My Yea God Moment

Though I did not serve on site this summer as a staff member with YouthWorks, I was given the opportunity to work alongside the Marketing Department and see the organization through a new lens. As a multi-denominational organization, YouthWorks strives to walk alongside all Christian institutions, taking careful consideration of the unique ways they approach service and community. I had the opportunity to represent YouthWorks at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Convention in Detroit this summer. We participated as a community partner during the convention where we engaged with youth, their leaders and other ELCA volunteers who sacrificed their time and energy to put together a spectacular gathering for over 30,000 youth that weekend.

While we enjoyed educating the ELCA community on our organization’s core purpose and offerings, we left learning just as much about ourselves as we did about the ELCA community. Though YouthWorks has a wide domestic reach of 70+ sites where we serve each summer, there are still communities, churches, families and individuals who have never heard of our organization. This became clear as we witnessed thousands of youth and their leaders ebb and flow in and out of our booth each day. It was humbling to witness community on the scale that the ELCA youth get to experience every three years at the convention. To put this into perspective, YouthWorks anticipated having over 1,500 churches with about 30,000 participants serving in over 70 communities during the 2015 summer season. The ELCA brought this number of participants together in just one weekend!

I am grateful to have been given a new perspective on community, something YouthWorks strives to create between a diverse assortment of denominations and individuals across our nation. Yea God for calling us to fellowship, for giving us the freedom to gather in unity and for creating a space to come together as the Body of Christ!

Lauren Domski spent the summer of 2014 as a Service Coordinator in Chicago. Lauren then had the opportunity to work as an intern in the YW office in a few different departments. Lauren recently graduated from the University of Minnesota in Spring of 2015.