What's New?

The Connectional Lay Council’s (CLC) Expanded Young Adult and Youth initiative, which is an interdepartmental collaboration with the Christian Education Department and the Women’s Home & Overseas Missionary Society, continues to move ahead full throttle toward reaching the ambitious goal of increasing the young adult/youth membership to 5,000 by the Convention in 2013.

Like the journey of a thousand miles incremental progress is being made with the accomplishment of tangible objectives. An operational matrix for the initiative now includes a three pronged Call To Action engagement plan. The Call To Action, introduced at the 9th Quadrennial Convention in July 2009, was formerly adopted by the CLC Executive Board at it’s meeting in Feb 2010 as a component of the Strategic Plan.

In order to raise the level of accountability and to measure progress at the local, district, and conference levels, CLC Regional Directors are being required to include the Call to Action performance matrix tool as an element of their standard report at bi-annual board meetings. Measurement targets include the number of regional lay academies conducted tailored to the needs and interest of young people, the number of mentoring programs at the local and conference levels and the number of new young adult and youth lay memberships.

The Connectional Lay Council will continue to champion the effort to edify, encourage, recruit, and train Zion’s youth and young adults for lay ministry by sponsoring promotional activities at all denominational meetings. Our next promotional event will take place at the Quadrennial Christian Education Convention July 2010 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The format will be similar to the one hosted at the 2009 CED Winter Meeting in Dallas, Texas. Youth and Young Adult attendees will be encouraged to participate in a “How Well Do you Know Your Church?” contest. Individuals will be asked to complete a Zion focused historical quiz, answer questions related to the worship experience, and to offer ideas and recommendations on how the church can be more effective in reaching and retaining the young people. The goal in Raleigh will be to reach a larger audience than in Dallas. Prizes will be offered as incentives for participation. The CLC leadership is also exploring the feasibility of conducting a lay academy at the 2010 CED convention for Christian Educators utilizing the Christian Education Department theme.

The CLC is pleased to report that the results of the 2009 survey can be viewed on the CLC web site (http://www.clcamezion.org/) by clicking on the Youth Initiative banner. Please take a few minutes to visit the site and review the results. The headline measures are most enlightening. Next steps in support of the retention initiatives include a formal report out of the survey results to Christian Educators at the CED winter meeting in Phoenix, AZ. December 2010.

In closing, I leave with this quote from John Maxwell (lead¬ership expert), “The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership”. The CLC through its young adult/youth initiative is fully committed to the highest calling.


Submitted by Yvonne Baskerville, 1st Vice President