i'm the robot king of the monkey thing

Tomorrow is July 21 which, besides being my dad's birthday, is not a very special or unique day.

Except this July 21 is the day that I, and eight other people from my church, will load up into a charter bus and head down to New Orleans for the ELCA Youth Gathering. I've been calling it the National Youth Gathering, but apparently that's wrong and not so politically correct, because youth from many other nations will be attending.

This will be my third one. The first was in 2000 at St Louis. I had just graduated from college and taken a job as a youth director at a church in Lincoln, Nebraska. I mean JUST taken the job, really. My first day on the job was July 1 and we left for the Gathering around a week afterward. It was a fluke opportunity. Most churches start planning for these Gatherings at least a year in advance. So all the details had been figured out, and I was told when I took the job that all of the adult chaperones had been selected and there was no room for me to go. And I was ok with that. I had never been to a National Youth Gathering before. At the church I attended in high school, the youth group consisted of me and Derek, who was three years younger than me. So, we never really did anything. I was not heartbroken to not be going, I was just excited and nervous to head out into the real world of youth ministry. But then one of the adult males found out he would need shoulder surgery a week or so before they left for the Gathering, and so he would be unable to go. A spot for a male chaperone opened up and they asked their new youth director if he'd like to go. I said Yes, of course. And it was pretty amazing. There were thousands and thousands of ELCA youth in one area. We had large group worships and all sorts of fun activities. I spent a lot of quality time in a van with these high schoolers that would now be mine.

In 2003, the Gathering was held in Atlanta. That year I happened to be on my Clinical Pastoral Education, which is a requirement for seminary and is a summer spent in a clinical ministry setting such as a hospital or a nursing home. It's a concentrated and intense experience and so to ask for a week or two off would be asking to miss a large chunk of the experience. So I didn't. But my friend, Pastor Mike, whose family was hosting me that summer went. I don't remember if he was taking a group or volunteering, but he was gone for those weeks while I trudged through the deep work that is CPE. I have to admit I was jealous. Very jealous.

So when 2006 rolled around and the Gathering was being held in San Antonio, I knew I HAD to go. But the only problem was, even though I was graduating from seminary in 2006, I most likely would not have a congregation by that point. And even if I did, it would be a situation similar to 2000, where they would have all their details in place and I could not expect emergency shoulder surgery to play a crucial role in me going. So I decided I needed to volunteer. I remembered that when I went to the St Louis Gathering that there were people in our hotel whose only role was to be hospitable. They were there to welcome us and to help us if we had any questions or concerns. They were called the Hotel Life team, and it seemed like something I could do. So I applied for this team, that was transitioning to the new title Community Life, and ended up being accepted as a volunteer.

I have to say that it was a pretty great way to spend two weeks of my summer. I ended up being in one of the hotels that was the farthest from the main hub of activity, and while that made me upset at first, I ended up enjoying it. I was part of a small team, just me and one other guy, and we had a great time. We schmoozed with the adults and youth in our hotel like we were getting paid for it. We patroled the hallways like the very safety of the hotel depended on it. We were there in the morning until the last groups got on the shuttle bus and headed to the convention center, and we were there towards the end of the night to wish them all sweet dreams. We hung out at the hotel closest to the convention center and spent a lot of time staffing their Community Life events. My favorite job was supervising dances. Being a church event we strongly discouraged the bumping and the grinding. So several of our female volunteers would stand up on the stage and observe the crowd. When they would see a young couple getting a little too friendly they'd point or nod, and my teammate or I would dance and boogie our way through the crowd to the overly amorous couple and remind them that there needed to be a bit more space in between them. Since our hotel was one of the distant properties, and there were no actual Community Life events held there, we were able to spend most of the day and evening at the convention center and the interaction center. We'd take the last bus in and wander around, check things out, visit the Community Life office and schmooze with the planning team, enjoy snow cones and check out the River Walk, and then go see all of the speakers and musicians and worship services. It was a great time, and an amazing two weeks.

