Providing Christian resources from the YMCA past and present to nourish inclusive, equitable work in our diverse and global neighborhoods that build up healthy spirit, mind and body for all.
As YMCAs in the United States grapple with the roiling upheavals of 2020, and the tumultuous start to 2021, as we seek solid ground from which to stand and serve our struggling communities, there is much we can learn from our global YMCA friends and their foundation for serving amidst world-wide challenges.
Grinding poverty, political violence, ethnic resentments, religious strife, environmental pollution, broken families, corrupt cities – whatever shock or resistance American citizens have to these realities in our own country (the wealthiest and most powerful in modern history) fellow YMCA workers from around the world have also had to strive for success in this grueling reality for generations.
What can USA Christian YMCA leaders learn from Y’s in other countries – particularly ones committed to the legacy of George Williams and the Paris Basis?
What have other international Y’s figured out when it comes to embodying the gospel of Christ in a dangerous and violent world?
YMCA Challenge 21 is a gritty and enduring Christian commitment to historical and spiritual realities, but focused on an inspirational and grounded future.
“Affirming the Paris Basis adopted in 1855 as the ongoing foundation statement of the mission of the YMCA, at the threshold of the third millennium we declare that the YMCA is a world-wide Christian, ecumenical, voluntary movement for women and men with special emphasis on and the genuine involvement of young people and that it seeks to share the Christian ideal of building a human community of justice with love, peace and reconciliation for the fullness of life for all creation.
Each member YMCA is therefore called to focus on certain challenges which will be prioritized according to its own context.
These challenges, which are an evolution of the Kampala Principles, are:
• Sharing the good news of Jesus Christ and striving for spiritual, intellectual and physical well-being of individuals and wholeness of communities.
• Empowering all, especially young people and women to take increased responsibilities and assume leadership at all levels and working towards an equitable society.
• Advocating for and promoting the rights of women and upholding the rights of children.
• Fostering dialogue and partnership between people of different faiths and ideologies and recognizing the cultural identities of people and promoting cultural renewal.
• Committing to work in solidarity with the poor, dispossessed, uprooted people and oppressed racial, religious and ethnic minorities.
• Seeking to be mediators and reconcilers in situations of conflict and working for meaningful participation and advancement of people for their own self-determination.
• Defending God’s creation against all that would destroy it and preserving and protecting the earth’s resources for coming generations.
To face these challenges, the YMCA will develop patterns of co-operation at all levels that enable self-sustenance and self-determination.”
Imagine the humble posture of North American YMCA’s discarding their exceptionalism and turning towards global Y’s to learn in mutuality how to live out our mission in this new era of unprecedented disruption and chronic uncertainty?
Imagine the kind of solidarity we could generate in the United States if we relented of reinventing the YMCA and took some lessons from our world partners on living out the historic mission of the Y amidst these challenging times?
Challenge 21 enables North American Y’s to transcend the boring discussions of whether we should be more or less a business or non-profit focused, more or less a gym/swim or social agency.
The vision and depth of Challenge 21 could transform the spirit, energy and creativity of local Y’s, if they are brave enough to embrace it.
Here’s how different Y’s across the world highlight Challenge 21:
If you were to “grade” your Y in light of Challenge 21, what would the result look like?
If you were to connect the most exciting parts of your Y with the Challenge 21, which parts would be highlighted?
Just imagine how exciting your Y could be with a more intentional holistic focus in solidarity with fellow associations across the globe!
One can make the case that Challenge 21 is a robust, thoughtful, dynamic, transformational unpacking of our current YUSA mission statement.
It can open up a way to transcend the colloquial American political and religious anxieties; it can reconnect us with our world neighbors and the immanent love that empowers us all.
What will guide our YMCA in 2021? With what we think is ahead of us, with what we are preparing to overcome, with what must change within and around us – what is our cornerstone for the Y future? Since 1855 the Paris Basis has been a foundation for YMCA’s around the world to navigate unprecedented disruptions and cataclysmic upheavals. What is the Paris Basis, and how can it aid Christian leaders in the Y to “build a healthy spirit, mind and body for all?”
What is the original animating genius of the YMCA?
What is the power source for sacrificial service, resiliency, and love that enables the Y to endure for over 15 decades globally and locally – especially here in Fort Wayne?
