[RMC News] WAYE Cancelled

[Roe, Ben]

Wyoming Annual Youth Event Cancelled
After much consideration of alternatives and taking a hard look at the realities outlined below, Margaret Gillikin writes that the Wyoming Annual Youth Event has been cancelled due to much lower participation than would be needed to break even financially.

Here are excerpts of her note:
The originally published registration postmark deadline for WAYE was this past Monday. As of today [March 13], we have received registrations from 3 churches with a total of 30 participants. With Casper’s paid registrants factored in, we would probably end up with 40
 and if we work our tails off calling multiple churches, etc. we might end up with 50 (or perhaps more). Unfortunately, our break-even number is 100
 and no matter what we do, we don’t think that’s a number we can realistically hit by the start of the event.

Also, our deadline for cancellation with the hotel and multiple other vendors is tomorrow [March 14]. In conversation with as many CORE team members as we could get a hold of tonight [March 13] (plus Steve Burnett), we surfaced some creative alternatives that could be employed... However, the more we talked, the more all involved came to the conclusion that all of these efforts would functionally be an extended version of CPR for something that can no longer sustain life on its own. Part of our reflection included looking back on the signs and indicators we’ve been seeing for a while now: Casper First has propped WAYE up financially with donations of $500-$2000 every year for the past six years; the VERY clear communication about the event’s volunteer needs at the past two events met with NO response; and, to my mind, most significantly, the number of youth excited about planning the event has dwindled from the 12–24 range
 to 2 who are willing to do so. When no one volunteers, and few sign up to attend
 perhaps that really is an indication that God is not calling us to this ministry at this time....

With all this weighing heavily on our hearts and minds, we are prayerfully cancelling WAYE 2008. Truthfully, we also see this as the death of the event, at least in its current form. The good news of the Gospel for us tonight is that God doesn’t resurrect things that aren’t dead. So, by allowing the event to die, hopefully this will open up possibilities for the Spirit to be unleashed in a new way and for God to be at work bringing about new life and hope for ministry with youth in this region.
 
Our intent at this point is to meet all our outstanding financial obligations incurred for this year (whatever they end up being), close WAYE’s checking account and send whatever funds remain to the conference office to establish a restricted fund for Wyoming/District youth ministry so that these funds can be seed money for whatever God does next here.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.
 
Shalom, Margaret
 
Rev. Margaret Gillikin
First United Methodist Church
332 E. 2nd St.
Casper, WY 82601
(307)-234-9385
pstrmeg at tribcsp.com


via Ben Roe
Information Administrator
Rocky Mountain Conference
The United Methodist Church
rmcumc.org
303-325-7046 / 800-536-3736 x 146
ben at rmcumc.com
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