The Words of the Gavin Family
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The Words of the Gavin Family |
Jaga Gavin is the Lovin' Life Ministries National Youth Pastor USA
Question: You once said, "Youth ministry is definitely about helping youth and young adults figure out their relationship with God, or how God works in their lives, helping them figure out where they're going, and giving them the tools to succeed in life and deal with peer- pressure situations." In these past two years, do you feel you have come close to this goal or reached it? If so, how?
In the past two years, I feel that we've made great strides in helping young Unificationists come to understand themselves in relationship to their faith, and to True Parents, but we still have a lot of work to do.
One person that sticks out for me is Glenn Haider, a 20 year old young man who's been coming to Lovin' Life Ministries regularly for the last two years. I approached him about the opportunity of being with and supporting the Lovin' Life Junction Music Team, and I felt that that was something he wouldn't have taken on had I not asked him, but something he'd been waiting for someone to ask him to do. I felt that he wanted to be involved, but didn't know whether he was the right person for the job. Now he's interested in how else he can give back and help out with other parts of Lovin' Life Ministries. He just needed that initial push. When you look at someone like Glenn, at first glance you're not sure how involved he'd be with our church or our movement, but when you get to know him and see his true colors shine through, he's someone who's still searching, still trying to figure out the answers, which I think is an amazing place to be. I'm glad he's here and that he's asking questions and not just sitting on the sidelines. He's involved, and he's thinking, "How can I give more of myself to this community and help it help express itself in a way that is natural to it?"
Question: You also said, "If the youth and young adults really understand who they are, really have a relationship with God, with their friends, to be who they are, centered on God and not be ashamed of that, then I think we'll see a culture shift happening." Do you feel the youth that have passed through the HSA-UWC youth ministry in the last two years have had this breakthrough? Do you feel there is a culture shift taking place?
I definitely feel that there is a breakthrough. Our Senior Pastor Reverend In Jin Moon's main message is to aspire for internal and external excellence, and I've seen that we've been able to highlight that through Unification News, different youth ministry programs across the country and different social impact groups. We've been able to highlight the young people in our community who are doing incredible things, whether they're aspiring to get jobs with Google or to give back to their local community. I remember a few years ago, young people wanting to work with our local movement wasn't something that was happening. If you come here now, especially to the sixth floor of HSA-UWC, it's primarily younger people here. As our Senior Pastor is creating room and areas for people to start working for the ministry, we are developing, under her guidance, a career path to work with the church. The church has actual positions, actual career paths that involve working with what you're already passionate about. Whether its journalism, video and 3D graphics, photography or ministry, we're creating that career path. I feel that we're definitely doing a better job highlighting individuals and supporting them throughout their careers.
Two years ago the culture was very individualistic. If I was Minnesota, I was Minnesota; if I was New Jersey, I was New Jersey; if I was New York, I was New York; if I was WestRock I was WestRock, not New York. I think it was like that across the country. Today I feel that we are the American movement, and we may be New York, California, or New Jersey, etc., but we feel all-around more connected than we did two years ago. This allows us to evaluate and appreciate the different people that we have across the country. We learn from each other, especially in the areas of ministry; we not only learn about ministry from Headquarters' point of view, but also learn and gather the best practices from around the country.
Question: What have been some nationwide programs to date?
Face-Off is a middle-school/ high-school winter workshop that we had last year. Youth pastors of New York and New Jersey led it, and it involved mostly people from the New Jersey/New York area. The gathering was smaller, but it was still open to other communities. Usually the nature of the winter workshops is that they are shorter and more localized, more by the region. We'll have Face-Off again this year.
FUSE is more of a national program, and I've been working with Dave Hunter and Jin Kwon Kim in creating it. It's taking a lot of things that Reverend In Jin Moon talks about. For example, she refers to looking in the mirror, so we're trying to change FUSE into more of a self-evaluation, or self-improvement program. We're also going into the roots of the Divine Principle and who we are as people. This program is geared towards young adults, and it gives them a chance to express any questions that they might have and to come together to find solutions and answers.
Question: Are there any efforts to implement Face-Off and FUSE in other parts of the country?
