Listening for God’s Call to Jesus Justice Jazz

We invite all who are busily preparing for the 2009 ELCA Youth Gathering to pause. We invite you to pause -- to step back from the lively work of dreaming and planning, fundraising and teambuilding -- in order to listen closely for God’s invitation! Pause, and then spend some carefully focused time and energy listening for God’s calling voice, God’s specific invitation to you, to your group of youth, to your congregation.

This pausing, this receptive listening for God’s calling voice, is often known as discernment. Discernment is prayer-filled listening and trust-filled conversation in community. Discernment is about sharpening our senses and opening our spirits for what God is saying to a particular people during a particular time of life.

	So, whether your congregation has attended one, none, or all seven ELCA churchwide youth gatherings;
	Whether you have heard a lot about Jesus Justice Jazz, or not much at all;
	Whether your fundraising is flying high, or not even off the ground;
	We invite you to pause, now -- this summer -- and spend focused time and faith energy listening closely for God’s calling voice, God’s specific invitation to Jesus Justice Jazz.

As you continue through this process, you will find two central discernment questions and resource ideas to help you to create space for prayer-filled listening and trust-filled conversation. There are many ways to do so, such as:

• 90-minute meetings over six weeks focusing on sections of this process
• An intensive weekend retreat
• Distributing certain portions as “explorations” for small teams of participants to dive into, and then gathering back together for a sharing of insights and group conversation, perhaps with a meal.
• There is a wonderful pattern for discernment in community called "The Liturgy for Discernment," arising from work by Mark Yaconelli. It can be adapted for this purpose. A full explanation is found in Mark Yaconelli’s book Contemplative Youth Ministry: Practicing the Presence of Jesus, Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 2006.

A video version of this discernment process is available online.

Listening for God’s Call to a Powerful Gathering

The 2009 ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans, Jesus Justice Jazz, will be an incredibly powerful time -- a time full of God’s power to stir up new life!

	As respectful guests, we will gather to witness to God’s power to stir up new life -- for the city and all its communities, for God’s church and for the whole world -- in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.
	As attentive guests, baptized in God’s gift of new life, we will gather to explore our calling to be “little Christs” (Martin Luther) to our neighbors, by living out God’s power in words and deeds of compassionate justice.
	As humble guests, baptized in God’s gift of abundant life, we will gather to become different, and to make a difference, by tuning ourselves to the always new, never finished song of God -- a kind of holy jazz!