The Future of Youth/Young Adult Ministry

    In the last several weeks, there have been a host of rumors about the future of youth and young adult ministry within the UUA. Recent announcements about a shift in emphasis to youth and young adult ministries rooted in our congregational life (which has been discussed for some years now) became confused with the elimination of funding for both Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) and Continental Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Network (C*UUYAN). In addition, there was some miscommunication at the UUA staff level that contributed to the sense that our youth and young adults were being set adrift in some important ways.

As your trustee, I wanted to alert you to this letter, written last week by our Board Secretary, Paul Rickter, that provides some much needed clarification on this important issue. I quote the letter below in its entirety:

February 19, 2008

On behalf of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Board of Trustees, I’m writing this message to set some facts straight regarding recent announcements affecting Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) and Continental Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Network (C*UUYAN).

Over the past few weeks, there has been much discussion about letters sent out by the YRUU and C*UUYAN Steering Committees announcing the decisions by the UUA staff to discontinue their budgets, decisions which would effectively result in the dissolution of YRUU as a continental organization and severely affect C*UUYAN. In this discussion, two facts need to be emphasized:

• The fiscal year 2008-2009 budget will not be approved by the UUA Board of Trustees until its meeting in April, so there has been no decision to end financial support for YRUU or C*UUYAN.
• YRUU and C*UUYAN have status as UUA sponsored organizations that can only be changed by a vote of the UUA Board and we have never voted to change those arrangements nor even received such a proposal from UUA staff.

In short, no decision has been made about the future of YRUU or C*UUYAN and no decision will be made until, at the earliest, the April 18-20 meeting of the UUA Board. And any decision we make will continue to be informed by consultation with all stakeholders in youth and young adult ministry, including both organizations’ Steering Committees and the community of youth, young adults, and their adult allies.

In faith,

Paul Rickter, UUA Secretary

I wanted to make sure that our youth and young adult leaders and members were aware of this development, and I want to encourage any of you who are interested in having a conversation with me about your concerns to be in touch. I welcome your input; I’m eager to hear your concerns so that I might lift them up at the forthcoming April meeting. As a congregational minister with a growing number of youth and young adult members (and as the mother of two Unitarian Universalist youth just beginning to come into their own), I am committed to the creation and continuance of a healthy, vigorous and spirit-filled Unitarian Universalism for young people, in Metro New York and throughout the country. Please let me know your thoughts!

In the meantime, please check out FUUSE, the web home of the UU youth and young adult community, for discussion and commentary on these issues, and of course, www.uua.org, for clarifying statements from our president, Rev. William Sinkford.