So then the 2009 Youth Gathering started to get closer. I did mention to my Senior Pastor that I would like to volunteer for the Community Life team again, but he thought it would be better if I were to be in charge of our group. Since I wasn't in charge in 2000, I could see the value of experiencing the Gathering in a different way, and so I willingly, but reluctantly, decided not to volunteer again this year. And, I have to admit, this has been a completely different experience. All the fundraising and details and paperwork and phone calls and e-mails and checking and double checking and triple checking, the informational meetings... all these things that go into an ELCA Youth Gathering that I have never been a part of before. And I readily admit that I have not done it the way it probably should be done. I am sure that many people are far more organized and detail oriented than I am and that they have everything figured out to the minutest detail. But I know that we are registered for the event, and I know that we will have hotel rooms when we arrive, and I know that we have a bus to ride on to get there. So I am sure that things will work out.

To quote the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Amen!

Harry Potter and the Early Morning Movie

I just went to a 3am showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. After finally going to bed at 11:00 last night, and getting up at 2:00 this morning, I know that I should get some more sleep before trying to tackle what this day might bring. Everyone else in the house (not mine) is asleep right now. So, I'm the only brainiac still awake and typing on a computer. I should get some shut-eye and then drive back home to get some work done.

But the movie was pretty good. Not as good as it could have been, but still worth watching. It's been a while since I've read the book, so I couldn't tell you for sure what was different, but there are parts that were in the movie that I don't remember being in the book. Also, with the books, we get to follow along with JK Rowling's amazing story telling. She has ways of using words that wrap you up and make you feel like a part of the story. When reading the books I get emotionally invested in a way that I don't with the movies. Also, it's never been the same since the actor who originally played Dumbledore passed away. He was just perfect for the way I pictured Albus - wise and gentle and intelligent and quirky. The newer Dumbledore just seems a bit gruffer and rougher around the edges than I imagine him to be. Also, Tonks and Lupin, two of my favorite characters in the books barely appear in this movie.

But there are good parts, especially Ron Weasley. Rupert Grint, the actor who plays him, does a fantastic job. He is a great comedic actor, especially during the scene when Ron accidentally eats a love potion meant for Harry. It was priceless.

And the actor who plays Professor Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) also plays Professor Kirke in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I like him a lot.

The actress who plays Lavender Brown, the young girl that is smitten with Ron, does a great job, too. Hilarious.

Anyway, I need to go and try to get some sleep. I recommend going to see the movie, and even though it wasn't as great as I had hoped it would be, it was worth getting up at 2am to go and see it with some good friends.

(oh... during the previews, there were previews for two movies that I cannot wait to see: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief [see earlier post where I talk about that book] and Where the Wild Things Are. I am super excited to see both of them!!!!)

ELCA and the NYG in NOLA

We leave for New Orleans, for the ELCA National Youth Gathering, in exactly one week. We are taking a charter bus, along with youth from three other congregations, and driving straight through from up north here in Minnesota to down south there in New Orleans (sorry Becky, not stopping in St Louie).

I am excited as all get out for this. It should be a lot of fun. It's an opportunity to jam 37,000 youth and adults into one place and we can all let our church nerd flags fly. For example, the travel slogan for Virginia is "Virginia is for lovers." Well, in 2006 at the San Antonio gathering, all of the people from Virginia were sporting "Virginia is for Lutherans" shirts. They were pretty awesome and ever since then I've made it my goal to get one of those shirts for myself. I have had no luck at all. I was so close, though, because that year I was volunteering for the Hotel/Community Life team, and one of the women in charge of the team was from Virginia and she said she'd help me get one. But they didn't have any extras with them there. I've even communicated with some of the Virginia synod staff members and they weren't able to help me out. Drat.

But that is an example of the stuff that goes on at the Gathering. We makes jokes about Lutherans, there are lots of jokes about Minnesota (because of our high concentration of Lutherans), we wear our Lutheranism with pride and excitement and enthusiasm. There is even a song, written by the group Lost and Found, about the ELCA to the tune of YMCA. At San Antonio they had people in big letter costumes get up and dance. Our Presiding Bishop even got in on the fun and with a few other "ELCA celebrities" got up on stage and danced to the song. There were five of them dancing, each with a letter of the ELCA on their shirt. Bishop Hansen was the exclamation point.

