Retreat report

I will try and post something about John Paul II later today, but I don't want to do so in haste.   I admired him, even loved him, and want to choose my words very carefully when blogging about him.

So a brief report on the weekend retreat is in order:

We took fifteen kids (six girls and nine boys) up to a camp near Big Bear, 7500 feet up in the San Bernardinos.  (My time in Bogota the last two summers and a couple of mountain 50ks has helped acclimate me to high altitudes; growing up, I never did well above 5000 feet.)  I drove eight of the teens in one van, along with a great number of suitcases and sleeping bags.  I usually let the kids pick the music we'll listen to on the drive, though I do exercise veto power over certain varieties.   I'm happy to say that our kids were in a retro mood; nothing could have made me happier than to have fourteen and fifteen year-olds eager to listen to the likes of Prince, the Violent Femmes, the Divinyls, Elton John, and Simon & Garfunkel.  I feared having to endure 50 Cent and The Game;  instead, I got to sing along with the others to "Tiny Dancer", in unselfconscious imitation of that wonderful scene in Almost Famous.  I sing off-key, but lustily.

Conditions were comfortable but not luxurious, as befits a weekend retreat.  It was cold but sunny, and lots of snow was still on the ground.  For at least three of our kids, this was their first experience with snow, and despite the fact that it was really more icy slush than powder, they delighted in it.  Of course, we ate far too much all weekend long.  The cafeteria at the camp cranked out hamburgers and spaghetti, and we fortified ourselves with chex mix and chocolate chip cookies almost hourly.  (I've gained at least one waist size since Easter weekend, but at least the peeps are all out of my office.)

There are many activities we do on these confirmation retreat weekends, but by far the most important -- and perhaps unusual by the standards of more conservative churches -- is the writing of our own creed. During the past six months of regular meetings, our confirmation class has learned about the historic creeds of the church.  They've learned about Nicea, and they've at least heard of the Thirty-Nine Articles.  They've read the catechism in the back of the Book of Common Prayer.  But like teens everywhere, they've questioned what they've read.  And on retreat weekends, we give them the chance to write their own statement of beliefs. 

The kids don't write the creed as individuals.  It has to be developed by consensus.  All fifteen had to agree on the final wording, and nothing could be included without unanimous consent.  Mind you, we do put parameters on the writing process: the creed must address God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. It also must include language that talks about the purpose of the church in today's world.  But while it is required that the kids acknowledge the Trinity, it is not required that their creed comply with the traditional, orthodox formulas of faith.   This is the fifth confirmation creed I've seen All Saints youth write, and each of them has proved to be a unique consensus statement of where each particular class has happened to be.

The process of writing the creed is a tremendous challenge.  Most teens are used to doing things by majority vote.   And yet it's remarkable how well (and how quickly) fourteen year-olds grow comfortable with a consensus model of decision-making.   They take turns facilitating the discussion and writing ideas on butcher-board paper. Every so often, one kid will grow frustrated -- but others will quickly step in to move the process along.  During the entire creed-writing process, the adults sit silently.  We only intervene if tempers flare out of control, or if the process becomes hopelessly bogged down (miraculously, that happens more rarely than you might imagine).

The kids came up with a short creed in a bit over three hours.  (Hah!  We beat most of the great councils of the church hands down!)   The creed remains private, but will be presented by the confirmation class to the entire church in June.  After it has been made public, I'll feel free to include it in a blog post, but until then, it remains between the teens and their youth leaders.

I love the effect the creed-writing process has on the teens.  Nothing else gets them to articulate their faith so well, nothing else forces them to listen to others so effectively.  I admit, when I first watched this process (back in 2001), I had my doubts.  As someone who holds much more conservative views than most All Saints parishioners, I was troubled by the idea of kids writing their own creed.  I argued that the time would be better spent getting the kids to accept Jesus into their own hearts.  At the very least, I felt we should be doing apologetics with the kids, helping them to understand the importance of the ancient creeds that have guided the universal church for well over 1500 years.  But let's face it: my idea of a good retreat involves lots of guitar music, and lots of nailing -- or thumb-tacking -- one's sins to the cross.   For me, a retreat ought to focus more on helping young people become "convicted of their own sinfulness."  That doesn't mean fire and brimstone, nor does it mean an unhealthy preoccupation with sexual sins.  It just means that I wish we sometimes weren't so damned scared of using moral language around the kids.  We make a huge mistake when we assume that "sin" occurs only in the political and economic arenas.  Sin is about what we think and do with our own bodies, and it is also about what how we participate in cruel and exploitative social structures.  So few churches manage to emphasize both messages to teens!   And All Saints gets the latter definition of sin just fine, but does a very poor job of discussing the former.

Now I admit, I don't always like the language the kids use in their creeds.   They aren't the bold, stark statements of certainty that my own evangelical heart would embrace.  But these teen creeds are often remarkably thoughtful.  More importantly, they almost always focus heavily on the obligation of the Christian to "be as Christ to the world".  Though the kids have trouble with the divinity of Jesus, they have far less difficulty with the mandate to follow Him -- and though I'm often troubled by their lax theology, I am heartened by their praxis.

I think I can do more good with these kids than I could at a more conservative church.  If folks with evangelical theology leave liberal churches, we leave the kids within those churches to grow up with a monolithic view of what it means to be a Christian.  Our kids need to see that people can believe in Jesus and in justice, can support same-sex unions (the great All Saints issue) and still call Christ the unique Savior of all humankind.  They need to know that liberal politics can mesh well with evangelical faith -- even if in that meshing, one's own contradictions become exposed.

