. For that reason a safe space away from controlling Authoritarians putting comfort over welcoming is important.
If we teach leadership well, we will not produce leaders that demand we follow them. To imply that if we train leaders (or identify them) then we must follow them is, in my view, disregarding the responsibility each of us has for our own actions. There can be liberal leaders, including our children, who, like Trump, should not be followed. I remember the youth demand that GA adopt a resolution that the prison system be abolished. That kind of extremism helps no one and hinders any liberal progress. Do we really want January 6 criminals patrolling our streets in ICE uniforms?
I don’t know if it is useful to have a quantitative goal for youth attendance at GA if their qualitative experience tends towards being essentially “seen but not heard,” or rather, heard but not heeded. Youth who have attended GA in recent years have often had their recommendations and priorities disregarded by adult attendees. Why would they feel motivated to show up in numbers if they don’t feel that their participation is meaningful?
Personally, I find metrics helpful. I know that Youth Caucus has been a deeply meaningful and transformative experience and a community where much harm has been propagated. And, this is a numeric benchmark because a more nuanced and soft measure is much more difficult. But, if we don’t support them organizing and gathering, we will no have the opportunity to do any assessment of the experience.
One of the questions that I always ask when people say “we need to get more . . . .” is “What do you do that would be attractive to them?” We have had strong youth/young adult presences in the past. Have we asked them what motivated them to be a part of the larger community? The old GA planning committee had youth as participants. Are youth involved in planning GA now? Shouldn’t they be?
Questions to ask ourselves as well as seeking youth voices to tell us what they need.
I would like to see the funding go to programming to teach adult leaders to cultivate and include youth leaders. It is clear from my conversations with youth to emerging adults that it is difficult for each to bridge the gap in building relationships between the generations. I would like to see the financial commitment of the UUA to put on training for older adults (“in a train the trainer”) concept where the adults are knowledgeable and committed in their communities to participate and promote life long faith formation using different forums of communication, instructional, conversation, casual social events, and social justice gatherings.
I would like to say first that there will always be some youth who find their niche in congregational life, others who find it in area-wide or regional programs (though we’ve lost the UUA-funded portion of this framework in recent years) and still more who find it at the national level. The Venn diagram of UU youth engagement has overlap between these circles.
That said, the focus on “numbers numbers numbers” is already playing out in congregational life and is often dissociated from any impetus to actually craft multigenerational relationships. As one example, too many UU churches hire out the youth advisor role to non-UUs, sending a clear signal to youth that the congregation can’t find adult congregants who wish to spend time with them. Training won’t fix anything if there’s no one who wants to take it.
If the UUA, which has already divested of, for example, Youth Midwest Leadership School, Summer Seminary, and so on, is going to focus on numbers at GA, I’m concerned they’re going to miss the mark, because many congregations are just going to throw up their hands and say, “Oh, well, we don’t have any youth.” If, on the other hand, we’re very blunt about the existential threat our denomination faces if our youth don’t have extensive networks of multigen relationships, that might help.
Youth also made it very clear during the Meet the Moment cohorts last year that the youth band was “about them without them”. They asked for more space to build culture and discuss their own place in the denomination. I’ve got youth who are interested in going to San Jose, if we can fund the plane tickets, and fortunately they have a lot of multigen relationships and adult investment present in their home congregation, so we might. But they’re going to gradually lose interest if these sorts of missteps happen when they get there…even if they genuinely love some of the UUA’s youth staff, which they do.
To attract youth requires vision and mission that resonates with the challenges of the world they are inheriting. Inequality continues to escalate, ecosystems face more severe threats, geopolitics turns violent and polarized, AI brings amazing possibilities along with corresponding dangers. Is the UUA deeply engaged in these issues - promoting dialogue that inspires deep reflection and innovative experimentation and community building from local to global? To do this would mean transcending the narrow minded ideologies and practices of identiity politics, which have been threatening our core values of open-minded inquiry and dialogue and respect for the inherent worth and dignity of all. Instead, on certain topics there is strong pressure to either follow the “party line” or keep silent. In this era of global turmoil and transition, we to open up and not censor legitimate critiques just because a few feel that such dialogue is harmful to their identity. In fact, let’s challenge youth to transcend narrow identities and become universal citizens.
I agree. I fear that voting for this resolution may instead encourage folks to pat themselves on the back rather than working to make real change because it is uncomfortable.
For me, the back-patting only comes after we have worked with youth to co-create a container where 200 or more of them are engaged in our largest, national faith gathering. Passing a motion without a metric has a much higher probability of creating “we did a thing” without us actually doing a thing.
