One way the Youth Gathering showed me we have a long way to go

This is part 2 of at least 3 (OK, probably just three) posts about the ELCA National Youth Gathering. The first post can be found here.

Many good things happened in Detroit. I'm glad we went and especially glad for the experience so many of our kids had. The event itself is not perfect, of course, and that's not what I'm going to write on today. There's plenty to be said for making some philosophical changes to what we do when we come together as a church, but again I'm not going to talk about that here. The truth is I'm not experienced enough, or wise enough, to come up with an ideal solution.

Instead, I'm going to talk about something that I witnessed leaving Ford Field each evening that left me concerned. No, it wasn't the youth who inevitably don't pay attention to directions and walk down the wrong side of the street, though they left me pulling out my hair all week. Instead, it's something harder to comprehend, deeper, and more problematic.

For those who weren't there, at the conclusion of festivities at Ford Field each evening we were cast out into a stream of people heading south on Brush Street through downtown Detroit. We had a walk of just under a mile to where the buses were parked, ready to take us to our hotels, and just about everybody at the Gathering was heading the same way. 30,000 people on one street. It was chaotic. It also had the potential to be a lot of fun.

Of course we were exhausted by this time of day. We'd been moving more or less constantly since before 7 a.m. and it was now approaching 10 p.m. each evening--later still by the time we actually got to our buses. But such is the beast of coordinating so many people in so confined a space. So, no, I'm not complaining about logistics.

My concern is this. On Brush Street we had a nightly opportunity to gather together as brothers and sisters of the same church--mostly young people--surrounded by others who shared their faith. We had about as safe an environment for self-expression as you will ever find in what was essentially a mob, and what did we do with it?

Well, sadly, we didn't seem to know what to do. I was struck by how this mass of people who just sang together and danced together and applauded together and even shed a tear or two together half an hour before with the help of musicians and speakers now felt unconnected and unfocused on the streets of Detroit. Or maybe that isn't quite right. We wanted to be connected; we wanted to be focused. We just didn't know how. We had left the church building of Ford Field and we became uncertain of how to be together.

Now, I've already given excuses: we were tired, we just wanted to get to the buses, some of us were legitimately concerned for our young peoples' safety. But those are really half-hearted excuses at best, because every time the crowd stopped people attempted to sing and chant and join together in one voice. The crowd wanted to be unified. We just couldn't manage to do it around anything that mattered to our faith.

So the ELCA mob witnessed to Detroit by singing The Star Spangled Banner, we witnessed by chanting "USA! USA!" and we witnessed by singing Bohemian Rhapsody (seriously, the most-impossible-to-sing large group song of all time) and by singing the theme to Spongebob Squarepants. This wasn't a one-time occurrence, either. It happened nightly. The same shared music and chants; all of it patriotic, cartoon, or pop culture. None of it connected to our shared faith.

I felt troubled.

I love liturgy in worship because I feel like it connects me back to those who have gone before. It's also rich in its God-centered language and intent. But something about that liturgy, which so many of that crowd have shared weekly from before they could even know how to read, did not connect enough to usurp Spongebob and The Star Spangled Banner. We had no communal song that mattered enough to drown out the cacophony of people chatting and taking videos with their phones.

It's tough work to instill an identity, especially one founded in Christ, as innately counter-cultural as that must be. But this is important work. I left Detroit with two competing thoughts. 1. I'm hopeful for the future of a church so willing to jump in and participate, to welcome others and to challenge themselves; and 2. I'm concerned about the future of a church whose collective identity as Christians evaporates outside the walls of the church building (whether it be an individual congregation or Ford Field).

I want a song I can sing with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I want a chant that shares the good news of Jesus on the streets of Detroit. I want something that uplifts and most of all connects us. There are places where this happens, our camp ministries come to mind, but is it strong enough to leave camp behind? Is it meaningful and deep enough to enter our soul like The Star Spangled Banner seems to do and create in us a shared identity? We need to be thinking about this, dwelling on it, and getting to work to do something about it, because it isn't getting any easier. This is evangelism at its core and if we want to live up to our name as the ELCA we have a long way to go.