It is bound to be a great time with a lot of fun people. The only problem is - I'm not a great detail person. Little things that I should think about or take care of slip by me because I'm too busy thinking about the big picture. So right now I'm trying to be calm and relaxed about the whole situation, but I'm starting to get a wee bit panicky about things. I don't want to get down there and realize I missed something with the hotel, and so we don't have rooms, or that I didn't send in a form and so we're not fully registered. All these little scenarios play out in my head about how I could possibly ruin everything. It's not a lot of fun.

Once we get there and dive in, it will be great fun. But right now, for the next week, I might lose even more of my already thinning hair...

still kickin'

I am hopeful that you, my faithful reader, do not mistake my lack of posting for a lack of excitement. You see, there is an awful lot of stuff going on in my life right now. Some of it is work related... some of it is not. Some of it is bloggable... some of it is not. Some of it is interesting... some of it is not. A lot of time I fear that the interesting stuff is also the unbloggable. There is a lot going on that I think you'd find interesting. But I'm not at liberty to share it with you. Drives you kind of crazy that I'm even mentioning it, doesn't it? Don't you hate it when someone does that?

But life moves ever onward. We are a couple weeks away from leaving for the National Youth Gathering in New Orleans, and I often feel like I am completely unprepared for it. But I think it should be a lot of fun, we are taking a good group of kids and adults, and sharing a bus with two other churches. I think it will be a good experience for everyone involved. Plus, I get to go to New Orleans again. So that's exciting in and of itself.

I led three services at our various nursing home and senior apartments today. I like these people, and I'm glad that we can bring the worship service to people who are unable to make it to church on their own. But I have found that one service at a nursing home takes more out of me than two services on a regular Sunday morning. We all have different gifts, I guess. (See what I said about the interesting stuff being unbloggable?)

What's on my mind tonight

So, Michael Jackson died. In case you haven't heard. But I'm not sure how you couldn't have heard about that by now. It's been on every TV station, and today as I was driving and listening to the radio, every break between songs the DJ talked about it. I think MTV even preempted their regularly scheduled programming to run a program about him. American Idol is going to re-air an episode for the first time, and it's going to be the one from this season where they all sang Michael Jackson songs. So I'm not sure how anyone could have gone this long without knowing something about Michael Jackson being dead.

And I get it. He's famous. He sang songs and made good music and cool videos. He did some pretty sweet dance moves and wore a sparkly glove. He lived at a fun park and had a pet chimpanzee and was friends with Emmanuel Lewis and Macaulay Culkin. I understand that.

But he was a person. No better or more important or any more special than anyone else. He wasn't any more special than one of my church members who I just found out died today in a car accident. His family mourns his loss. His wife and children and grandchildren now have a very big hole where this important and special man once was.

I just think it's wrong to lift up the death of some people as more important, more worthy of attention than others. We are all children of God, equally loved and cherished by God. It doesn't matter if we had best selling albums, or if we were on posters on every boy's room in the 1970's or if we were on one of the best late night talk shows, or if we lived in a small house in rural Minnesota. We are all special. We are all equal. We are all loved.

a list of highlights (creative title, i know)

Well, two weeks of Busy Summer 2009 are over. They were, indeed, busy. But they were fun nonetheless.

Some highlights of the past two weeks:

- Meeting Pastor Christie, a fun and funny fellow clergyperson, at church camp. She was there with her senior pastor and their middle school youth, and was at camp for most of the week, and was my partner-in-crime for the week. We now even have matching sweatshirts to confirm this.

- Canoeing with Pastor Christie and trying to catch pelicans on the lake. Even though they appeared to be sleeping they were able to get away from us. Though we did worry about being gangbeat by a bunch of them for disturbing their chillaxing.

- Playing "jackolight" at camp. It's a game original to this camp, that involves campers running around outside in the dark, and various counselors, staff members and other assorted adult-type people jumping out, shining flashlights at them and shouting "Jackolight!" Apparently there was a object that the kids were trying to find. I just thought it was an opportunity to jump and scream at the kids.

- Having kids raise their hands if they liked various food items, and when I said "Raise your hand if you like cheese curds," little Joey came tearing from across the room, looked at me with consternation and asked, "Did you say turds?"

- Eating at an end of VBS potluck and having little Becca standing behind me and say, "You have hair like my grandpa!"

- Taking another group of camp staff to see the two-story outhouse in town.

