MYLES of Community

Greetings from San Antonio. I'll make a short post, just to let you know what's up. We've been here for three days already. We started off with a pre-event, called the Multicultural Youth Leadership Event (MYLE). This is intended for congregations with youth of color to connect with one another. However, our group is feeling that they are quite different from the rest of the kids who are here.

I am traveling with a urban collaborative of nine congregations, and our model does not fit into the mold of the ELCA. Registration was much more complicated because we were nine congregations trying to register as one. We also have a very multicultural youth group, with kids from a lot of different backgrounds. I've found that most of the ELCA is monocultural. Of course, most 98% of the ELCA is white. But even the congregations of color are mostly congregations of one ethnic background. Thus, they still haven't worked on how to celebrate and appreciate each other's culture. They finally realized that we are just further ahead of where the rest of the ELCA is. We hope that we can help be an agent of change. Here's hoping.