Youth worship at Triennium. Photo by David Young
Go!
Presbyterian Youth Triennium—where worship is as big as the faith of 7,000 teenagers from around the world
By Marci Glass
I’ll never forget my first experience of worship at Presbyterian Youth Triennium. I can see it in my mind to this day: the doors open to Elliott Hall of Music at Purdue University, and 4,500 youth rush into the auditorium, hoping to get seats up front. To an outside observer, it looks as if a rock star is about to give a concert. But these kids are here to worship. They sing loudly and from the heart. They interact with the preaching. They connect sacred texts with the sacred moments of their everyday lives. It is worship both uncommon and familiar. With loud music and dimmed lights. With familiar liturgy and hymns.
People often fret about the future of the church. And yes, some churches are closing, and budgets are getting smaller. But each time I worship with youth at Triennium, any anxiety about the future of the church subsides. Our youth want to be challenged. They want to be engaged. They want to come before God in praise and lament. And at Triennium, at least, they have the opportunity to do just that.
The first Presbyterian Youth Triennium was held at Indiana University in Bloomington in 1980 with about 2,500 youth and adults in attendance. The Cumberland Presbyterians, Presbyterian Church in Canada, and the precursor denominations to the PC(USA) started the event. Three years later, the event moved to nearby Purdue, where it has met every three years ever since.
Anywhere from 3,500 to 7,000 youth and adult leaders regularly attend Triennium, and if you have never worshipped with 7,000 youth, you might not be able to imagine the level of energy and joy gathered in one place.
More than 5,000 youth and their leaders took Communion at the 2013 Presbyterian Youth Triennium. Photo by David Young
Jeremy Wilhelmi, associate pastor at Salisbury Presbyterian Church in Midlothian, Virginia, attended his first Triennium before his senior year in high school. “The opening worship at Triennium 1998 still gives me chills,” he says. “They began in Genesis 1 when the Scripture says, ‘Let there be light.’ ” And just at that moment, light flooded the auditorium. “These big, bright lights just overwhelmed me. It brought my understanding of God’s light to a completely different place. God’s light is so powerful. That has never left me. Worship at Triennium is so different and so big . . . but it is so true to who we are as Presbyterians. I can physically feel the Holy Spirit when I am in that music hall with all of those youth offering praise to God.”
Wilhelmi keeps going back to Triennium. This summer will be his fifth. “I keep coming back because I think it is the best event we do as a denomination,” he says. “The energy, production, intentional faith/life connections, small groups, worship, recreation, and exhibit hall are extraordinary. This event fills me no other way has.”
The Presbyterian Youth Triennium is a five-day event for high-school-age youth (entering freshmen through graduated seniors) and accompanying adult youth leaders. Its focus is on equipping young people to be transformational Christian leaders. Triennium is not intended to replace the ministry of a participant’s home congregation, but seeks to join home churches in calling young people to deeper discipleship in Jesus Christ.
Wilhelmi encourages youth in his congregation to attend Triennium too.
“My hope is that PYT is going to overwhelm the faith that they have,” he says, speaking of a positive transformation. “They are going to be opened up to God in ways I could never re-create in my own ministry with them. They are going to gain a stronger sense of what it means to be part of the ‘body of Christ.’ They are going to be able to see just how incredibly faithful our denomination is to ministering to those in deep need. They are going to see the church love them, challenge them, push, pull, and tug at them in ways they have never experienced. Their eyes will be opened to God and the world around them with lenses they didn’t know they had. And they will come away with confidence that they have a significant role to play in the church of Jesus Christ.”
Massimo Daltoso, now a sophomore at the University of Nevada, Reno, attended Triennium before his senior year in high school in 2013. Growing up in churches that loved youth and children but didn’t always know how to nurture them, Daltoso loved Triennium for the way it engaged his faith.
“At Triennium, I saw a resurrection, in a way,” he says. “What I saw at Triennium was the church helping us start conversations, but with people we never knew and may never see again. It spurred conversation with people from all over the world, with different levels of faith, and they made it fun to discuss religion. We all took our experiences home and shared what we learned.”
Gina Yeager-Buckley, the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s associate for youth ministry, says Daltoso’s experience is not uncommon. “We see wide eyes on opening night as the doors open and the youth rush into the theater—and you literally hear the phrase ‘I didn’t know there were this many Presbyterians!’ That is a transformation of a sort,” she says. “We see young people bump up against different Christian habits, practices, understandings—test them against their own, along with their own, and begin to really dig into their faith.”
To help youth do just that, the event has transformed over the years.
_big590.jpg "More than 5,000 youth lend their hands to a Stop Hunger Now mission project during Triennium.")
