According to an INSEE study, known as the “Age pyramid at 1er January 2022”, about a quarter of the French population is under 20 years old. That is to say, in our country, one in four people, or even more, depending on what we want to understand by “young people”. In any case, at the National Youth Network, the range goes up to 30 years. But then, does the Church reflect this reality?
Why don’t young people come to our churches? How to get them to come? How to keep them? These are all questions that our parishioners ask themselves.
What is the place of young people in the Church? How to talk to them? How to encourage them to take an interest in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that the Church wants to announce and in its activities? How to interest them in pastoral succession? I mean by that, the role of animator, manager, leader vis-à-vis even the youngest? Or even all of us, why not?
What place do we give to this “emerging culture” of the new generations in the services and the life of the Church?
These are some of the questions and concerns facing the Church, and which need to be answered. In any case, which we must try to answer. But to ask these questions, “to ask” in the sense of “depositing in a place”, of engaging the debate, here is the complexity, the difficulty with which the Church faces; for asking them puts a finger on the tension between novelty and tradition, and perhaps even “the identity of the Church”.
One thing is certain, youth is an important element for the Church of Christ in general. Protestantism knows it and our United Protestant Church of France is aware of it.
But here it is, it is clear that often we do not know what to do with the young people we have in the families, who dare to approach us or not. And if we don’t know what to do with them, maybe it’s because we don’t really understand what they want.
So, to overcome all this, the National Youth Network, which brings together members of youth committees from all regions of our Church (as well as our partners such as Défap, EEUdF, Baladins, the Jeepp mission, UEPAL, the CPCV…), meets several times a year, with the mission of reflecting on these questions and making proposals to the local Churches, the regional councils and the National Council, but also more simply to make the link between all the “youth” actors of our Church.
One of the missions, last year for example, was to rewrite the educational project of the United Protestant Church of France.
For this year 2022-2023, the Network is working on “listening to the needs of young people”. Spiritual, emotional, physiological needs… It is also a matter of knowing how to listen to the training and support needs of youth leaders and young adults likely to take over the supervision of the youngest.
And, with this in mind, the National Youth Network and the National Catechetical Service (SNC), are working on the project of a joint training weekend during the first quarter of 2023.