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 Paris Basis was adopted on 22nd August 1855 in Paris, France at the 1st World YMCA Conference
“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
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.
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