This is a special double entry from the writers of the theme song for the Gathering! Check out the video for the theme song!

– Judi Tyler

I have been learning to write songs and hymns in the past few years. I often get catchy “ear worms” in my head and I start humming them as I drive to and from my job. I like to take theological thoughts (sometimes even from a sermon!) and put them to music that is pegajoso, sticky in Spanish.

I have been thinking a lot about the 2018 Gathering theme, “This Changes Everything,” and how to put it to music. I had parts of a song, but I knew I needed help. One year ago, I met James Kocian through the Arizona Songwriters Association. James is a song coach and music maker who lives in Wisconsin. When I shared my thoughts with James, I said, “In my head, I hear drums but I cannot play drums at all.” James said, “I am a drummer!” We talked about the Gathering, the theme, who would attend, and their home communities. James worked on the song with his amazing musical and technical skills.

One of my favorite parts of the song is the bridge:

It’s by grace.
We are saved.
We belong to Jesus.

That is what I hold on to when life is overwhelming; belonging to God tells me who I am and whose I am. This belonging changes everything.

Looking forward to making music all together in Houston in 2018!

Judi Tyler is a pediatric medical social worker and is a deaconess from the Lutheran Deaconess Association (LDA) diaconate.

– James Kocian

I’ve been a songwriter and producer for a while. Through a mutual friend in Nashville, I was connected to Judi Tyler to offer song coaching and critique. In one of our sessions, she told me about the theme song contest for the Gathering. I absolutely loved the vision for the Gathering. I thought that the title, “This Changes Everything,” was perfect.

In creating the lyrics, I was thinking about not just my own experiences with God, but also the experiences of teens attending the Gathering. I was thinking about the teenage years and how they are often chaotic.

I hoped to capture God’s unchanging and steady nature, no matter how chaotic and challenging our lives can often be.

I wanted the mood of the song to match the enthusiasm of the moment. For the music and melody, I envisioned a stadium full of energetic and passionate youth singing along to the refrain of the chorus. Adding a lot of “ohs,” “heys,” and other modern responses in a drum and guitar driven arrangement seemed to complete the vision and present the song in the way I had hoped.

I am privileged and honored that the song I wrote with Judi was selected. I look forward to experiencing the amazing Gathering in 2018!

– Aubrey Thonvold

I know firsthand just how magical and life changing the Youth Gathering can be.  I went to my first Gathering back in the 90s when I was a freshman in high school.  It was powerful to be with over 30,000 peers experiencing the life of the church on such a massive scale. It was just as powerful as a youth leader when I brought a youth group ten years later.  However, it is in my current role as the Executive Director of ReconcilingWorks that I look forward to the Gathering with a different level of excitement.

The holy work of ensuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people and their families are named, seen, and cared for in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is transformative.  As a lesbian, there have been times in my life where church did not always feel like a safe place for me.

The role that ReconcilingWorks has at the Gathering is to create a space where LGBTQ youth and adults can be fully themselves and celebrate the beautiful diversity in which we are all made.

I am looking forward to the Gathering in Houston so we can celebrate and affirm the many ways the LGBTQ community helps to make the ELCA its best.   No one should ever wonder if the church is a safe place for them.

Make sure and stop by the ReconcilingWorks booth . . . just look for the rainbows!

– Iain Chester

My first experience of the ELCA Youth Gathering was less than two years ago in Detroit. I learned quickly that a Gathering is unique and that there is nothing quite like worshiping in an NFL stadium filled with 30,000 people. As children’s rights activist Marian Wright Edelman walked out on to the stage during worship, she summed it up perfectly saying, “You are incredible.”

My role at the ELCA Youth Gathering was to help with ELCA World Hunger’s Walk for Water. This interactive experience invites participants to learn more about access to clean water by following the story of someone who does not have easy access to clean water. Participants can feel what it is like to collect water by carrying a five-gallon jug of water (about 41.5 pounds when full).

Looking out at the crowd, Marian Wright Edelman challenged us saying, “With your energy we are going to transform America and make it understand that God did not make two classes of children.”

Since the Gathering, many congregations, youth groups, and high schools across the ELCA have hosted their own localized versions of ELCA World Hunger’s Walk for Water. I believe that this experience, taken home by so many who came to the Gathering, has been a small part of the transformation Wright Edelman spoke about.

Congregations and youth groups have also been part of transformation through giving. Many who attended the 2015 ELCA Youth Gathering brought gifts to support ELCA World Hunger’s Walk for Water. To date, over $1 million has been raised to support ELCA World Hunger water-related projects. This transformation all began at the Gathering and will continue to provide clean drinking water like spring boxes and boreholes, support for irrigation systems, education about sanitation in rural villages, and so much more.

