Youth Gathering Blog

If you drew a picture of the world as you hoped it would be, what would it look like? Deborah Storie drew a picture as part of a presentation she made at the Australian Missiology Conference inMelbourne,Australia, in 2005. She took her inspiration from Old Testament prophets, New Testament prophets and post-Testament prophets like Martin Luther King, Jr. The title of her paper was “Dreaming Shalom: Hopeful Imagination asMissioninAustralia.” For this month’s blog, I want to share Ms. Storie’s imagination with you.

 This is Ms. Storie’s description: My diagram has two pictures: a picture of injustice and a picture of shalom. The picture of injustice represents the world today. Twenty percent of the people consume 85 percent of the world’s resources. One side of the fence is barren with emaciated people squatting despondently. On the other side, things look green and beautiful. People are well-fed and amply housed. They consume a lot and pollute a lot but their rubbish mostly ends up on the other side of the fence. What is not immediately obvious is that despair, fear and hopelessness pervade both sides. You can’t hide from the harsh reality of the barren lands but life in the green places is equally desperate, they just spend more on public relations and camouflage.

The picture of shalom summarizes biblical images of the future of God. People rest beneath their own vines and fig trees. They live in houses they built themselves and eat the fruits of their own labor. Everyone has enough, no one too much. There is diversity but not division. There is no domination and no fear. Children play and their grandparents live out their days in peace. Men and women tread lightly on the earth, cherishing creation, respecting its fragility, enjoying its extravagance.

 The society of shalom is a society of right relationship: harmony with God, harmony between people, harmony with creation. The diagram has two arrows. Injustice happens whenever non-love (it doesn’t have to be hate – indifference or ignorance are quite enough) uses power to maintain the boundary between “the haves” and “the have-nots.” Injustice happens whenever resources, skills and opportunities are denied to the poor and given to the rich. The tools injustice uses serve some better than others: education, information, health care, legal systems and institutions, economics, trade, aid and development projects, dreams. Injustice can be very subtle. It is often unintentional.

 Shalom, on the other hand, is created by love. Shalom can never be built by coercion or domination. Shalom’s power is the power of the cross, of weakness and humility, of forgiveness and reconciliation, of truth. These rainbow pathways are creative, courageous, audacious; they encompass every hope, every dream, every hopeful act and every movement of resistance through which individuals and societies participate with God in building shalom.

 [A] [h]opeful [i]magination asks: How does the way we live approach or retreat from shalom? What practical strategies might we devise to move us-with-the-world toward shalom? We are not the central focus here. It is not all about us. What a wonderful thing to be where we belong doing what we were made for!

 If you are accompanying young people to the Gathering, I encourage you to ask them to draw a picture of the world as they see it before they go to the Gathering, and again after they return home. What has changed? How do they feel about not being the center of attention? Can they relate to the power of the cross being a kind of anti-power stance according to the North American value system in which we live? How can they see themselves building shalom in the communities in which they live – home and family, church, school, clubs?

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“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink…”(Matthew 25:35).

Matthew 25 is a familiar text to many of us, and because it is so familiar our brains might not fully comprehend its power to refocus our way of living in the world. On the Practice Discipleship day at the Gathering, young people will ponder what it really means to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus.

It is challenging to be a follower, especially since the rise of the extrovert ideal in 20^th centuryU.S. culture. Think about it. Who usually gets rewarded with the best jobs or the most public acclaim and trust, and who gets noticed most often in a classroom, in a committee meeting, even in church? Often it is people who can attract the most attention and/or speak the loudest and most persuasively. It is usually the leader of the pack who fascinates and attracts us. Is this the posture of a follower of Jesus?

As we heard in the gospel text on Sunday, March 3, Jesus says “get behind me.” Jesus is reminding us that he is the leader, and we are followers. How many teachers or parents would encourage their children to be followers rather than leaders? Yet, that is exactly what Jesus is suggesting. What makes it even more counter-cultural is the fact that the image of the one we are following is reflected in people who are living in poverty and those who are marginalized, not those who are wealthy, attractive and super articulate. Our leader is not a Tony Robbins-type of leader.

As difficult as it is for us to embrace, in Matthew 25 Jesus gives us our marching orders as Christians. How are we to live? We are to follow Jesus’ lead by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick and visiting those in prison. Not one of these actions will garner much attention or acclaim, but that is exactly what Jesus says we are to do.