- Having a week at confirmation camp that did not involve threats of physical violence, mustard packets emptied on sleeping bags, kids tipping their canoes on purpose, or kids carving in their arms with safety pins.

- Playing Bonkers (also known as Biffer, or Biffer and Medic, or Boof or countless other names) and being a Bonker for the entire time and not dying. Although several kids taunted me, knowing they could easily outrun me. But it was a personal achievement. Don't try and take that away from me!

- Watching Sam and Aiden put pillows on their heads and dance to entertain the people behind our bus on the way home from camp.

- This isn't an actual highlight from camp or VBS, but it's related, so I'm including it. Getting to lead "Giants, Wizards and Elves," one of my favorite games ever (and I learned it at camp) at a meeting with the other churches with which we'll be traveling to the ELCA National Youth Gathering. It's a group "rock, paper, scissors" type game, and I learned it as "Giants, Wizards and Dwarves" but have changed it so as to be a bit more PC.

- Playing watergames during VBS in my backyard, and getting countless cups of water poured on me and more than several water balloons thrown at me. I try to remind myself that the sadistic attitude my young people have toward me really means that they like me.

- Finding and buying a camp hoodie that I had been envying and coveting for the past three years. And finding it on the clearance rack at the camp store. Granted, it's not the color that I would have chosen, but I still like it and am wearing it right now.

So those are just a few of the many highlights of the past two weeks. I've been enjoying a much needed day off, doing a whole lot of nothing all day. Tomorrow looks like a very similar day.

Awesome.

and so it begins

Summer is officially here. Well, not according-to-the-calendar official, but In-the-life-of-me official. Because tomorrow I head three hours north, with a busload of 7th graders, to spend a week away from their parents, at confirmation camp.

Now, if you know anything about me, then you know I spend most of the entire year looking forward to this one week. I won't go into my deep love for all things summer camp, that could be an entire post of it's own. Maybe even an entire blog. But, let's just say I really enjoy it and look forward to the opportunity to go there.

This will be my third summer at camp as Pastor Mark. I'm hoping that it will be a great week, the weather will cooperate, and the kids will have a good time.

Note: The previous paragraphs were written the day before I left for camp. I got back from camp on Friday. What follows, is obviously written post camp.

So, the week was good. I took a great group of 7th graders up to camp for the week, and I'm pretty sure most of them had a good time. Some of them even had a great time.

The week started out chilly and rainy, but got better as it progressed. By the end there was sun, although I think I'm wearing a sweatshirt in every picture. This year at camp we did not have any major issues, such as we had my first year. Which was nice. All of the kids were low drama, mixed well with the other kids, and had a good time. Several of them even mentioned wanting to go back to camp next year.

I had a good time, too. There was a new pastor friend this year, who I had not met before. She is in her first year of pastorhood and we had a good time hanging out and causing mischief. We went canoeing and tried to harass the pelicans on the lake, but they avoided us all too well.

It was a great time. I love camp, I love being in the midst of that atmosphere and in that environment. So even though it was, technically, 24 hours of work a day, it was a refreshing and fun experience.

The day after we got home, we had a car wash. I was out in the sun washing cars from 10 until 4, and I was even an hour late. This was a fundraiser for our mission trip to Denver and our trip to the ELCA National Youth Gathering. It was a great day for a car wash. Not a cloud in the sky, it wasn't too hot, but it was nice and sunny and warm. Which, of course, means sunburns. I got one on the back of my neck and my bald spot. Luckily it's not a very bad one. I made out far better than some of the others that were there.

Today, the camp counselors arrived for our week of Vacation Bible School this week. Luckily, none of them are staying at my house this week, I'm just not sure that I'm up for that right now. I feel like I've got a lot of stuff going on and I need to be in all these different places, and the condition of my house reflects that.

This afternoon we had a get-together with the churches we'll be traveling with to New Orleans for the ELCA National Youth Gathering. I got to lead Giants, Wizards and Elves - one of my favorite games ever. It's sort of a big group version of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Then we chatted for a bit and worked on covenants for the trip. It was a good time and gets me excited for our upcoming journey to New Orleans!!!

Now I have to get ready to head over to church to eat supper with our camp counselors and get ready for worship this evening. Tomorrow we start our week of VBS. It's going to be a busy summer!