After a full day of travel yesterday, today's 8:00 wake-up call was welcome. I didn't even hear any kids in the hallway until 8:15, so it was clear all the groups enjoyed some sleep. The Gathering is separated into three days: Proclaim Story Day, a Proclaim Community Day and a Proclaim Justice Day. We 30,000 participants are divided into equal parts who rotate through the days. At First, Onalaska, today was our Proclaim Story Day.
After a morning of sightseeing, walking and lots of selfies... let me repeat - LOTS of selfies - our entire group converged on Detroit's enormous Cobo (pronounced with long o's) Convention Center. There we met with every participant from our entire La Crosse Area Synod; something like 300 in all. For four hours the kids were led through a 'curriculum' that centered on their "Lifeline". They were each given a "My Story Journal" and were tasked with writing down the highs and lows of their life thus far. After mapping out their lives, we then looked at the claim God made on their lives at baptism. Whenever an activity (typically 5 or fewer minutes) ended, they were brought back into the larger group by someone yelling, "Jesus Is..." and the rest of the group shouting, "Good News". Our own Parker Mannel was the designated "Jesus Is..." guy a number of times. A homegrown praise band from Good Shepherd, Viroqua provided the msuic, with our own Mickaela Larkin on the drums. She did great! We then considered the story of Jesus healing the paralytic. It's a story about Jesus being good news; a story about how the faith of friends is what heals the suffering one; a story about God at work through others. That's when we started considering how God works in our own lives. We named the people who faith for us like thoe friends of the paralytic did. And we heard stories from leaders who have experienced God. Ellie Havenstrite shared the story of her Father's death and what it has been like in the aftermath... Most kids and all the adults in the room were hit hard. What I especially loved about Ellie's story is how she was honest that she's not always down with the whole God thing, despite the ways she admits God has been present with her family through so many friends and family. This persepctive grounded the whole conversation in reality instead of some shallow story where everything turns out OK and unicorns fly over rainbows in the end because "everything happens for a reason". Through the story of Ellie and others, we got to admit that our "Lifelines" are littered with real lows while also including fantastic highs.
What's your story? was the question asked of all the participants. Amd by the nd of our time together, the last thing we did was draw a circle around the whole thing and label it "God's story." In other words, our story is a part of God's story. His claim on us claims the good and bad stuff that has happened. Because Jesus Is!... Good News!
From there we needed to eat. But so did 29,981 other people. The Gathering is a never-ending sea of humanity that overtakes every popular street in town. Monroe Street which goes through "Greektown" just a couple blocks from our hotel has a couple dozen restaurants. Walking down the sidewalk meant carefully weaving through seated people waiting to get into each establishment, while high-fiving almost every single person who walks past you. LOTS of high fives. We could only get reservations for Friday night from one of the Greektown restaurants, so we split up and scavenged for food in two smaller groups. Some of us went to the Renaissance Center, which is the base of the GM Towers (amazing) where there is a food court. Five of us ate with 5,000 of our closest friends there, while the rest of th egroup ate at the hotel's restaurant. They made a wise choice.
From Supper we went the few blocks from our hotel to Ford Field for the nightly main event. The theme from our speakers centered around privilege, diversity and equality. We heard from one young woman who recently completed a young adult in global mission year in Madagascar first. She named how eye-opening her expereince was. The people around her had so little and were yet so wealthy in community and in faith. More than ever, she recognized her privilege in material and culturl status. We then heard from Eric Barreto who was born and raised in Puerto Rico but who then moved to the mainland later in childhood. He shared stories of how he has at different times been told to put away his Puerto Rican identity in favor of only speaking English and only acting like an American. He spoke to the beauty of how God makes us all a little different, even though our differences can feel exposing and embarrassing. Finally we heard from Alexia Salvatierra who has worked with poverty and immigration for more than 20 years. She offered a powerful witness to the injustices of our broken immigration system that is not simply unhelpful to our country, but inhumane to those in need of refuge from dangerous places.
These days are so full of such meaty topics and experiences. The kids are bombarded with sights, sounds, ideas and music and told to care about so many things. They are kidn of tired and kind of revved up in a way they've never known. There was a noticeable change in our group from Wednesday to Thursday as their comfort level with the whole thing grew in leaps and bounds. Their willingness to engage with people from Alaska over here, Virginia over there and that group from Minnesota across the street is competely different from the first day. These next two days promise to include even more energy, more ideas and deeper faith. I definitely see God stretching our kids. After all, Jesus is... Good news!
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