Young Porvoo in Sweden

Church of Sweden Youth is an organisation for children and young people within the Lutheran church of Sweden. During two years, 1998-2000, we harboured a leadership project, with the intention of mapping how we should work with young people´s leadership issues in the future. These are some of the conclusions which the project reached:

1. Analysing the world and context in which we live. It is important to see and understand how changes in society affects our possibilities of recruiting and training young leaders. What are the needs and the expectations that young people bring to their church? How can being a leader help them grow and use their talents? When society challenges us with individualism and a thousand possibilities of choice, when acceptance of authority is no longer self-evident, this affects young people´s expectations on leadership.

2. Analysing our own concept of our organisation. How do we view ourselves? How do others see us? How do we relate as a youth organisation to our mother church? Do we have a clear-cut identity as the basis of our leadership? Do we know what ideas we want to work for and pass on to others? How is this evident in our training programmes and our gatherings? Are there different cultures within our organisation and within the church? Do we adopt the Church´s patterns of authority and values, without questioning? How do we distribute power within our organisation? How do our leaders handle the fact of their own power over others? Are there invisible power-structures that affect the democracy within our organisation?

3. The importance of focusing on the basic values and the individual person. Are we not only bearers of a vision and an idea, but are we being carried by it? Meaning: How do our beliefs affect the way that we act and organise? What we do must speak the same language as what we claim to believe in. We must improve our self-reflection and be ready to change when the world around us is changing. Because of this, it is imperative that we give room to an ongoing conversation and debate about our central values: why are we here? What do we want to be? What are our hopes for the future? We must train district boards so that they can initiate this type of dialogue locally.

Leadership is all about the people involved: We must see and give room for those who want to contribute with their gifts to our community. We must improve our ability to see their motives and their resources, so that they can grow as individuals, and take responsibility for others.

“Speaking about faith..”

Church of Sweden Youth are preparing for a project investigating how we can improve our ways of speaking about faith with young children. A research investigation in 1999 into how young leaders within the Lutheran Church of Sweden and Church of Sweden Youth see themselves and their faith in the context of the church, suggested that many young leaders are unsure whether their personal faith is in accord with the official creed of the church. We think it is important that those who work with children and young people are prepared to have conversations about faith that allows room for young faith to be acknowledged and grow. The working name of the project is “Speaking about faith” and a group has been preparing a plan for the project, which will hopefully begin realisation during 2003-2004.

“Cool Consumer”

In the past, Church of Sweden Youth have taken part in the boycott against Nestlé, as a protest against the company´s policy of promoting the sale of artificial breast-milk in third world countries. After some years we found that it was difficult to find young people who wanted to work actively with the boycott. It was decided that we would leave the boycott and look for other ways to get young people involved in international consumer issues. A national group has been working with the questions 2000-2002 and one of the results is that we have now applied and been granted means from the Swedish government´s Youth board. During 2003 we will start a new project called Schysst konsument (Cool Consumer), concerned with spreading information and enthusing young people about issues relating to Fair trade and globalisation, as a way of acting upon our Christian faith.