Soon after my wife, Hyeyoung Lee, and I began our mission co-worker assignment in South Korea, a Presbyterian elder from Cayuga-Syracuse Presbytery, Linda Russell, called to tell us that her presbytery has been maintaining a Korean Partnership Team for over a decade. Linda suggested this team might be interested in our work as site coordinators of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program. We felt our excitement for the work ahead reciprocated. That began what has been a long and fruitful partnership with Cayuga-Syracuse Presbytery.
When First Presbyterian Church of Homewood, Illinois, celebrated 150 years of ministry in 2008, it wanted to both cherish the past and embrace the future.
A year of service, a lifetime of deeper questions. One of the many ways the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program hopes to challenge participants is through the continual reshaping of the program’s own concepts about service. This is done best when young volunteers and local people of faith walk together to encourage, challenge and inspire one another.
Los jóvenes adultos voluntarios (YAVs por sus siglas en inglés) participan por un año de servicio basado en la fe, en más de 20 lugares en todo el mundo y en los Estados Unidos, de19 a 30 años de edad, acompañando a las agencias locales, trabajando para abordar las causas fundamentales de la pobreza y la reconciliación, mientras explora el significado y la motivación de su fe en una comunidad cristiana intencional con sus compañeros y mentores durante un año académico que va de agosto hasta julio.
When Don Stribling looks at the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program, he sees an experience that challenges the hyper individualism that pervades much of today’s religious practice.
Young Adult Volunteers (YAVs) engage in a faith-based year of service in over 20 sites around the world and in the U.S. YAVs, ages 19–30, accompany local agencies working to address root causes of poverty and reconciliation while exploring the meaning and motivation of their faith in intentional Christian community with peers and mentors for one academic year, August through July.
As a mission co-worker and cultural worker in the Philippines, sometimes I am utterly exhausted. There are periods that require quite a bit of travel related to meetings and theater-based trainings for children, youth, church workers, teachers, women and others. When I am in Dumaguete, days sometimes stretch into late evenings for rehearsals with our youth theater group or with Silliman University Divinity School students preparing for the annual church workers convocation. So a few years ago, when asked by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program if my husband, Cobbie, and I would consider reopening the Philippines YAV service site, we pondered, could we? Should we? Could we say no?
I’ve always been stubborn. My mother has a picture of me as a child, with arms crossed and a determined squint that sums up most of my childhood and possibly my adult personality. Difficult, resistant, overly critical — I’ve been called many things throughout my life. Maybe that’s why I’ve always enjoyed Wendell Berry’s poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” Throughout this piece, Berry eloquently encourages the reader to do things like: “… do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. … Ask the questions that have no answers.” Berry not only empowers us to be cantankerous, but indeed goes on to warn that if we are not, we are putting our individual and, ultimately, communal moral compass at risk. Finally, my “troublesome” traits are vindicated!
Presbyterians do mission in partnership. For the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program, now celebrating its 25th recruitment season, partners are at the heart of the program’s success.
A year of service, a lifetime of deeper questions. One of the many ways the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program hopes to challenge participants is through the forming and continual reshaping of the program’s own concepts about service. This is done best when young volunteers and local people of faith walk together to encourage, challenge and inspire one another.
