The time has come! The ELCA Youth Gathering is just days away, and MYLE and the tAble begin programming tomorrow.

After bake sales, car washes, crab feed dinners, parent meetings, planning meetings, laughter, maybe some nervousness, definitely a lot of excitement, and time of intensive planning and prayer, it is now the appointed time. Team leaders have been in Houston putting the plans and activities they’ve been working on for the past two to three years to life. Youth are beginning to arrive. The city of Houston is prepared to welcome us.

Make sure to follow us in a number of ways on social media. Find information and follow the faith formation and fun at the following places:

• The ELCA Youth Gathering Blog (updated in the mornings and evenings of event days);
• Facebook for MYLE, the tAble, and the ELCA Youth Gathering;
• Snapchat (elcagathering);
• Instagram; and
• Twitter for MYLE and the ELCA Youth Gathering.

Don’t forget to follow the hashtag #ELCAYG2018 on social media.

You can also follow instructions to download the ELCA Youth Gathering app here.

For those who have offered your prayers, your resources, and of so much more to provide the youth from your faith communities a unique and formative experience, make sure to continue to connect to what is happening in Houston!

– Molly Beck Dean

(Click here to read last week’s entry, Gathering Hopes and Goals, Part I)

The Gathering is an awesome way to meet Lutherans from across the world, but ultimately, we hope this ministry strengthens your congregational group.  You will be with us in Houston for a maximum of eight days and the Holy Spirit will move in powerful ways in that short time.

However, we know that the real “magic” happens back in the young people’s home congregations.

Often the Gathering is used as a spring board for a congregation’s youth ministry as they restart or re-energize. Whether it’s the bus ride to Houston or a meal time at the University of Houston or a late night Final 15, we hope that the various parts of this ministry deepen the connection that youth have to their peers and adults in their home congregation.

The final goal of the Gathering is that young people learn about the ELCA. Some will come to Houston and realize for the first time that they are part of something bigger than their congregation. Others may have strong connections with their synodical ministry, but not be fully aware of what we do throughout our country as a Church.  And most young people (and adults) have a lot to learn when it comes to how the ELCA is present with our global Lutheran siblings and doing ministry across the world. I hope that young people meet ministry partners in the hall of NRG Center and are amazed at the many and creative ways we are Church together. I hope they hear and see that there are opportunities for young leaders to be engaged right now in many parts of the ELCA’s call to be Christ in the world.

And finally, I hope they go home and share with those in their home congregation about the ELCA and the ways they are most passionate about engaging. 

Perhaps I should have opened with this, but maybe you are thinking, “why are these five things Molly’s hopes and goals for participants?” The answer is actually quite simple – because it’s what I have experienced each time I’m a part of this ministry.  My first Gathering was as a high schooler in 1997. I journeyed on a bus from small town North Dakota to New Orleans.  It was my first urban experience, the first time I realized my Church was so huge, the first time I saw people of color who were Lutheran. I think it was at the Gathering that God solidified my heart as a youth minister. Several of the other youth who journeyed with me at the Gathering are still my best friends because we grew in our relationship with God and each other that week in ways that are hard to put into words.  

And each time I return to MYLE, the tAble and the Gathering, I am challenged and affirmed in new ways as a Christian, as a leader, as a woman, as a mom, and as a friend.  My eyes are opened and my heart breaks. Every time I’m a part of this ministry, I am brought to tears because of the incredible beauty and the haunting darkness in people’s stories and in our world.  Even though I’ve been a legit ELCA church nerd since high school, each cycle I learn something new about what our Church is doing with and for God’s people across the world and I am proud to be part of the ELCA. 

This is a powerful and transformational ministry if you are brave enough to let your guard down long enough for the Spirit to enter in, if you can be quiet long enough to listen to someone different than yourself, if your prayer is to be open to what God is calling you to, if you realize the strong roots of a community will ground you no matter the strength of life’s storms, and if you imagine yourself as part of something bigger than you. 

– Molly Beck Dean

Faith formation in teens is the mission of the ministry of the Gathering.  It is the hub from which all things come for the tAble, MYLE, and the Gathering. We strive to create environments and opportunities for faith formation through worship, Interactive Learning, Bible study, Service Learning, and fellowship. Some of the faith formation experiences at the Gathering can be replicated – you can bring them to your home, congregation, or synod and create the same experience for others there. Some are unique to this ministry because of its size and scope.

There are also several hopes or goals that I have for those who come to the Gathering, especially the youth participants.

The first is that they are both affirmed and challenged in their faith. I hope that at least once during their time with us that each young person feels the undeniable presence of God and is affirmed in their beliefs. Likewise, I also hope that each participant has a moment where something troubles their heart or their mind enough to challenge their faith. Maybe they have to rethink what they have been taught about God. Maybe their heart breaks over a story they hear and they have to wonder why God would let such a thing happen? Our faith is deepened on the mountaintops and in the valleys.  It is my hope that participants can be vulnerable enough to let both happen while they are at the Gathering, surrounded by caring adults and peers.

