Lutheran teens roll into New Orleans for massive convention
Published: Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Some 33,000 Lutheran teens from the Dakotas to Florida began rolling into New Orleans on hundreds of chartered buses Wednesday to participate in their church’s massive youth rally, a combination of religious education, service work and socializing that stands as a landmark in some Lutheran lives. Ryan Micke attended such a weekend two decades ago in San Antonio. At 39, he’s back with his 15-year-old daughter, Alyssa — one of the 2,000 adults outnumbered 16-to-1 by teen members of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
View full sizeTeenagers from Salem Lutheran Church in Bridgeport, Conn., dance at Champions Square in New Orleans on Wednesday.
Micke said the once-every-three-year event, sometimes just called The Gathering, was one of the important events of his own teen years — as he hoped the next three days would be for Alyssa and 82 others from Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Sioux Falls, S.D.
Financed by bake sales, car washes and their own funds — the cost for some is more than $800 — they arrived by the thousands all day and streamed into the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. While adults registered them, teens sat in circles on the floor, huddled in group conversations, and took in the parade of distant hometowns emblazoned on thousands of passing T-shirts.
The Kinfolk Brass Band strolled the hall, thumping out jazz that drowned out the iPods.
Martin Harper, 19, of Kissimmee, Fla., is one of the few who had been to a Gathering before — and that, too, was in New Orleans. It was in 2009, when the recovery from Hurricane Katrina was just beginning to tail off.
Harper said he remembered painting the bathroom at an unnamed high school. And he and another veteran, Justina Holstrum, remembered how New Orleanians, recognizing them as volunteers — part of the post-Katrina army that helped rebuild thousands of homes — spontaneously called out greetings and thanks.
View full sizeHeather Swanson, an adult leader from Word of Peace Lutheran Church in Rogers, Minn., uses her umbrella for shade at Champions Square in New Orleans on Wednesday.
That the church should return to New Orleans speaks to a bond between the city and the church’s youth ministry, said Heidi Hagstrom, the convention’s Chicago-based program director.
The decision to come to New Orleans in 2009 was not risk-free, Hagstrom said then. Distant parents worried that the city was still too raw, its neighborhoods too damaged to safely host young teens, some just entering high school.
But it turned out to be a notable success.
“The relationships we built with New Orleans in 2009 in many cases continues,” said Hagstrom.
“When we announced we were coming back to New Orleans this year, there was almost an audible cheer.”
The Gathering is a major event in young Lutheran life, and a tool the 4.5 million-member denomination has developed over more than a century to teach its children how to live the principles of Christianity, Hagstrom said.
To that end, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee — who was awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, with two other women, for their nonviolent efforts to promote women’s rights — will address the group at the Superdome, where each night through Saturday the teens will gather for worship and music.
And 60 of about 65 Lutheran bishops are in New Orleans with their young people, Hagstrom said.
While teens will discuss Scripture, they’ll also fan out across New Orleans neighborhoods Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Working with nonprofits such as Green Light New Orleans, thousands will build community gardens, clean storm drains and paint in the Pontilly area, Central City, Hoffman Triangle, Pigeon Town and other neighborhoods.
Lutheran families are supplying hundreds of thousands of children’s books — the goal is 1 million — for distribution at 25 book fairs hosted by the New Orleans recreation department and other local organizations on Saturday. The books were selected in consultation with Orleans and Jefferson educators, who suggested about 50 titles.
And each day in the Convention Center, thousands will go through interactive projects teaching the principles of peacemaking and discipleship.
In addition, thousands will play, sliding down cable zip lines or swinging in long arcs from cables tethered high in the Convention Center’s roof trusses.
On Wednesday, typically muggy and hot, with a high around 91 degrees, some teens and their parents struggled to acclimate.
Micke, the South Dakota parent with daughter, Alyssa, found it a respite from a crushing heat wave that has roasted the Midwest.
It was 102 when they left, he said. New Orleans was a relief.
Bruce Nolan can be reached at bnolan@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3344.
View full sizeTeenagers from Salem Lutheran Church in Bridgeport, Conn., dance at Champions Square in New Orleans on Wednesday. Financed by bake sales, car washes and their own funds — the cost for some is more than $800 — they arrived by the thousands all day and streamed into the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. While adults registered them, teens sat in circles on the floor, huddled in group conversations, and took in the parade of distant hometowns emblazoned on thousands of passing T-shirts.
The Kinfolk Brass Band strolled the hall, thumping out jazz that drowned out the iPods.
Martin Harper, 19, of Kissimmee, Fla., is one of the few who had been to a Gathering before — and that, too, was in New Orleans. It was in 2009, when the recovery from Hurricane Katrina was just beginning to tail off.
Harper said he remembered painting the bathroom at an unnamed high school. And he and another veteran, Justina Holstrum, remembered how New Orleanians, recognizing them as volunteers — part of the post-Katrina army that helped rebuild thousands of homes — spontaneously called out greetings and thanks.
View full sizeHeather Swanson, an adult leader from Word of Peace Lutheran Church in Rogers, Minn., uses her umbrella for shade at Champions Square in New Orleans on Wednesday. The decision to come to New Orleans in 2009 was not risk-free, Hagstrom said then. Distant parents worried that the city was still too raw, its neighborhoods too damaged to safely host young teens, some just entering high school.
But it turned out to be a notable success.
“The relationships we built with New Orleans in 2009 in many cases continues,” said Hagstrom.
“When we announced we were coming back to New Orleans this year, there was almost an audible cheer.”
The Gathering is a major event in young Lutheran life, and a tool the 4.5 million-member denomination has developed over more than a century to teach its children how to live the principles of Christianity, Hagstrom said.
To that end, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee — who was awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, with two other women, for their nonviolent efforts to promote women’s rights — will address the group at the Superdome, where each night through Saturday the teens will gather for worship and music.
And 60 of about 65 Lutheran bishops are in New Orleans with their young people, Hagstrom said.
While teens will discuss Scripture, they’ll also fan out across New Orleans neighborhoods Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Working with nonprofits such as Green Light New Orleans, thousands will build community gardens, clean storm drains and paint in the Pontilly area, Central City, Hoffman Triangle, Pigeon Town and other neighborhoods.
Lutheran families are supplying hundreds of thousands of children’s books — the goal is 1 million — for distribution at 25 book fairs hosted by the New Orleans recreation department and other local organizations on Saturday. The books were selected in consultation with Orleans and Jefferson educators, who suggested about 50 titles.
And each day in the Convention Center, thousands will go through interactive projects teaching the principles of peacemaking and discipleship.
In addition, thousands will play, sliding down cable zip lines or swinging in long arcs from cables tethered high in the Convention Center’s roof trusses.
On Wednesday, typically muggy and hot, with a high around 91 degrees, some teens and their parents struggled to acclimate.
Micke, the South Dakota parent with daughter, Alyssa, found it a respite from a crushing heat wave that has roasted the Midwest.
It was 102 when they left, he said. New Orleans was a relief.
Bruce Nolan can be reached at bnolan@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3344.
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