The Paris Basis of the YMCA is a concise yet potent agreement for shaping how a global youth movement can adapt to a plethora of cultures and unique circumstances while embodying a transcendent purpose and calling.
Here in the United States, the Paris Basis guided the YMCA amidst the violent upheavals of the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Great War, the Great Depression, World War Two, the Cold War, Civil Rights Era, Korea-Vietnam-Central America-Iraq-Afghanistan wars/tragedies, 9/11, and now COVID.
“The Young Men’s Christian Associations seek to unite those young men who, regarding Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour, according to the Holy Scriptures, desire to be his disciples in their faith and in their life, and to associate their efforts for the extension of his Kingdom amongst young men.
Any differences of opinion on other subjects, however important in themselves, shall not interfere with the harmonious relations of the constituent members and associates of the World Alliance.”
YMCA Paris Basis, adopted at First World YMCA Conference, 1855, organized by Henri Dunant
draft document of the Paris Basis, 1855
The spirit of the YMCA leaders that drafted this document also shaped the future ecumenical movement of European and then international Christian churches.
The emphasis on Jesus Christ, his Kingdom, and harmonious relationships should not be underestimated for its significance on the growth and vitality of the Y in a turbulent and war-torn century.
George Williams, a founder of the YMCA, who embodied this kind of Christian spirit of service, was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1894.
Henri Dunant, organizer of the first YMCA world council, also embodied this Christian spirit of service, and would go on to found the International Red Cross; he would be awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.
The Christian spirit of service embodied by Williams and Dunant, as expressed in the Paris Basis and enculturated across dozens of nations around the world in those early decades, still exists today for YMCA’s to work together and collaborate in their communities.
It has been necessary and good for the Young Men’s Christian Association to adapt and mature over the past 175+ years.
In regard to the Paris Basis the need prevails to immerse our mission in it, as we fully immerse ourselves in the cultures of our communities. We still live in a violent, broken, yet beautiful world, as 2020 revealed so clearly to us.
The genius of the Paris Basis is its emphasis on the personal, not the abstract: Jesus Christ as our faithful God and courageous Savior; on its reconciliatory nature as revealed by Christ’s kingdom that prioritizes forgiveness, oneness, and sacrificial service.
The world doesn’t need platitudes or empty promises; it does still need real people living as peace-makers inspired by the words and works of the real Jesus Christ.
The YMCA is at its best when it is personal, when it connects and unites communities, when it brings out the best in others. What makes this transformative is when it happens amidst irascible conflict, brokenness, and apathy.
The spirit of the Paris Basis originated among twelve industrious young Christian men who associated to improve the lives of workers around them living in darkness, squalor, and hopelessness.
When YMCA workers seek to embody this same spirit in its complicated context, the Paris Basis can be a guiding light and spiritual fuel as it enters into difficult and overwhelming circumstances.
The Paris Basis emphasizes some key texts from the New Testament:
– the dynamic person of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Gospel according to Luke, especially the first four chapters.
– the transformative kingdom of Christ unto which we are disciples in faith and life, described in the Gospel according to Matthew, particularly chapters five through seven.
– the harmonious relations stem from a robust and powerful vision of Jesus Christ as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane “that all may be one” as recorded in the Gospel according to John, in chapter 17, but prefaced by the call to “love one another” in chapters 15-16.
Christian leaders within the YMCA movement can draw great wisdom and strength from reflections on these three core Gospel writings, as they go about their demanding work in the community.
Like anyone else we can get overwhelmed by the upheavals on our world; the Paris Basis can be our North Star in the wilderness, our compass in the storm, our lantern in the dark.
You may not be knighted for your YMCA work, nor receive a Nobel Peace Prize. But that same spirit of Christ that animated Williams and Dunant, as articulated in the Paris Basis, is still alive and vibrant, for those willing to embrace it.
Together we can strive for more peace, in the way of Christ and his Kingdom, especially in the troubled times still ahead for our world in 2021.
What is a way that communion can be part of the YMCA’s Christian ecumenical work in a community to build stronger bridges for a healthier spirit for all? Expanding and enriching our grasp of communion opens up new possibilities.
What is Communion? In part, it is about union with Christ Jesus, with God, with God’s people in Christ, across the globe and the ages.
As the Director of Christian Emphasis with the YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne, Indiana, and as one connected with other Christian Y workers around the state, country, and world, I muse often on why communion isn’t a more common practice within our association.