This gospel is personal for Jesus as he identifies with people living in poverty and those who are marginalized. Jesus doesn’t say they were hungry or they were sick or unwelcome. Jesus says, I was hungry, naked, unwelcome and in prison. Jesus fully identifies with those who are hungry and on the margins.

Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J. has said the message of this Gospel leads to a place of personal connection with people living in poverty. “Humility is that downward mobility and it leads to a place of solidarity with the poor and the outcasts. There is no distance, it’s a one-ness.” He adds that it’s a humility that never wants to have any distance between Jesus and people living in poverty.

Can you imagine what the church would look like if, by God’s grace, we would practice the kind of radical discipleship Jesus is inviting us to, where there is no distance between our self-understanding and those who are poor and marginalized?

This is one reason why I am so proud of ELCA youth for committing to come together in Jesus’ name for the sake of people inNew Orleans. They are demonstrating, by their numbers, that they are at least somewhat attentive to Jesus’ invitation to identify with people who are living in poverty and those who are marginalized. That kind of follower posture may not win them points with their friends or, for some, even their family, but it is the right thing to do. God bless your faithfulness, ELCA youth. See you in July.

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“You have no idea what it’s like to work with a group of youth in a congregation.” The woman on the other end of the phone was frustrated for sure, and on the verge of anger. She had checked her congregation’s online account, and wasn’t happy with the number and type of hotel rooms to which her group was assigned. We started to make hotel assignments, but didn’t disable that part of the online account while the puzzle pieces of the complex housing assignment process  were being moved around.  You can’t imagine how complex this proces is, made more difficult by our commitment to house congregational groups by synod. It will take some time to fit the various pieces together, and until the puzzle is fully put together, registered congregations won’t be able to access that part of their online account. Housing assignments will be distributed as promised by the time of the ELCA Youth Ministry Network’s annual Extravaganza in early February.

It was a bad day. Angry people called and accused my two, faithful co-workers of making a mistake because their assignment didn’t match what they submitted. Some people sent emails that lobbed the same accusation, and still others evoked alarm by posting their displeasure on Facebook. We are sorry if we caused any angst.

I want to express to all of the people who called, emailed or posted on Facebook, we feel your pain. We are in this together. Really, we are with you; we are among you; we are because you are. Do you remember ubuntu in 2003?

 We care about the details, and we work to make this the best experience we can for you because we know that the ELCA Youth Gathering can be a turning point in the faith lives of young people, and adults. We can bear witness to the fact that Jesus uses the ELCA Youth Gathering to

● call people into ministries that bring about the beloved community (Revelation 21) Jesus promised;

● give young people clarity about their vocational call;

● fill our hearts with the love of God, and be softened by God’s grace;

● be God’s hands, feet, eyes, ears and voice in the world.  

 Seth Godin wrote in a recent blog, “Caring involves raising that bar to the point where the team has to stretch.” We are stretching for the stars — in service to God and YOU!

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“What are you looking for?”

 Jesus asked that question of John’s disciples (John 1:38) and he is asking that of us, too. I have thought about that question when making my New Year’s resolution(s). I invite you to do the same. Answering that question may be the most important resolution you and I make for 2012. Another way of putting it is this: How do you want your relationship with Jesus to grow?  

 That might be a great question to ask young people, too. How do they want their relationship with Jesus to grow as a result of their participation in the ministry of the Youth Gathering? You have several months during which you can ponder that question together. You can create a safe and sacred space for confession and forgiveness as you meet with your group to prepare for the summer experience.

One way to approach answering that question is to identify those parts of yourself that still await integration with following Jesus. Don’t hesitate to bring these areas of your life to Jesus. Jesus understands our human struggles. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who is tempted in every way that we are, yet never sinned” (Hebrews 4:15).

Dick Hauser, S.J., Professor of Theology, and director of the Christian Spirituality Program at Creighton University, says, “The deepest yearning of the human heart is the yearning to live in communion with God — yes, to live in communion even in the awkward and complex and often overlooked areas of our lives.” I encourage you, and I encourage myself, to bring those awkward parts of ourselves into the light in 2012. Jesus is inviting us — as he invited his first disciples — to walk more closely with him in the complexity of our lives.  

