Dear Mid Council Leaders,
The Office of Presbyterian Youth and Triennium has come to the difficult but important decision to cancel the Presbyterian Youth Triennium 2022 in-person event. This is out of a deep desire to prioritize the safety and health of our participants and their communities – youth and adult volunteers from your churches. It feels heartbreaking but necessary to make this call and to share it with you today. We are also sharing this news with registrars and will be making a public announcement today.
This decision was made thoughtfully and prayerfully alongside our 2022 Coordinators, under the guidance of our COVID Medical Advisory Team, and with the support of Presbyterian Mission Agency leadership. The care and concern many of you have expressed to us over the past few months has also helped to shape and inform the direction in which we are headed.
We have very real safety and health concerns that have increased with each COVID Medical Advisory Team meeting and with the spread of the omicron variant. We also want to do justice to what is significant and wonderful about Triennium, as well as our 2022 theme.
In beginning to address all of the COVID recommendations, our office and coordinators became increasingly concerned that we were no longer planning and hosting a youth gathering so much as coordinating a COVID-centered event. This, along with the news that we would face a 100% chance of clusters at our event, made it clear we needed to shift.
Instead of holding a traditional Triennium this summer, we will flip and begin with our PYT Beyond work. The PYT Beyond Team was created to carry the 2022 theme out into the world after the event and beyond the four days spent in Indianapolis. This work will now serve as a pathway leading up to our next in-person Triennium - which we are close to confirming dates for in July 2025!
In this decision and new direction, we see God continuing to call us beyond the historic framework of Triennium towards incredible opportunities to serve our young people in new and creative ways. Our Production Team is meeting this week to discuss and develop a number of exciting possibilities that will guide our work moving forward. We hope to share these possibilities and much more – including our 2025 Triennium dates – with you after our meeting and in the months to come. For those of you who are concerned about youth who will miss out this summer, we were already planning on a Young Adult track for 2025 which has become even more important with this cancellation.
Thank you for your commitment to young people as well as this event. We look forward to continuing to work with you as we begin PYT Beyond and in preparation for Triennium 2025.