More than 5,000 youth lend their hands to a Stop Hunger Now mission project during Triennium. Photo by Andrew Yeager-Buckley
In 2001, event organizers introduced a prayer center and some contemplative elements. “The idea that all young people are balls of
energy, jumping around, needing noise and guitars and . . . fireworks . . . whatever” needed to be challenged, Yeager-Buckley says. “We wanted to provide places to help youth have some mystery, some time to pray, to let the sights and sounds and thoughts roll around their minds for a while.”
Today, if you want to find the Triennium prayer center, just look for the room with the long line of youth going down the hall, waiting for their chance to pray. Every year, participants line up for their opportunity to engage their faith in more contemplative ways.
2001 was also the first year Triennium began including a Sabbath Morning. Event organizers noticed that participants—youth and adults—were having a wonderful experience but were absolutely exhausted. “There was kind of an old thought in youth-ministry event planning that you should ‘keep them busy so they don’t get into trouble, get bored, wander off, etcetera,’ ” Yeager-Buckley says. “But in the planning of the event, and in really looking at the lives of our young people. we felt that it was important to model a healthier, more integrated Christian community.”
Yeager-Buckley is always touched by the powerful stories she witnesses at Triennium. “I remember a young man, a participant in 1998. He was deaf; he was seated near the stage in worship because that is where the signers were positioned,” she says. “That evening this amazing group of youth and children, the Soul Children of Chicago, was in concert. They are loud. And powerful. The young man felt the power of their voices; he felt the energy of the 6,000 people in the theater jumping up to clap and scream their joy. And he came to me after, with tears stream-ing down his face—and on his adult advisor’s face—to tell me what it meant for him to really feel what God could be like. What faith could feel like.”
Because of interest in starting a Presbyterian Church of Canada national youth event and financial limitations to do both Triennium and this new event the Canadians withdrew in 2007. Triennium did not lose its international flavor, however. At each Triennium, youth and adults from our partner churches around the world attend.
At Triennium 1998, the small group I was leading had a global partner from Kenya. The youth were playing a get-to-know-you game, moving around the room and pairing up to answer questions. I asked some version of the questions “Do you have brothers or sisters? How many?” A young woman answered that she had one brother and one sister. Moses, the youth from Kenya, said he had 31 siblings between his father’s five wives. I watched as the other youth overheard his answer, and an awareness of different cultural experiences washed over their faces. They recognized the opportunity they had to befriend someone whose life experiences were vastly different from theirs. And at the same time, their faith in Christ made them one.
“This is the one time in a high-school youth’s life that they can gather with so many other Pres-byterian youth who are like them and who are very different, all in one place,” Wilhelmi says. “I think it is essential that the Church does all it can to encourage young people to understand this experience is worth their attention and offer any help they can to ensure they attend. In other words . . . as the theme says, GO!”
Marci Glass is the pastor of Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho. She also serves on the boards of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, and Ghost Ranch retreat and conference center.
2016 Presbyterian Youth Triennium, July 19–23
By Jon Brown
Go! It is easily the shortest conference theme in more than 30 years of Presbyterian Youth Triennium. But while the message itself is short, the meaning and implications are endless. The theme comes from a number of biblical narratives:
Let us GO and see . . .
GO and do likewise . . .
Show me the way I should GO . . .
Let my people GO . . .
GO and make disciples . . .
This theme reminds us that our faith is a journey. From the very start, individuals and delegations will explore where they are going—what they are going to do—after Triennium.
The first day will focus on the narrative of the shepherds confronted with the good news of Christ’s birth. It is an invitation for the youth to open their eyes and hearts to all that God might reveal to them.
Day two will look at the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). The young people will consider the question “Who is my neighbor?” in reference to their own lives.
Day three will take a more contemplative turn as we dig deeper into the questions of faith. Participants will explore themes of discernment as we learn from the stories of one another’s lives.
The fourth day will be a call to action and advocacy. From the bedrock of our Judeo-Christian identity we hear again the words Moses was commanded to speak to the powers
of his day, “Let my people go” (Ex. 9:1). Youth will explore
how God is calling them, like Moses, to be advocates
and to speak truth to power. Worship on this day will include a commemoration of the first “to-go” meal—the Passover—and its Christian expression in the sacrament of Communion.
Appropriately, the last day of Triennium will turn to Christ’s Great Commission to go and make disciples (Matt. 28:19). What is the story the youth will tell as they go from this place? What will be their story a year later? Ten years from now? Yet, they will not leave alone; they will go with the echo of Christ’s closing words, “And remember, I am with you always.”
To learn more and to register: presbyterianyouthtriennium.org