We pray for the grace to be open to Jesus’ invitation to follow him more closely in 2012.

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When young people step off the bus, plane or van inNew Orleansnext summer, I want them to step into a community of the beloved that operates according to God’s economy of grace. I want them, and me, to experience a community wherein the rules of merit are broken, a moment in time when God is completely in charge for a while.

 In our culture we base almost everything on “achievement, performance, accomplishment, payment, exchange value, or worthiness of some sort.” * In God’s economy of grace we are released from the “internalized merit-badge system” that holds many of us hostage. Within that system, and “without grace, almost everything human declines and devolves into smallness, hurt, and blame.” Many of us try so hard to earn the merit badge ― consciously or unconsciously ― that we sacrifice the freedom and peace we are promised in Christ.

 I want young people, and the adults who accompany them, as well as myself, to be disoriented when they are inNew Orleans, disoriented by grace that “humiliates our attempts at private virtue” in an effort to gain the merit badge. I want us all to experience the peace Paul references in our theme passage (Ephesians 2:4-20), peace that knows no division between people, nations or faiths. In Christ, where all are one, (v. 14) we give up what Richard Rohr calls our “ego consciousness” and replace it with a “soul awareness.” Fr. Rohr says it is going from being “driven” (to perform, achieve, accomplish, please, earn, etc.) to being “drawn” into God’s heart.

 I would like to suggest that it is at the intersection of action and prayer (contemplation, reflection) where we are drawn into God’s heart and where transformation happens. That is why the Gathering program activity days, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, are wrapped with worship at the beginning of the day, and prayer/reflection at the end of the day. In worship we enter into the paschal mystery (the death and resurrection of Christ) as we join with the saints of every age, the body of Christ, around the Lord’s Table. We become the body of Christ after we eat the body of Christ and are sent out into the world to be Christ for others. But “Jesus did not call us to the poor and to the pain just to be helpful to them, although that is wonderful, too. Jesus called us there for fundamental solidarity with the real and from that, to the transformation of ourselves.” Each night, as groups gather for the Final 15, they will be reflecting on where God has met them in the day, and asking God to use those moments to draw them closer to God’s heart.

 I cannot predict when the Spirit will move in the hearts of young people at the Gathering, but I know chances are good that during times of prayer and reflection (i.e., contemplation) on the action of the day young people may glimpse the grace-shaped, life-altering path of Christian discipleship. Their witness upon returning to their congregations may not be one of celebratory victory for mission accomplished, but rather they may reflect a powerlessness that is evidence of God’s economy of grace.

 * All of the quotes in this blog come from “A Lever and a Place to Stand: The Contemplative Stance, The Active Prayer” by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico  www.cacradicalgrace.org

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“So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”

(1 Thessalonians 2:8) This verse from the second lesson on Sunday, October 23, 2011, jumped out at me. Youth and adults who attended the 2009 ELCA Youth Gathering could have written that to the people ofNew Orleans.

Whether they know it or not, through their presence in New Orleans ELCA youth and adults are modeling a way of being in mission that defines our church. This form of mission is about relationship-building, about deep investment — emotionally, physically, mentally, financially and spiritually, and it is about self-emptying. This way of being in mission is called “accompaniment.” “The ELCA Global Mission unit defines accompaniment as walking together in solidarity that practices interdependence and mutuality. In this walk, gifts, resources and experiences are shared with mutual advice and admonition to deepen and expand our work within God’s mission.” (http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Global-Mission/How-We-Work/Accompaniment.aspx)

Notice that it is God’s mission in which we participate and not our own. For example, immediately after Hurricane Katrina devastated theGulfCoast, disaster workers inMississippitold us they had to figure out what to do with hundreds of winter coats, hats and mittens that caring people sent. Really? What were people thinking sending winter gear to the Gulf? This expression of care, which I’m sure came from kind, good-intentioned people, became a health hazard (as rodents took up residence in the mountains of useless materials that piled up), and required the attention of disaster workers who were there to serve people who had lost everything. That is an example of humans responding out of their own need to help rather than offering what is most needed. God’s mission or my need? Americans, especially, do it all the time. We act as if theUnited Stateswere at the center of the earth’s orbit. We think the rest of the world should want to be like us, and we act accordingly.