Yes. We're still fine-tuning the program right now, so every time we run a FUSE program, we try something a little bit different. We've done about three or four of them throughout the year so far. Jin Kwon and I recently did something similar to FUSE at Camp Lonestar in Texas with the camp's staff, and we've also been asked by Boston to come up and show them how to run a FUSE program. So it's definitely something we want to share, but something that still needs some fine-tuning. We're learning what to do and what not to do as we go on.
Jin Kwon Kim is a volunteer and as an older second-generation Unificationist, he helps a lot of young adults ask the right questions regarding their life of faith. He helps many discover what's holding them back and what makes them unique and special, taking the idea of a mirror of self-evaluation and really looking at ourselves so we know how to move forward with our lives in the right way. About six years ago, Jin Kwon started up BCSF (Blessed Culture and Sports Festival), which is definitely something that has become bigger over the years. In 2009, Lovin' Life Ministries didn't have a big hand in it, but in 2010 and 2011, Jin Kwon offered BCSF to Lovin' Life Ministries to make this program even better. He knew he could only take it so far and that in the scope of Lovin' Life Ministries, it can go to a new level. So now he's working with Lovin' Life Ministries directly.
Question: As far as future plans for the youth ministry department, you shared with Unification News that you wanted youth ministry to be a place our youth can bring their friends from school, to do more training to empower the parents and to bridge that gap between parents and their children. In your opinion, have you reached these three goals? Why or why not? If so, how?
We have reached the goal as far as people bringing and their friends to the ministry, camps, and Sunday Service. Whenever people brought in friends who were not church members, they were received very well. There is training for the staff to understand that we don't want to ostracize anyone, and I think Reverend In Jin Moon really encapsulates this concept when she says we're all sons and daughters of God -- no matter who we are or where we're from, we all have that unique divinity within us, but we don't water down these concepts with second generation Unificationists.
There are definitely people who have joined the Church by attending our programs as guests. We have a few examples of someone being invited to the youth ministry or Sunday Service, and with support from that youth's family, joining the Church.
The youngest to join was about 15 years old, from the WestRock community, I believe.
Question: How do you teach about lineage at camp when there are guests there?
We teach it in the scope of the Blessing, and what the Blessing offers.
Question: What about building relationships outside the church, as in other youth groups, other churches, and other religious groups? Has our youth ministry gotten to this point?
We haven't started doing that yet, and it's definitely still on the list of things to do. But one thing we've realized is that there are a lot of things we have to figure out as a community before we start outreaching. Reverend In Jin Moon with Lovin' Life Ministries is focusing on getting us healthy as a community, and, until we do that, we are what we are, and we're still not all on the same page. I think that in the last six months, Lovin' Life Ministries has taken large strides in bettering this process, and we see it happening naturally. It says something that we're averaging 27 new members every month.
Question: What goals have been added to the youth ministry's future plans?
When I was looking at the youth ministry two years ago, I was thinking about young adults (young adults range from age 18 to the age of 35). In reality though, in many of our communities, we focus on the youth ministry pretty much everywhere. Many times when people reach a certain age, around 23, 24, 25, we don't see them anymore. It doesn't matter how great our youth ministry is if our overall ministry is not intact, not functioning, not structured. If we don't have a healthy ministry that the youth ministry is part of, then I feel we're just kidding ourselves. So in focusing on building healthy ministries, my next step is encouraging youth pastors and young adult leaders in the community to work together with their local pastors and local ministry teams.
Question: What about parents? What has happened with empowering parents?
The Blessed Family Ministry takes on an aspect of this. We haven't really developed any program specifically for adults yet but Debbie Gullery, counselor for the Blessed Family Ministry, and Heather Thalheimer, Director of Education, and I have been in discussion about creating a program that addresses just this issue, with parents understanding where the kids are coming from, but also with the kids understanding where the parents are coming from, trying to open up lines of communication, which is very necessary. This is still on our to-do list.
Question: How many people make up the youth ministry staff nationwide?
Hundreds. Core staff is probably in the hundreds also.
Question: What departments has the young ministry merged/partnered with since 2009?
