General Synod / Te Hīnota Whānui
Youth Presentation



The Youth of the church were once again offered the opportunity to present to the General Synod and did they ever present.

Presentations were heard from each of the Individual Tikanga as well as from the national bodies that bind the youth of the church together.

While the presentations celebrated the many successes that the youth have had in their ministry since the last Synod, they also added a challenge to the General Synod members that as a church we will only reap in the future what we sow today. The question was then left Synod members "So what are you sowing ?".

The presentation was best summed up by Synod Delegate Tessa Wolff who offered the following reflection...

"For the young people of our church this is a significant time. We have been privileged to hold events that have brought together young people from around the church, not just from one area, one culture or even one country but from all across our church and beyond.

We have seen young people who often see the church solely in terms of their local and often monocultural reality, able to experience a much larger reality, and to see these young people so keen to engage, and with such a deep sense of their place through the midst of these experiences is really an achievement.
It excites me that young people can move together with a kind of clarity and immediacy to challenge the boundaries and the biases, to charge through the constant conflict, clarifications and qualifications to say this is important, this matters, and this needs to be done. Our church can often seems to be stuck in a state of immobility, but as young people we are here and we are calling our church to a new place to a new commitment.

The challenge and the opportunity for us is that we have been able to do this in a way that recognises Christ is present in our different cultures and our different languages and our different ways of being church and at the same time we have been able to say we are all one and we will move forward together.
I believe this is because young people are deeply faithful, extremely committed, and have a strong sense of a love of Christ, of church, of God’s presence in our lives and of how we are going to translate that into having an effect on those in our world. For us our destination really is our journey, and my one hope would be that the wider church can trust in their young people to help move the church forward or maybe even take a leap of faith by joining with us to enjoy the ride…"

 

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