I don’t wish to wholly derail this conversation but I cannot let this statement go unchallenged. You are referring to trans youth. Many of the UU youth that I know are trans and nonbinary and are explicitly withdrawing from participation in UU life because of lack of respect for their identities in their congregations. Gen Z and Alpha are more likely to be LGBTQ+ than older generations. Dismissal of trans youth’s existence as “identity politics” is the very thing that is pushing youth out of our denomination–not only trans youth but their cisgender friends and allies as well. If we do not meaningfully embrace trans youth, cis youth will fall away from us and we will die as a denomination. There is no way around it, and no amount of complaints about “identity politics” will browbeat trans youth into participating in a denomination in which they do not feel respected and valued, or feel that their participation is conditional upon accepting disrespect and dismissal of their everyday lived realities.
I agree with you there. I think we could afford more meat on the bones of this in the form of more metrics. 200 young folx is great, but what is the plan? It costs money to do this and we do it during normal working hours (I am joining you from work)
Non-Binary person here. Can confirm that this statement is correct.
Thank you for saying this Evan, as I was trying to form a response. You have said many of the things that I was searching for the words to say.
@dickburkhart I know I and many others have tried to engage with you during at least the past 4 years I’ve been attending GA about how holding marginalized identities in heightened awareness is so inherently important to our faith, and that “identity politics” is a charged term used most frequently by those who oppose efforts for diversity and inclusion as a way to “civilly” ignore the lived experience and needs of those who have been marginalized. I want to express this because it seems to come up every year, and I do not feel that you engage in good faith with those of us who try to speak on this issue and why it matters, or at least do not seem to be willing to have a discussion about it at all.
I don’t have the energy right now to make a huge statement or write a thesis on why identity matters and how looking at our society and structures through this lens is critically important for change, growth, and living into our values, but please know that this is a topic that has occurred before and it does cause harm.
The Responsive Resolution requires work in the following year by the Association and congregations. 200 words can never create a fully formed plan, much less a positive outcome. It can call us to action and relationship.
Evan, I have unfortunately experienced this as well. Contempt shown by some folks toward the identity of trans youth is part of the reason my teenagers no longer attend UU church and why I struggled for quite a while with my own connection to the faith.
Here is a statement from the UUA Lifespan Faith Engagement office’s Youth & Emerging Adult Ministry Staff on youth involvement at General Assembly:
Recognizing that there have been two responsive resolutions proposed at this year’s General Assembly related to youth participation, we wanted to share our insight about the factors that have the most impact on this. Since the pandemic, how communities gather has changed, and attendance at events is down across the board for people of all ages. Historically, online years of General Assembly have struggled to reach a larger attendance of youth. Youth in particular have expressed clearly and emphatically that online GA is not engaging, inclusive, or accessible for them, and that no amount of online programming will be as attractive as in-person opportunities. This reality has been reflected by consistently low youth participation in virtual GA in recent years.
We, the staff at the UUA who work most closely with youth, recognize the tension between online General Assembly being an efficient way to engage in the business of our association and it not meeting our collective need for multigenerational community and a way for youth to connect with each other and build community. We were quite aware of and grappled with this tension for GA26 and thus, for GA27 we are actively working to create a sustainable youth engagement and youth leadership structure.
Lifespan Faith Engagement’s Youth and Emerging Adult Ministry Staff participate in General Assembly each year. In this experimental year, we created resources including video invitations to engage youth as they considered attending General Assembly 2026 and chose not to offer youth specific programming based on low registration. However, we coordinated Synergy 2026 and Bridger Recognition and offered grants for covering the cost of attendance. Our goal was to offer a wider invitation to engagement and delegate work.
UUA staff have been in conversation with the Board of Trustees about generating sustainable youth leadership structures that provide equitable access to community building resources. The priority of the Lifespan Faith Engagement team is to continue to grow the capacity of religious professionals and dedicated lay leaders to provide great youth and emerging adult ministry at the grassroots level in congregations and cluster settings, which we hope will continue to nurture a culture of year-round youth inclusion across the association. Our Deeper Joy Compendium of Activities and the Journeys of Deeper Joy Roleplaying Game Curriculum are both seeds which are being planted towards this goal–providing ways for our young UUs to cultivate community building skills.
I appreciate this greatly. Going back to the 1st GA I attended in Pittsburgh, I have watched our EA/YA engage in the process, spread information different from the “party line” (sometimes even convincing me to vote other than I thought would, and activists.
I also observed congregations and the UUA dismissing this same group and not meeting them in the moment or where they are at, especially when they hold an inconvenient truth. This hurts my heart.