Elder Blunck,
As a follow up to our discussion in our CCM last week, I’d like to offer the following thoughts:
1. My experience as a former YSA Ward bishop is that denying a temple recommend and/or a church calling because the membership record is not in the ward or branch are not compelling enough reasons to expect YSA will attend the unit we want them to attend.
2. There are two broad groups of YSA’s: (1) 18-25 year olds, mostly students, serving missions, still figuring out their career, some getting married; (2) 25-31 year olds, mostly professionals, have a career focus, looking more intently to marry, either well-grounded in the gospel or using the Church for social reasons because they still want to marry someone of their faith.
3. The two groups above really don’t mix well no matter how hard we try to engage all of them at the same time.
My point is that no matter how hard we try to force the transplant YSA’s out of the Westlake YSA Ward to get them to go back to their assigned YSA unit, they just won’t go without placing undue guilt in their lives.
My recommendation is that we not try to push or pull them to do the right thing, but let’s recognize the differentiations between the younger and older YSA groups and provide options for them.
For instance, why not let all YSA’s know that they are expected to stay in their stake’s assigned YSA unit until they’re 25 years of age. And then when they turn 25, if they want, they can transfer to a designated “older” YSA ward—in this case, the Westlake YSA Ward.
Maybe they’ll appreciate that we recognize the difference in YSA ages and that we’re trying to accommodate them—that we’re not trying to “tie them down” to one YSA unit for their entire YSA years, but that we want to work with them if they’ll work with us. Hopefully they'll recognize how much we want to help them and will stay in their assigned unit and serve at least until they reach the age of 25.
I have a grandson who recently visited MIT in Boston with his father (our son, a UofO professor). While attending Sunday meetings, they reported to me that this is exactly what they’re doing at MIT and neighboring Harvard University—they have one YSA ward for the 18-25 year olds for both campuses combined and they have another YSA ward for the 25-31 year olds, if they choose to attend.
I realize there is a little more flexibility with campus YSA units, but nonetheless it underscores the importance of addressing the significant difference in maturity and interests for the younger and older YSA in the Church.
I hope this is not too radical or I’m not too naive, but I strongly encourage us to find a way to work with the YSAs (recognizing the reasons there is a migration to the Westlake Ward) and not try to force them to come back just to obey the handbook.
Thanks for listening,
Crismon Lewis
President, Mount Hood Stake
503-914-8689