If ELCA youth journey to New Orleans this summer, and then return to their home congregations with an understanding that it is God’s kingdom that is truly exceptional and God’s way that should be advanced, then they’ll be on the path of discipleship. The fruits of their discipleship will be identification with the poor and weak, the sick, those who are treated like outcasts and those called strangers. In Ephesians, the book from which our core text (Ephesians 2:14-20) is chosen, Paul says the church was to show that people — Jews/Gentiles — would get along because they love Jesus and are committed to the things the church is committed to. The confession that Jesus is Lord was one thing that held them together in community, their actions of feeding the poor, caring for widows and orphans, raising the dead, and serving all people were the living out of this confession.

I, for one, am really excited to welcome a generation of leaders in our church whose radical identification with “the other” becomes the Lutheran charism.

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Part of the Living Into the Future Together [taskforce's report] http://tinyurl.com/3ad5eyw  included the call for every ELCA congregation to have a mission strategy by the end of 2012. This resolution was adopted by the 2011 Churchwide Assembly. It is the responsibility of the Congregational and Synodical Mission unit of the ELCA, the churchwide unit in which the Youth Gathering is housed, to fulfill that legislation. I am assuming that the bulk of the work toward completing congregational mission strategies will be carried out in collaboration with the Directors for Evangelical Mission in each synod, whom we hope we also will be at the Youth Gathering, along with the bishop from every synod. (Please make sure your bishop has been invited and encourage your Director for Evangelical Mission to participate as well.) 

I gratefully acknowledge the Holy Spirit when I observe how beautifully timed the work of the (Youth) Gathering Coaches is with this missional movement that is generating so much energy in our church right now. This is an opportunity for us to position and equip youth to play a critical role in shaping the mission of their congregation and their synod. That is one reason why we chose to keep synods together at the 2012 Gathering. Youth need to be at the synod mission tables and at the table when mission is defined in congregations, but first they need to know these conversations are taking place.

The Practice Discipleship Planning Team is making available, through Synod Coaches, training sessions  http://www.elcaymnet.org/CoachesAndCoordinatorsCalendar) for adults to learn youth ministry best practices so that when young people are invited to the conversation they speak from the context of faith informed by Holy Scripture, prayer, worship and service. My hope is that when youth are made aware of these conversations, they will insist on being part of them as baptized members of the body of Christ. What they learn and practice inNew Orleans will inform their contribution to the mission of the ELCA in the world for the sake of Christ.

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I just returned from a large group bible study at the youth gathering of one of our ecumenical partners. The opening band had the audience of teens jumping in unison with raised-arm praise, singing lyrics about their God being greater, stronger and higher than any other. In fact, most of the songs the group has sung for two days have been about how awesome God is, and how awesome they are in God’s eyes.

 When I got back to my hotel room I spent some time in prayer, trying to discern my discomfort with what I was hearing and witnessing. Not that I don’t think God is awesome, and not that I don’t support full-out, full-body praise of Jesus, and not that I don’t think young people need to hear they are the desire of God’s heart. It just felt like the planners of the gathering chose the easy path.

It is relatively easy to get a room full of Christian youth fired up about an all–powerful God who is greater than any other. One can’t help but get swept up in the moment, especially when the decibel level alone overwhelms all senses. But is that an accurate depiction of God in light of the cross of Jesus Christ? And is the kind of preaching that substantiates teenagers’ identification with a God who is all about buoying up their Ego reflective of the church’s mission?

Martin Luther taught that a Superman-kind of divine power is the very opposite of what divine power is all about. He reminded us that God’s power is hidden in the form of weakness. When Christians talk about divine power, or even about church or Christian power, it is to be conceived of in terms of the cross—power hidden in the form of weakness. That is NOT the easy path!

Kenda Creasy Dean reminds us in her book Almost Christian, that the Gospel story that animates the church is about self-giving love and dying in order to live. That is a much more challenging message for American teenagers to embrace. Most of us would rather invoke the power of our collective American determination to fix problems than surrender power or turn the other cheek like Jesus asks. Jesus’ example of sacrificial love goes against the grain of can-do American individualism.