When I was first hired, and I proposed offering communion at different branches in the chapels for our members, I was discouraged from doing so. The main reason given focused on the non-unifying reality of communion, how it was not as inclusive as other Christian practices like praying, volunteering in the community, singing, or a Bible study.
Interestingly, this is a very similar reason given in the early days of my denomination, formed in the last decades of the 18th century, for why they only practiced communion quarterly as a church.
The Church of the United Brethren in Christ was formed amongst primarily German Protestants, led by a continental German Reformed pastor and a Pennsylvania German Mennonite minister. They had close ties with the British clergyman Francis Asbury of the Anglican-Methodist movement.
It was a heady day of revivals, of preaching to mass cr0wds in open fields or large barns. They sought to proclaim a simple message of salvation to churched-people.
The liturgy around communion in the Reformed, Mennonite, and Anglican churches became tainted with formality, a dead spirit, and legalism. A result: a de-emphasis on the role of communion in a Sunday morning worship gathering, and an over-emphasis on the proclamation of the word for the explicit result of the salvation of souls for Christ.
The YMCA movement in 1844, a British product of Anglican and Dissenter Christians, highly valued the revival style, with founder George Williams leaving a legacy of constantly witnessing to strangers for the salvation of their souls.
While the Y valued unity and harmony in the movement, as expressed in the 1855 Paris Basis, the emphasis was on the extension of the kingdom through revival-style tactics that led to the salvation of souls. It would seem that communion was delegated as a sacrament of the church, and the Y was not a church, but the Y could help the church out by saving souls, and then sending them to the church.
This became a complicated scenario. Often the young men saved by the YMCA didn’t want to join the stuffy old churches in town. So the Y had to provide discipleship courses and ministry training of their own. Springfield College provided a lot of this educational operations. But without the emphasis on communion, which was the role of the church.
The Y has moved on from offering Christian education courses as part of its core identity. Many other para-church organizations have sprung up over the decades to evangelize and disciple youth, men, and families. There is a current movement in the Y to strengthen the “C” – I’m part of that work; but: to what end? What can we learn from our past 176 years of Christian ministry work (evangelism & discipleship) and build on it, rather than repeat it or over-nostalgiaize it?
Click on pic for more on the World YMCA celebration and reflection of their 175th anniversary gathering.
My own church tradition has a mixed relationship with communion, much like many other conservative Evangelical congregations. With a reductionistic-like focus on the salvation of souls as the highest, most important, very urgent priority – the role of communion is minimized. It’s not always clear how to connect communion to the salvation of souls, other than to over-emphasize the atonement for our sins made through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus on the cross.
While that part of communion is true, there is more to the sacrament of communion than just substitutionary atonement, of justification by faith, of sanctification by grace. There is also the spiritual unity that is inherent in the name of the practice: commune + union = communion. And it is this element that the YMCA can retrieve and build upon, especially with our emphasis on unity, on being “for all” and building bridges.
Rather than skim the surface in connecting with the many different kinds of Christians in the YMCA, we could make thoughtful attempts to build stronger spiritual bonds through the practice of communion. It’s not just the sharing of a cup and bread that bind us together, but how we understand it, what it means to us, how it connects us to what God has revealed to his people through Christ, through the Scriptures, and the saints who have come before us.
Growing up in the UB church, we partook of communion quarterly. Because it was so special, we didn’t want to take it too often, as that might cause us to take it for granted. Also, we didn’t want to be like the Catholics or liberal mainline congregations who took it every week. But even as a youth, it seemed to me that if communion was as special as we said it was, shouldn’t we do it every week? When I started a church, we “compromised” and practiced communion every month. For certain sermon series, we might do it every week, which was a relief for some in our congregation, and a stretch for others.
The practice of communion continues to stick in my heart as a sacrament which I want to understand better, that I want it to mean more; it seems to me there is more to it than what I was taught or experienced growing up. Getting to know faithful Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, and Methodist Christians who took communion every week has helped a lot.
I realize that there are certain restrictions that some denominations place on their members when it comes to partaking of communion. Because it is so special, it is especically guarded, to help keep it pure and it’s meaning sacred.
My Protestant evangelical heritage prompts me to open up communion to the world, but to also pay attention to the concern to keep it special. I’d like to find a way where we could offer communion every week, maybe every day, in a way that it would be open to the world, and still be special. The YMCA seems to be a vehicle to attempt those experiences.