One big step that we've taken is that the young adult ministry partnered with CARP (the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles). We wanted these departments not to be two separate entities, although they have two separate areas of focus, but we wanted them to work together, help each other. The young-adult ministry helps CARP with life of faith as a college student and is there for people when they come home, through various programs like Face-Off and FUSE. The youth ministry, CARP, and the young-adult ministry help people see what the next step is in their lives. If you graduate from high school, there's something set up for you to be a part of next. GPA (Generation Peace Academy) definitely works with the youth ministry, serving as that kind of next step for people who are searching for answers and have the time to take a year off. One big part that GPA will be focusing on that will help young adults with ministry is the Lovin' Life Leadership Initiative, which everyone in the GPA program will be going through. This program is built to teach people how to do contemporary ministry.
Question: You also shared the following: "All our ideas are in the developmental stage right now. We want to do what we can to feel like a collective whole and really go forward in educating our youth around the country." Which of the ideas your team had back in 2009 have been implemented?
Junction has probably been one of our biggest implementations. Junction is the young adult ministry that happens every Wednesday night at the Lovin' Life Learning Center, and it only happens there. Just as Face- Off and FUSE only happen there, too, but will hopefully everywhere else soon, Junction will hopefully get started in other communities, if it works for them. What I would teach is for people to build a consistent program, and that it really comes through empowering the leaders.
Question: What is your definition of a "collective whole"? Do you feel your team fits that definition?
Making us a "collective whole" is my understanding that I'm not alone as a youth pastor in New York, or Florida, or wherever, that I'm part of a bigger team of youth and young- adult leaders across the country. One thing we've actually done is create a bimonthly webinar for youth and young-adult leaders across the country to brainstorm things that we thought would be relevant for these leaders to be educated on. Within that webinar, we have people who have expertise in different areas like education, public speaking, time-management, setting up different programs or activities, share through PowerPoint how to do these things. So we're not learning just from Jaga Gavin's point of view, but also Kayleigh Moffit's point of view, or through Raymond Gallagher's point of view. We're learning from each other and helping each other. By being a "collective whole," we're aware of who's out there so that we're no longer feeling, "I'm Ohio by myself," but, "I have all these other youth leaders across the country that I can call on to help me in my personal ministry."
Question: How close do you feel the youth ministry team under our Senior Pastor, Reverend In Jin Moon, has come to "reaching its full potential?"
For one thing, I think we're definitely having a lot more fun. One important thing Reverend In Jin Moon said was that youth ministry has to be something that's fun, and that's one aspect we're trying to bring into everything. Honoring and having our traditions is a big part that she doesn't want to lose, so we're brainstorming how we can make our traditions relevant to our faith today. This is one aspect we're working on. We're on track to making it happen, but we definitely have a lot of room to improve. I think it's a continuous cycle -- we're always improving, always getting better, but we still have a long way to go.
Question: How do parents fit into the different programs of the youth ministry and the youth ministry's "reaching its full potential" and being the "collective whole"?
Parents fit into a lot of all this We definitely have parents working with us in developing programs such as Face-Off, FUSE, Junction, etc. Within developing all these programs, it's not just second-generation working on this. You might see second-generation faces around these programs, but they're part of a team that makes everything happen. So when I say Jin Kwon, Dave Hunter, Jaga Gavin, or Victoria Roomet, those are some of the faces in front of the programs, but there's a whole team behind them that helps things come into fruition. I believe parents are an integral part of making a youth ministry happen, and without them on our team for advice, wisdom, and support, the ministry can only go so far. So we incorporate the parents into our teams. Of course we find the ones we feel we can work with, who add value to our team, and who agree with In Jin Nim's vision. So for most everything we do, even BCSF, we had first-generation on board, helping us develop whatever we were working on. Building the culture around the youth definitely involves the parents.
Question: Looking back over the last two years, would you say you are satisfied with the progress of the youth ministry team? Why or why not? Are you satisfied with your progress and efforts as the national youth pastor? Why or why not?
I am. Being the national youth pastor is definitely a lot more work than I thought it would be, but it's worth it. What we've done in the last two years with Lovin' Life Ministries has been incredible, and I feel that what we're going to see in the next two years is going to make people say, "Wow!" I think that Lovin' Life Ministries as it is today is not the whole of what In Jin Nim envisions for our community; it's only a couple pieces of a puzzle, the first baby steps. What we'll have in two or three years' time, especially when people jump on board and give themselves and express themselves, is going to be something incredible.