Comments

[Rachel]

I look forward to reading the kids' creed when it becomes public and is posted here. This sounds to me like a wonderful way of encouraging the kids to take ownership of their faith. I imagine each kid's sense of self and God and salvation will change and mature over her/his lifetime -- but that doesn't invalidate the text they worked together to craft over the weekend. I imagine they will remember this experience for a lifetime, and it will shape their Christianity in deep and meaningful ways.

[Thunder Jones]

Sounds like a great time. Did you celebrate morning and evening prayer? Was a celebrant there? I'm really curious to see what they came up with, too. Can you post some creeds from previous years?

[Hugo]

I'll look for some old creeds; we did do a Compline service on Friday and Saturday nights and a Sunday morning Eucharist (but no celebrant.)

[Stentor]

The fact that your kids can come up with their own creed speaks well of the quality of your confirmation class (in terms of the teaching and in terms of the pupils). Thinking back to my own confirmation experience, I remember us as bored and uncomfortable with speaking to each other in religious terms. It wasn't so much a learning and growing experience as something we had to get through to gain the social standing of adults in the church. Had we been asked to write a creed, we would have focused all too much on figuring out what the pastor wanted us to say so that we could get on with our lives.

[Sarah Dylan Breuer]

How did you have a Eucharist without a celebrant? Did you use pre-consecrated elements?

I'm going back and forth on what to do for our high school spring retreat. Our co-rectors will have left the parish, but we'll still be using supply clergy on Sunday mornings only, as the interim won't have arrived yet. In other words, there's pretty much no chance of having a priest there. My understanding is that our bishops don't really like layfolk, or even deacons, using preconsecrated elements under circumstances like this (I suppose I could ask them).

I'm leaning toward doing an agape instead -- maybe see whether we can do it in the context of breakfast on Sunday morning, with the gospel reading being the resurrection appearance in John in which Jesus cooks breakfast for his followers. Too bad there isn't any kind of fish we could have that the group members wouldn't find repulsive! Maybe bread and honey would work ...

[Swan]

The writing of the creed sounds like a great idea. Makes the students about their faith.

What is a celebrant? What are pre-consecrated elements? Isn't all you need (yeast-free) bread, grape juice and some Christians to have a Lord's supper?

[John]

Not if you're an Anglican or a Catholic. This is interesting, Hugo. I'm going to be teaching a Baptism class in a month or so, and although we shall emphatically not be writing our own creed (We prefer to let the Apostles do that), I shall read with interest, and I hope, not with pain.

[Hugo]

Yes, we always use pre-consecrated elements. One of our youth directors is an official eucharistic minister, and helps arrange everything for us. (Pre-consecrated means that the host -- the bread -- has already been consecrated -- blessed -- by a priest.)

[the_methotaku]

"Our kids need to see that people can believe in Jesus and in justice, can support same-sex unions (the great All Saints issue) and still call Christ the unique Savior of all humankind. They need to know that liberal politics can mesh well with evangelical faith -- even if in that meshing, one's own contradictions become exposed." I comepletely aggree with you here, though in my case I'm a politcal progressive in a somewhat evangelical Methodist church.

[Sarah Dylan Breuer]

Hugo,

I'm a licensed Eucharistic minister too, but in Maryland (unlike L.A.), the (not totally inflexible) position is that lay Eucharistic ministers should do their thing pretty much only when the people they're sharing the Eucharist with are physically unable to get to a place where it's being celebrated by a priest or bishop. I doubt that any Eucharistic police would arrest me or anything if I used pre-consecrated elements to do a Eucharist on a youth retreat, but I do try to follow my bishops' preferences.

I think I've pretty much settled on bread and honey for the Sunday morning liturgy -- I think at the end of and incorporated with breakfast, if I can arrange tables at the retreat center such that we're all sitting around one table. But I'm *really* looking forward to being able to celebrate the Eucharist.

[Lisa]

Hugo, Your last paragraph sounds a lot like how I feel about being a liberal feminist Mormon, only the vise versa side of things. In my world, there's way too much emphasis on what we do with our bodies, and not nearly enough on exploitive social systems. I hope in some small way to bring balance where I can. If I left, if everyone who feels the way I do ran off to join All Saints, then where would the balance come, what good could I do there in a room full of people who totally agree with me?

[brett]

I've stumbled across this site after googling "teen creeds" and have read with interest some of what's here. I feel compelled to ask a question. Being ordained in an evangelical denomination, the mere asking of this question may play into some of the negative stereotypes surrounding evangelicals, homosexuality, and same-sex unions. However, after reading this quote found above ("If folks with evangelical theology leave liberal churches, we leave the kids within those churches to grow up with a monolithic view of what it means to be a Christian. Our kids need to see that people can believe in Jesus and in justice, can support same-sex unions (the great All Saints issue) and still call Christ the unique Savior of all humankind."), what do you do with a passage like I Corinthians 6:9-11? How does that mesh with a "liberal" view on homosexuality? I realize that there are many disciplines we hold within our denomination as necessary for membership - non-smoker, non-drinker, etc. - that are "gray areas" scripturally. I believe in my heart that you can smoke and have a share in the Kingdom of God. But these I Corinthians verses seem definitive concerning a lifestyle of active homosexuality, among other things, which is sinful in the eyes of God. Help me out.

[rofovnifo]

Hi all!

Looks good! Very useful, good stuff. Good resources here. Thanks much!


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