Leadership Journal

Nora and I slid into a pew in the ornately decorated temple. Beautiful mosaics covered the front of the worship space. Nora's friend Lilly awaited the beginning of her bat mitzvah service. Other friends sat close by, most of them, like us, unaccustomed to the special ceremony we awaited.

This ceremony is not a separate service organized to honor the participant. Instead the 13-year-old leads the regular worship of the day. As the service began, Lilly read the Torah in Hebrew, the rhythmic words filling the temple. Her parents shared stories and words of encouragement. Between the readings, her brothers, grandparents, and two cousins shared blessings called aliyah.

Then Lilly preached, well, at least that's what I would call it. The Jewish term is d'var Torah, explicating the passage of the day. Lilly shared about Noah, his faith, and how her faith had deepened as she studied for this day. She explained that Noah had been spared because he was a righteous man among a culture of sin. She talked about the challenge of remaining righteous at school when most of the students cheated on their work. I couldn't help but think her teachers must be smiling.

I found my eyes welling with tears, feeling pride in the work she had done to reach this day. She wasn't even my daughter, yet I felt moved by the richness of the ceremony. The rest of the day was filled with more celebrating, a lunch at the temple, then a party later in the day.

What really captured my attention was the collaboration of all the facets of her life in affirming her. Her relatives stood and bragged unabashedly about this dear member of their family. Her friends honored her by their presence at the ceremony, much of which they probably didn't even understand. Her teachers even attended. And while there, all heard Lilly proclaim her owning of her faith, which had been deepened by her study in preparation for that day.

As we shared her joy, I reflected that our tradition has nothing to compare with the magnitude of this celebration. When do our young people ever have a platform from which to express their faith to their friends?

What could I possibly do to affirm my own children in such a meaningful way? Or the children of our church?

When Linda Adams, pastor at New Hope Free Methodist Church in Rochester, New York, attended a bat mitzvah for her daughter Carrie's girlfriend, her response mirrored mine. "The entire worship service at the synagogue was organized around this one girl's entrance into the adult faith community," she said. "It was announced as an honor and a privilege, and was obviously something for which she had prepared a long, long time. Afterward, the party was as elaborate and joyful as any wedding reception I've ever attended!"

Linda compared this experience to the typical youth membership ritual. She concluded we are shortchanging our young people and our whole faith community by underselling a momentous occasion.

That fall, she ran a 12-week youth membership ...