God did not make two classes of children, some with access to clean water and others without.

As we look toward Houston and the 2018 ELCA Youth Gathering, I am excited to see the ways in which God will transform us, our world, and our understanding of one another.

– Kinda Makini

Blessings from me to you!

My name is Kinda Makini. I am honored to serve as the Team Leader for the Multicultural Youth Leadership Event (MYLE) for 2018. Through MYLE, we live to empower young people of color and those whose primary language is other than English.

At MYLE, our hope is for everyone attending to embrace their story as a part of God’s story to move towards healing and wholeness as transformational leaders in the world.

At the Gathering in Detroit, I served as a Co-Team Leader and Project Manager for Service Learning. Serving on the ELCA Gathering team transformed my life to love and tackle God’s work through accompanying our young people.

I live in Detroit, Michigan with my precious little one; Kay’Lei Ella. I am the Executive Director of Inner City Youth Group, whose mission is to serve youth between the ages of five to 24. My hobbies are sewing, playing Candy Crush, exercising, bowling, and most of all, enjoying time with family.

– David Hunstad

In 1973, I was a junior in high school and I had an experience that indeed “changed everything.” I went to the All Lutheran Youth Gathering in Houston, Texas. I came from a small town in Wisconsin and my dad was our pastor and youth leader. Until I sat in the Houston Astrodome with Lutheran youth from all over the country, I thought the church, this faith that I was a part of, was kind of a family thing.

I remember to this day the reverberation of the Lord’s Prayer filling the largest room in the world. I remember watching as some of my dad’s friends ran the sound system and made announcements on the stage.

The joy and excitement of that space opened my eyes to the vast reaches of God’s grace, love, and mercy.

That moment in time changed the course of my life. I made it my mission to participate, attend, organize, and implement similar transformational events for future generations of high school youth. The Christmas gift that was most exciting for me was when my parents paid my way to a Gathering in Minneapolis. When I was in college, I would find a youth group that needed help going to a Gathering. As a youth director, I worked tirelessly to make sure our youth could attend local, regional, and Churchwide Gatherings.

The mission of Old Lutheran is to provide unique products and services that help our customers express their Lutheran identity.

I believe that the ELCA Youth Gathering is an event that helps shape that identity, and I consider it a privilege to be a partner.

I get a thrill knowing that my life’s journey of participating and organizing has led to a business that continues to help express the identity of this event before, during, and after we all gather in Houston.

– Keith Amano

We’re everywhere. Hopefully you don’t notice us too much, but we’re in and out of rooms, behind curtains and walls, and, yes, even under tables. We zig-zag around town, loading and unloading van-fulls of equipment.  We’re the scouting crew, the staging squad, and the extraction team for phones, radios, computers, printers, projectors, screens, and displays.  We’re here planning before you arrive. We’re here constantly moving, setting up, configuring, maintaining, fixing, breaking down, and moving again while you attend events and activities. We’re here putting away our toys after you leave.  We’re the Information Technology Team:  a merry band of network nerds, gadget geeks and glorified go-fers—and we are here to serve.

Our mission is to enable and support the other leadership teams in delivering meaningful worship, learning, service, and community experiences to Gathering attendees.

We deal with “things” so presenters and leaders can concentrate on the “content.”  We’re the rapid-response SWAT Team of surge protectors, cables, and wires.  We’re the Widget Whisperers and Doo-dad Doctors.  Sometimes, we’re the Cyber Counselors—talking down those panicked and infuriated by uncooperative and megalomaniacal machines.

My name is Keith Amano, a short, long-haired Japanese-American from a little island in Hawai’i, who ended up on a much bigger island we call “The Mainland” and who, by the grace of God, has been blessed to travel the country to see tens of thousands of youth come together in the name of Jesus. I have done IT for a lot of conferences over years—mainly in the public school sector.

My first experience with the Gathering was as a volunteer at New Orleans in 2012.  I was in awe of the folks I saw orchestrating such a huge and complex event—all with grace and a common spiritual purpose.  Imagine a music fan getting to join their favorite rock band or a sports fan playing with their favorite team—that’s what it was like for me when I was asked to be a co-leader for Detroit 2015 and then Team Leader for Houston 2018.  I am a humble fan amazed to now work alongside those I most admire.

Working with the Youth Gatherings, I feel so blessed that I am now part of something that is on a much grander scale and for such a beautiful purpose—to walk alongside our youth as they serve their communities and as they journey in their faith.

Yeah, this is definitely where ITs at!

Aloha ke Akua! God is Love!