In our under-nourished Christian ecumenical work, once a hall-mark of our YMCA identity, and now in America almost largely forgotten, the sacrament of communion could be a spiritual practice which re-focuses Christian Y members on Christ in a new, ecumenical way.
Something like this is needed for Christians to fuel the existential/spiritual work of racial reconciliation in our communities, adapting to and recovering from the effects of the pandemic, and building bridges across polarized chasms.
Thi attempt/experiment is not a replacement for the different Christian churches and how they do communion. But maybe rather a re-connecting point for Christians who are not part of a church tradition for many reasons, some of them being the hypocrisy of the church, the irrelevance of the church, the spiritual-deadness of the church, and other reasons.
There is much that needs to be thought out on this idea. For me, I know it includes continuing to expand my understanding of what communion means to other Christians and their church traditions.
This morning I was reading For The Life Of the World by Alexander Schmemann, former Dean and Professor of Liturgical Theology at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary. The following paragraphs from chapter 2, The Eucharist, caught my attention, I had to re-read it several times, as it made fresh connections and new points about communion that I found to be inspiring, disturbing, and encouraging.
It opens up for me a richer vision of what is happening in communion, of it’s larger purpose, what it can mean for me and for us as participants, and what it can mean for the church and the world. This Orthodox perspective is new to me, so there is much I need to learn yet to keep it in context. Yet, I do know that I will never participate in communion the same ever again, having read this perspective by Rev. Schmemann. For me, it reads as a profound meditation on John 17:21.
“As we proceed further in the eucharistic liturgy, the time has come now to offer to God the totality of all our lives, of ourselves, of the world in which we live. This is the first meaning of our bringing to the altar the elements of our food.
For we already know that that food is life, that it is the very principle of life, and that the whole world has been created as food for man. We also know that to offer this food, this world, this life to God is the initial ‘eucharist’ function of man, his very fulfillment as man.
We know that we were created as celebrants of the sacrament of life, of its transformation into life in God, communion with God. We know that real life is ‘eucharist,’ a movement of love and adoration toward God, the movement in which alone the meaning and the value of all that exists can be revealed and fulfilled. We know that we have lost this eucharistic life, and finally we know that in Christ, the new Adam, the perfect man, this eucharistic life was restored to man.
For He Himself was the perfect Eucharist; He offered Himself in total obedience, love and thanksgiving to God. God was His very life. And he gave this perfect and eucharistic life to us. In Him God became our life.
And thus this offering to God of bread and wine, of the food that we must eat in order to live, is our offering to Him of ourselves, of our life and of the whole world. ‘To take in our hands the whole world as if it were an apple!’ said a Russian poet.
It is our Eucharist. It is the movement that Adam failed to perform, and that in Christ has become the very life of man: a movement of adoration and praise in which all joy and suffering, all beauty and all frustration, all hunger and all satisfaction are referred to their ultimate End and become finally meaningful.
Yes, to be sure, it is a sacrifice: but sacrifice is the most natural act of man, the very essence of his life. Man is a sacrificial being, because he finds his life in love, and love is sacrificial: it puts the value, the very meaning of life in the other and gives life to the other, and in this giving, in this sacrifice, finds the meaning and joy of life.
We offer the world and ourselves to God. But we do it in Christ and in remembrance of Him. We do it in Christ because He has already offered all that is to be offered to God.
He has performed once and for all this Eucharist and nothing has been left unoffered. In him was Life -and this Life of all of us, He gave to God. The church is all those who have been accepted into the eucharistic life of Christ.
And we do it in remembrance of Him because, as we offer again and again our life and our world to God, we discover each time that there is nothing else to be offered but Christ Himself – the life of the world, the fullness of all that exists.
It is His Eucharist, and He is the Eucharist. As the prayer of offering says – ‘it is He who offers and it is He who is offered.’ The liturgy has led us into the all-embracing Eucharist of Christ, and has revealed to us that the only Eucharist, the only offering of the world is Christ.
We come again and again with our lives to offer; we bring and ‘sacrifice’ – that is, give to God – what He has given us; and each time we come to the End of all sacrifices, of all offerings, of all eucharist, because each time it is revealed to us that Christ has offered all that exists, and the He and all that exists has been offered in His offering of Himself.
We are included in the Eucharist of Christ and Christ is our Eucharist. (p34-36)