MYLE, the tAble, and the Gathering are opportunities to experience new perspectives. It is my hope that youth and adults will open their minds and hearts to let in those perspectives. For some, that will happen in NRG Stadium through a speaker’s story that is different or even contradictory to their own story. For others, the new perspective is being in a large city. Others will experience a new perspective by learning the story of the organization and people they serve with on their Service Learning day. No one is trying to change another person’s mind on an issue or invalidate one story in exchange for another, but rather we seek to expose our participants to stories, sensations, and situations that are new and encourage growth.

Intentionally, and often completely unintentionally, we know that the Gathering is a place for young people to ponder who God is calling them to be. Vocation is how we live our baptism out in daily life, how we are the hands and feet of Jesus in our corner of the world. The Church needs to have a stake in the development and understanding of our young peoples’ vocation. Gathering leadership hopes and plans for moments of “aha!” as our young people meet inspirational people, hear their stories, and then listen to the nudges of the Holy Spirit calling them to something similar in their lives. Almost every time I’m at an event representing the Gathering, someone will tell me that the Gathering helped them realize they were meant to be a social worker or a volunteer or a youth director or an advocate and on and on.

– Sarah Mayer-Flatt

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made!”  proclaims the psalmist in the 139th chapter. That proclamation is the truth to which all participants of the tAble 2018 will come to know as their truth, too. Because God made us—putting us together piece by piece from within the bodies that held us before birth—we are ALL wonderfully made.

Sometimes other worldly voices try to tell us that those who live with a disability are an inconvenience, inspirational, or any number of things that do not speak to the truth that we are promised in the equalizing waters of our baptisms: we ALL belong to God.

Each day at the tAble, we’ll answer those questions that get stirred up by other voices in our lives and yet answered by God. Who do you belong to? Why do you belong? How do you belong? And finally: Who belongs with you?

At any table that is made holy by God, ALL are welcome.

You Belong: these two words are words that many never hear enough within their lives, and youth who will attend rhe tAble may struggle to believe them even more. Belonging means the community welcomes you as you are, and that accommodations are second nature and not uncomfortable. Belonging means the community of faith sees gifts within you just as they do in so many others, and upholds those gifts as valuable.

Belonging means the community of faith walks or rolls with you and goes into the hard places, where the truth of belonging still needs to be proclaimed—by and to the very ones who DO BELONG—to each other, and to God.

Sarah Mayer-Flatt is a person with a disability who serves as the Team Leader for the tAble 2018. Sarah is also Associate Pastor at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Omaha, NE, where she lives with her husband Randy, their two cats, and their new puppy.

-Sarah Mayer-Flatt

There’s a renewed ministry of the ELCA Youth Gathering that I am excited to be a part of for the second time as Team Leader: the tAble. Formerly known as DAYLE, The Definitely-Abled Youth Leadership Event, the tAble is maintaining many of the best practices of this ministry, while also focusing on different opportunities to include and support youth who live with disabilities within the ELCA.

Without question, this ministry is where my sense of call first took root. I was a young person in a wheelchair at DAYLE ’00 learning about the ways God could use even me. But explaining what a “definitely-abled” person became cumbersome as I grew into my leadership over the next 15 years through the event. This past January, a passionate group of people came together and heard new ways God is calling this ministry into being.

The new name is simpler, with a focus on where we most concretely meet God in our lives: God’s table of grace. As we hear in worship, the bread is broken for all people, and the cup is the new covenant in our lives—signs of grace, of hope, of community—where all are welcome.

The community of young people with disabilities is growing within the church, and there isn’t always a place for us. As a pastor with a disability, the first questions I am always asked in any congregation are about accommodations. The tAble hopes to help reinforce that the kingdom of God has a need for abilities of all kinds, even if our buildings are less than accessible.

Accompanying one another through the kingdom of God with all of its stairs, written words, untranslated language, and tight schedules, is all of our responsibility as children of God. The tAble will be a safe space for youth and their companions to experience God’s power in their lives, while being empowered to go out into the kingdom—first at the Gathering and then back to their congregations, synods, and communities, knowing that they are a vital part of the church.

 

The tAble (formerly the Definitely-abled Youth Leadership Event or DAYLE) is a pre-event to the Gathering that blesses and empowers young people who live with a wide range of physical, cognitive and emotional disabilities so that they might grow as faithful, wise and courageous witnesses. The event also gives participants the opportunity to acclimate and orient themselves to Houston and the venues in which the Gathering are being held. The tAble will be held June 24–27, 2018.