On the day Youth at Assembly (YatA) asked the Assembly to focus more on "community building" and the children of KUCA-A called the church to "involve all ages in all aspects of church life", three young people were elected as members of assembly standing committee.

Kylie Crabbe, 23 (Vic), Jelita Gardner-Rush, 24 (NSW), and Julia Pitman, 24 (SA), said they were excited about the election. They also said that, depending on feedback from evaluation sheets, they would be urging standing committee to look at "radically restructuring" the next Assembly meeting to be held in Victoria in 2003.

YatA, whose 20-minute video journal reflected on their time at Assembly, called on the church to take seriously the task of community forming.

"If you intentionally build community, the outcome is consistently rewarding," they said. "The time perceived as lost in intentionally making and building community will be gained back in effective decision making."

YatA also expressed disappointment at the amount of polystyrene and paper used during the assembly and asked that the church continue to find ways to run environmentally-friendly gatherings.

In response to a question about how to identify and nurture potential leaders, YatA’s Simon Moore-Crouch, 17 (WA), said increasing funding was essential. There was now only effectively one day a week funded by the assembly for youth and children’s ministry nationally, he said.

Alison Cox (Qld) said she was disappointed that funding had diminished so drastically and urged the assembly to give youth and children’s ministry high priority when the budget was revisited in 2001.

KUCA-A members had earlier told the meeting how each of them had raised $825 to contribute to the cost of their participation in assembly.

However, the business committee said it would be proposing to assembly standing committee that the children should not have to fundraise in order to attend future meetings.

KUCA-A members also spoke of being moved by "Uncle Vince Ross" who made the issue of covenanting a reality and showed what life was like from an Aboriginal point of view.

That the threat of being taken away from his parents as a child was so recent and such a part of everyday life was a shock, one KUCA-A member, Patrick Macrae, 12 (Vic), said.

Tegan Annis-Brown, 12 (NT) was going home to apologise to her best friend Catherine, an Aboriginal person, because she felt sorry about what had happened in the past.

"I think the nation should feel sorry for what’s happened. In the future the whole country should unite and move forward together," Ming-En Koh, 12 (Vic) said.

That the Strategic Planning Unit facilitation group had invited KUCA-A to talk to them had made the children feel like they were an important part of the assembly. "And not just along for the ride," KUCA-A said.

There was a perception, said Ms Crabbe, that youth represented a homogenous group. But it was "very, very apparent that we come from all areas of the assembly’s life".

Ms Gardner-Rush said, "We are holding together the diversity of the church. Young people have a real passion for unity and oneness."

Interviewed by Hemline Catherine Herbert, 15 (NSW), Tim Fialkowski, 15 (WA) and Megan Dunn, 16, (VIC), said they felt that some members of Assembly were afraid of their youthful energy but that most were positive about youth involvement.

Though it was only the first time young people from Years 7 to 12 had been officially included in Assembly, YatA had attracted 11 participants and the program had been extremely successful, they said.

Ms Dunn said she felt the assembly meeting had given her a chance to extend her education in a context "schools just don’t come up with". It had also been great to interact with "people twice and three times our age".

She added that some people seemed to be forgetting to value the Assembly meeting which was "a great working model … exciting because we’re all so different and we’ve come together as one to try and test ourselves out".

"To come away from my congregation and their intricacies and their fussiness and their committees by the million," Ms Dunn said, "makes me wonder how important is all that little stuff. Look on the broad side! They’ve got to think nationally."