“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!

“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.

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

“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.

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.

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.