46: That’s the number of different ways I counted those blue neckerchiefs being worn.

23: That’s the number of people who attended  "Exxentials of Ministry with Generation X."

A ballroom full: That’s the number of people who crammed into hearings on the same-sex union proposals in front of the Physical Health and Spiritual Well-being Committees. So many that they had to close the room where the committee was meeting and reopen it in one of the ballrooms.

What is wrong with this picture?

Well, let’s start with what’s right: those neckerchiefs.

Back in the last century, when I was a kid, in the summertime I went to Y Camp. The big thing about Y Camp was the Ragging Ceremony. For every year you attended, you received a different color cotton square to tie around your neck. It started when you were thirteen with a brown rag. The last one–white-- was earned at age 21. Rags were worn one way: folded into a triangle, and tied with a square knot around the neck. You got points in morning inspection for how well-ironed and squarely-knotted your rag was. At camp in 1970, they looked, well, fashionable.

When we arrived at LAX, there was that Good COLA Fairy, with a Welcome to GA sign in her hand, and the directions to the shuttle on her lips. Blue neckerchief stoutly tied about her neck. All the next day myriads of Builder type volunteers competently organized the ticket window, the book drop, the tote back pickup. It looked like a reunion of Blue Raggers. 

But then on Sunday morning, droves of volunteers assembled to help direct the traffic flow into the stadium. Hello, Y2K. Suddenly, Toto, it wasn’t just precisely-triangled Builders running the show.

Apparently those square-knotted neckerchiefs are not the Fashion Statement for the ‘00s. I started to count. There were Boomer women, wearing their neckerchiefs as elaborately knotted scarfs, just like Martha Stewart taught us to. Sort of Murphy Brown as Usher. And there were the natty gents, with their neckerchiefs folded to neatly cascade out of their suit jacket pockets.

And----there were the Gen Xers. Out in force as volunteers. The Net Gen/Millennials were there too. I counted the ways young adults and youth were wearing those blue squares: on their heads as pirate hats, tied around their arms, chaining from their belts. They wore them any which way but one way. Not one person under the age of 30 did I see, wearing their COLA identification around the neck. Not one.

Being the curious type, I puzzled on this for days. I asked commissioners: "What’s up with the neckerchiefs?"  Neckerchiefs??? Everyone was too busy following weighty issues to have noticed.

So I asked Karen. Karen was a volunteer gatekeeper. She was wearing her neckerchief in an elaborate side-slipped knot with a little swirl thing where the triangle used to be. Her companion was wearing hers pinned over one shoulder in a neat double diamond pattern. "What were you told?" I asked. "Are there Neckerchief Guidelines?" Karen gave me the Rule: "We have to wear them so they are visible." Was there lots of volunteer-talk about how to wear them, I wondered. Karen shoot her head doubtfully. "I don’t think we talked about it, she said. We just did it.

I decided to investigate further so I found a volunteer coordinator. She said that at first COLA just assumed everyone would wear them the way GA volunteers always had, the square-knotted triangle centered over the back the right way. Then some volunteers – Boomer types– began to complain that material was too stiff, or too floppy, or too big, or too small. The younger ones didn’t complain. Some of them just made it clear that if they had to wear the neckerchiefs as neckerchiefs, they were out of there. They wanted to help, but not if it meant wearing scout style squares about the neck. She said, "We decided the essential thing about the COLA symbol was the blue piece of cloth itself, not that it was worn around the neck. We said they had to have the symbol visible, and that they could wear it any way they pleased. It’s working for us."

The Diversity in Unity of Neckerchiefs, so to speak.

Then she added, "Uh, maybe the idea of neckerchiefs is something future Local Arrangements Committees will have to reconsider."

By that point, I wanted to hear it straight from the fashion pioneers. I went and found me a couple of 18 year olds: Jason and Matt. Jason had his tied about his head in a modified buccaneer style. Matt's was tourniqueted about his thigh.

How come you aren’t wearing your neckerchief around your neck? I asked.

Our necks?? They looked at me like I was crazy.

They never did answer the question. They did let me take their picture.

I went to a presentation called "The Generation X Primer: Exssentials for Young Adult Ministry." It was led by an expert: Kirk Winslow, associate pastor for young adult ministries at the Irvine Presbyterian Church. 23 other people showed up. He documented the challenging realities of doing ministry with this generation. Half of them come from broken homes. They’re the most marketed-to generation ever. They've got that irony thing, even about sacred things. They filter reality through pop culture. (Hey! Did you know you can sing Amazing Grace to Gilligan’s Island?? Cool.) They say they would give up food before they give up music. (At least the ones who have never actually been hungry say that.) They think X-Files is Reality Television.

Kirk’s best advice? "Whatever you do in ministry has to be real. Don’t give them half the story–bring the bad, smelly part, the fundamental authenticity which opens up all the pain of the struggle."

There were 23 people there to listen to him. Did I mention that??
The last time I checked statistics, young adults make up 26% of the US population and 6% of the membership in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Houston, we’ve got a problem.

Now, in the mean time–although not at the same time, the one committee with the real "action" this year–the placidly named Physical & Spiritual Wellbeing Committee, was having hearings on a series of amendments dealing with same-sex unions. Whatever air there was in the room got all used up by overcrowding. They had to move the whole show to a bigger ballroom.

There’s no doubt what room we think we're going to find Waldo in.
No matter what slogans we embroider on our Mission Statement Tea Towels, those statistics say it all.

Mission Matters? Of course.
Evangelism, you bet. The church is only one generation away from extinction, you know.
But which rooms are full, and which empty tells the naked truth about us.

Freud was right. There’s something about sex.

I’m not saying the principles at stake aren’t foundational issues for us.
But I wandered away for another look at all those young adults crowded onto the rock-n-roll decks of the Long Beach Wharfside eateries. They still didn’t look like they cared whether we vote to bless them or ordain them.

I had a dream that they scheduled a session on reaching the younger generations, and the room was so full they had to spill into the streets.

I sent up another of my seagull prayers that our Unity and Diversity Conferences would be pervaded by the same practical graciousness which COLA displayed, and that we would be able to sort out what is essential and what periphery, and that speedily.

In the meantime, I've got to watch another edition of Survivor, where Colleen has turned her neck scarf into a tube top and Greg's got this surfer-dude headgear thing going with his. 
Y Camp never looked like this