![Charlotte Frank [third from right] from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Central Germany joins other young delegates listening to LWF General Secretary Rev. Dr Anne Burghardt [far left] at the Kraków Assembly.](/sites/default/files/styles/ino_plain_2x_xl/public/2025-08/youth-advocacy.jpg.webp?itok=hS2sFjxo "Charlotte Frank [third from right] from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Central Germany joins other young delegates listening to LWF General Secretary Rev. Dr Anne Burghardt [far left] at the Kraków Assembly.")
Charlotte Frank [third from right] from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Central Germany joins other young delegates listening to LWF General Secretary Rev. Dr Anne Burghardt [far left] at the Kraków Assembly. Photo: LWF
Member churches follow up on Thirteenth Assembly call to implement youth quota and secure voting rights
(LWI) - At its most recent Assembly in Kraków, Poland, the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) called on all its member churches to implement a youth quota, so that young people “are fully engaged through participation and voting in decision-making structures and processes.” But how are churches in different parts of the world responding to that call to live up to a commitment that was first made by the LWF over 40 years ago at its Budapest Assembly?
“We have been very vocal about this issue ever since I started as Youth President,” says Francisco Gómes of the Lutheran Church in Chile (ILCH). His church recently passed a motion that he drafted requiring youth representatives on its Synodal Council to have the right to speak and vote in all of its sessions. “Youth delegates have been formally invited to the Council and other Synod meetings for decades, but without voting rights," Gómes notes. "Now that has changed. It is only natural and just that we should also take part, not only in all the discussions, but in the final stages of decision making as well.”
Other churches in the Latin American and Caribbean region have also opened up spaces for fuller youth participation with voting rights – including Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and the Evangelical Church of the River Plate. Youth leadership was one of the priorities chosen at the 2023 Regional Pre-Assembly, while the importance of ‘intergenerational justice and dialogue’ was also highlighted at the last two Leadership Conferences of the Americas. “Empowering and elevating the voice of young people simply means strengthening the structure of the whole church,” Gómes insists.
Budapest resolution as basis for constitutional changes
At its recent Churchwide Assembly, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) approved an amendment to one of its constitution bylaws, increasing the goal for youth (under 18) and young adult (18-30) voting membership of its Assembly, council, boards and committees from 10 to 20 percent. The youth and young adults responsible for bringing the amendment cited the LWF resolution from the 1984 Budapest Assembly as the basis for their motion.
LWF Council member Khadijah Islam, who is a voting member of ELCA’s La Crosse Area Synod, said: “We need to believe and understand that our conversations at these tables are fundamentally incomplete with the voices of youth and young adults sitting there as well.” She and others lifted up “the particular wisdom that young people bring to leadership and decision-making spaces” and named the importance of seeing their peers in positions of leadership as they discerned their own vocational calls.
The church invests a lot in us and needs to find ways of channeling that knowledge and energy.
Charlotte Frank, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Central Germany and member of LWF’s Intergenerational Justice Policy task force
In other recent developments, young people from the age of 16 in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Central Germany can now be voting members of the Synod, as well as being elected to the councils of their local congregations. “Before, we were more or less guests at the Synod, but now we have full membership with voting rights,” notes Charlotte Frank, a Synod delegate and a member of LWF’s Intergenerational Justice Policy task force.
“There are eleven Lutheran churches in Germany and they are at different stages, with some only recently passing laws about youth participation,” she continues. “Our church was one of the first, over a decade ago, so now we are ready to ask for further changes, like securing our voting rights and lowering the age limit from 18 to 16. Up till now, youth was defined as 18 to 27, but we also need to include older people as the church invests a lot in us and needs to find ways of channeling that knowledge and energy,” Frank reflects.
Being a part of the LWF task force, which is currently drafting an Intergenerational Justice Policy, is a vital way of sharing best practices and learning from the experiences of others around the global communion, Frank says. “Our task force members come from all the regions, so we can get a holistic overview and suggest different approaches, looking at the principles and theology behind intergenerational justice.”
“For us in Germany, it’s more about changing the culture,” she adds. “We have the laws, but we don’t always think about including the youth voice in every process and in all aspects of church life.” In preparation for the next Assembly in Augsburg in 2030, Frank is working with other young people from the German National Council to prepare an intergenerational justice workshop that can be rolled out across the regions “to enable different churches to start the conversation about effective youth participation.”
