A Grassroots Youth Revival Movement
“Service Requests” came in.] 2. “We are concerned that local church youth leaders and some college students are under the impression that this group is authorized by the General Conference Youth Ministries Department because of its close name association. They are independent of the Seventh-day Adventist Church Youth Ministry.” [NOTE: This comment faults GYC for its name “General Youth Conference.” Previously, GYC had explained why it chose its name: “General” (because the youth movement was very diverse, racially, socio-economic status, etc.), “Youth” (because it was youth-initiated and youth-led), and “Conference” (because its meetings were annual training “conferences,” similar to professional conferences to which the public university students and young professionals were accustomed to). Though these facts about the GYC name were widely known, critics of GYC chose to make an issue of the name, claiming GYC was trying to confuse people into believing it was an entity of the General Conference Youth department. This is the reason why GYC would later change its name to Generation of Youth for Christ.] 3. “The Seventh-day Adventist Church has the best trained Youth Ministries Professionals on all levels of church governance, and we encourage organizations to stay within the church structure when it comes to leading our children and young people. This is something we do not take lightly. The General Youth Conference (GYC) has no Seventh-day Adventist Youth Ministries Professionals within its leadership structure.” [NOTE: This comment is a veiled suggestion that GYC leadership is not professionally qualified to be engaged in youth ministry. The truth, however, was that there were qualified individuals—both church leaders and trained professionals—on GYC’s Board who were respected for their knowledge and commitment to the kind of youth ministries approach desired by the young people.] 4. GYC has “chosen to operate independently of any local conference, union, division, and General Conference youth departments. Any group operating as an independent supporting ministry should work with and through the structure of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The youth of the Seventh-day Adventist Church should be encouraged to allow God to use them to evangelize the world as promised. We should also encourage them to work within the Body of Christ, His Church.” [NOTE: GYC was birthed and sponsored by a church entity—the Michigan Conference. Though youth-initiated and youth-led, it had never chosen to be independent of the church. The youth of GYC were simply avoiding the contemporary approach to youth ministry that was being imposed upon them by certain well-meaning adults in the industrialized world. The youth leaders’ comment above was, however, designed to suggest that GYC was an “independent” or “fringe” group, not recognized by the church. Here’s where the issue of “church structure” comes in] As would become evident later in GYC’s “Statement of Clarification,” the Division Youth leaders’ statement was based on a lack of knowledge and misinformation about GYC.
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