In the biblical text around which the 2012 ELCA Youth Gathering is being shaped, the first thing that Jesus does is offer a gesture of peace. If we are following Jesus’ path it should be our intention to offer – first – a gesture of peace to each other and to the people of New Orleans. The biggest lesson we can learn from New Orleans, in New Orleans, is a way of being Christian in the world that values humility, sacrifice and mutuality. You may be disappointed if you come to the 2012 ELCA Youth Gathering expecting to join an army of Christians all fired up to  “help those poor people,” or fix something that is broken, to get dirty and tired doing service projects, and then come together each evening to celebrate our accomplishments.

Our service projects – or justice experiences as we are calling them – will reflect our identification with Christ in how we relate to people in a distinctive way. “They will know we are Christians by our love.” For some that will mean listening to stories of injustice; for some that will mean cleaning a playground that is not a safe place for children to play; for some that will mean learning how they contribute to the systems that keep people in poverty; for some that may mean reading stories to children; for some that may mean painting pictures to brighten the halls of a dingy school building; for some that may mean planting to rebuild wetlands.

We return to New Orleans, not as representatives of a fist-pumping, all-powerful God who uses us to “fix” broken lives, but as representatives of a wounded God who brings a greeting of peace, and a gesture of understanding by joining with them in their life. That is the harder path.

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One of the Gathering synod coordinators recently passed along questions that she has been receiving from congregations trying to decide if they are going to invest in the 2012 ELCA Youth Gathering. Questions like, “Will the stage in the Superdome be different?” and “Will there be a well-known speaker this time?” made me wonder how we can help young people think about how their perspective on the world leads to these kinds of questions.

 Is it just me, or does anyone else think those kinds of questions come out of a consumerist approach to the Gathering? Don’t get me wrong; I understand that attending the ELCA Youth Gathering is a substantial investment for youth, their families and congregations, so questions of value should be asked. Alongside those questions, though, I think we have an opportunity to invite young people to ponder questions that help them determine if they are hoping to be overwhelmed by the stage in the Superdome or filled with the Holy Spirit present in the gathered community of the faithful?

 That raises a question for me about how some North American Lutherans approach participation in church in general. Many of us who attend congregations where there are multiple pastors and/or musicians, make decisions about attendance on Sunday morning based on who is preaching or on what choir/group is leading music. There is nothing wrong with personal preferences per se, but what if we went to church on Sunday being open to being encountered by the Holy Spirit in whatever form that may take? What do we lose spiritually when we make worship about us and our preferences?

 At the Gathering we are always open to who God may provide to proclaim the word in our midst. The word may come to us from the witness of a celebrity or an undocumented immigrant; from a published ELCA pastor or a Baptist lay person. I wonder if adult leaders could use the question of desiring a known vs. unknown speaker to ponder what it was like for people to listen to the young kid from Nazareth born out of wedlock when he stood in the midst of elders in the temple saying he was the son of God, or when the King of the Jews made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a stinky donkey and not in a stretch limo flanked by security guards. Would we think God duped us because the path God’s son followed was a path of randomly strewn branches and not a red carpet?

 The Gathering is an impressive ministry to behold, yet those of us called to care for this ministry also strive to be good stewards of the resources participants invest in it. For that reason, the stage in the Superdome will be different, but the structure will utilize the same footprint. Saving money by not having to redraw the rigging plot or reconfigure staging or order new drapery allows us to be better stewards and put our energy and resources into other areas of this Gathering. We are trying to strike a balance between the “wow factor” of the Gathering’s productions in the Superdome and creating justice experiences that connect youth and adult participants with New Orleanians who need to know God’s people are still there for them.

 Am I a fuddy duddy for hoping that all of us can see beyond the fog of consumerism that prevents us from recognizing the things that really bring us closer to God? Am I out of touch with what teenagers need to feel connected to God? Am I resisting some kind of generational change in some way? Those are questions with which I invite you to help me wrestle in the comments section below.

 I feel strongly about helping people, myself included, discern what is of the Spirit and what isn’t; what draws us closer to God and what turns us in on ourselves. If having a glitzy, technically cutting-edge stage, the hottest band, and the hippest celebrity speaker helps us worship the eternal God and bear fruit in the world, then we keep them. If those things lead to narcissism or to an obsession with having the best, most impressive, revolutionary stuff, then we need to loosen our grip or even let go of them completely.

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