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2009 ELCA Youth Gathering E-News
May 2009 ► Issue 13

The Gathering E-News will be sent to you each month and deliver Gathering information and news to you on New Orleans and beyond. Previous issues of the Gathering E-News are archived.

How is God at work in this world through your hands? Tell the story of your youth group in a short video and you could win a $5,000 ministry grant or $2,500 in cash.

Visit www.elca.org/videocontest to learn more about the ELCA’s first-ever video contest.

Youth and adults are invited to participate in the Jazz, Jam, and Poetry Slam in the Krewes Learning Center in the Convention Center during the Gathering. Bring your musical instruments and original poetry.

There will be jazz improvisation on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 10:00am until 3:00pm.

Learn more about the daily schedule.

• May 25 is the very last day for making any registration cancellations. No refunds are given for cancellations after May 25 or for no-shows in New Orleans.
   
• The May 25 deadline for paying your balance in full has been extended to June 25. Paying in full by June 25 will enable you to use the faster E-Z Check-In when you arrive in New Orleans. If you are still working on fundraising though, you can always pay your balance when you arrive in New Orleans. To see your balance due, just log back into your on-line congregational registration record and click on "Congregation Details."
   
• June 25 is also the new deadline for making on-line corrections and substitutions.

“Weakness as the way to God.” When I saw that sub-heading in a book recently I paused, hoping that the next few paragraphs would validate what the 2009 ELCA Youth Gathering is all about. Jesus Justice Jazz, shaped around Philippians 2:1-8, is all about trying on the way of weakness that was modeled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Weakness is not a position to which most of us aspire, especially youth, but maybe, just maybe, that is what God is asking of us who follow his Son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus deliberately became a servant who suffered because of and for the sins of the people. That act of self-giving service determined the “way” that Jesus’ community would have to follow if they were to survive the coming crisis.

The people of New Orleans know something about surviving a crisis. It is a gift that we are meeting there this summer, especially during a time of growing financial crisis in our country and the world. I predict that the real treasure from this Youth Gathering will not come so much in what ELCA youth and adults give to New Orleans through service projects, but in what New Orleanians give to us.

As you prepare to come to New Orleans, talk together about what it means for you to enter the city expecting to receive as well as give. In my opinion, the best thing all of us can do to prepare is to ask the Holy Spirit for strength to go there “empty” (Philippians 2:7), or poor, because when we are empty, poor, and weak, we are in a better position to receive the gifts of the community within which we gather.

There is a huge difference between approaching a service experience with the intent to fix, and approaching humbly, receptively, and with a spirit of compassion and kinship.

“The vision of Jesus is that we meet people at the bottom and help bring them up to trust themselves. In order to break down the walls that separate people we… must begin at the bottom. Jesus came to announce good news to the poor, freedom to captives, liberty to the oppressed, sight to the blind.”  (Living Gently in a Violent Word, 2008, page 71)

If our intent in New Orleans is to help people rise up out of the tragedy wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, then we need to “humble ourselves, even to the point of death, death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:8) Then watch things change!

Heidi Hagstrom
Director for the ELCA Youth Gathering

Gathering logo art for making your own shirts and things.
 

Guidelines for making and hanging banners in the Superdome

Congregations are invited to bring banners to hang in the Superdome to add to the colorful, festive, jazz-filled atmosphere. Ushers in the Superdome will be available to advise your group where banners can be hung on the first night.

Congregational banners must meet these guidelines:

• Banners messages should be consistent with the spirit of the Gathering.
• Banners must be no larger than 3' x 10', and be  designed in a horizontal format (landscape or sideways).
• Banners may be attached only by means of plastic cable ties, string, or plastic-coated wire.
• Nothing can be attached to any surface in the building by means of tape, Velcro-like tape, tacks, staples, nails, double-stick tape, sticky-putty, pins, wire, or any other means.
• Sticks or poles cannot be used with the banner.
• Air conditioning vents and any existing Superdome signs, either static or electronic, may not be covered.
• The Superdome employees, Gathering staff, or volunteers have the right to remove any sign or banner.

• Getting Ready resources
• Gathering E-News
• New Orleans resources & links
• Learn more about the ELCA Youth Gathering
• Learn more about Youth Ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

You are receiving this e-mail because you subscribed to the 2009 ELCA Youth Gathering E-News.  Unsubscribe from this list and stop receiving further Gathering E-News.  For general questions contact the ELCA Youth Gathering office at gathering@elca.org or 1-800-638-3522, ext. 2100.