Youth and Young Adults

“Welcome, ELCA.” So read the signs all along Canal Street and throughout the French Quarter of New Orleans. Café Dumond and all the other restaurants and shops were thrilled to have more than 33,000 youth and their pocketbooks walking onto their premises. But the impact upon the city was more than just an infusion of dollars and the life and energy of high school youth on the streets. It was the witness in song and service of a Church bringing healing and hope to a city where 60% of the youth do not graduate from high school. The reasons for that statistic are legion, I suppose, all having roots in a long history of racism and poverty. But as the bellhop in our hotel said to me, “these young people touch my heart and renew my faith!”

I want my life to make a  difference.

I want my life to make  change.

I want my life to do some  good here.

I want my life to make  change.

(Make a Difference by Rachel Kurtz)

If there was a theme song for the 2012 Youth Gathering this was it, with youth exhorted to receive the gift of life and peace in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:11-22) and use it to make a difference in the world. The theme of the Gathering was “Citizens with the Saints”, a phrase taken from Ephesians 2:19. Again and again we heard that we are no longer strangers and aliens, people far away and on the out from God, but “Citizens with the Saints” And because of that we get to tear down the walls that divide, or as we say in this synod’s missional direction, building bridges across all the differences that divide society.

“Practice, practice, practice,” is a phrase usually heard from the likes of basketball coaches and piano teachers. But it also echoed around the Crescent City these 5 days as the youth Practiced Discipleship, Peacemaking, and Justice, the three main components of the Gathering. On Wednesday we met as a synod for worship--more than 650 youth and adults--in the Mardi Gras Room of the Marriott Hotel. Following the Holy Communion we learned about the seven faith practices of worship, study, invite, prayer, encourage, serve, and give.

On Thursday after worshiping together, the youth were able to find ways to practice peacemaking by visiting booths in the Interaction Center, participating in Bible study with bishops (I helped lead the Road to Shalom experience in the Book of Faith room) and engaging in conversations with people from war torn areas like Palestine. Over the course of three days, 509 heads of hair were donated to make wigs for cancer patients and 1193 pints of blood was collected from Gathering participants.

On Saturday our youth joined 12,000 others, a third of the gathering, in projects as varied as painting walls in schools, reading books to young children, cleaning paths in a forest, clearing lots in the Ninth Ward, or, in projects learning about the slave culture of the South or other facets of New Orleans’ history. And, truth be told, some of us, myself included, learned about the history and culture through two delightful hours at the New Orleans School of Cooking!

The evening mass gatherings were at the Mercedes Benz Superdome, the “Luther Dome,” as some began to call it. This year’s dynamic speakers included Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, Shane Claiborne, Pastor Andrena Ingram, Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee, and the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA, the Reverend Mark Hanson. The gathering ended on Sunday morning with the Festival Eucharist, the largest worshiping body in America that morning, with communion distributed in less than 20 minutes!!

It was a great gathering, with the youth now back home, charged to practice discipleship, peacemaking and justice in their local congregations and communities. I pray that we can receive their gifts, experience, vision and energy and like the bellhop at the hotel be encouraged in our own faith and life.