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- Malik Baloney (center), founder of Let’s Be BIGGER, hosts participants of the 2024 ELCA Youth Gathering on Accompaniment Day in New Orleans. Photo: Courtesy of Malik Baloney
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- Members of the delegation from Faith Lutheran Church in South Beloit, Ill., at the Youth Gathering included Pastor JoAnna Patterson (far right) and Hayden Gruenberg (second from right). Photo: Courtesy of Faith Lutheran
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- Members of Red Wing, Minn., congregations St. Paul Lutheran, United Lutheran and First Lutheran at the Youth Gathering. Photo: Courtesy of St. Paul Lutheran
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- St. Paul Lutheran youth group members Gabe Albarado (left), and Eli Grand (right) with ELCA Pastor Albert Starr, who led workshops at the Multicultural Youth Leadership Event. Photo: Courtesy of St. Paul Lutheran
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- Baloney emphasized the importance of mutual service, aiming to create a bridge between Youth Gathering attendees and New Orleanians. Photo: Courtesy of Malik Baloney
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- Through Baloney (center) and Let’s Be BIGGER, Youth Gathering participants learned about the area’s history, got to know local youth, and experienced authentic Louisiana cuisine. Photo: Courtesy of Malik Baloney
Hayden Gruenberg never expected that attending the ELCA Youth Gathering would give her a clearer sense of her career path. But after making connections there, she’s pursuing a vocation in helping others.
“I’m nearing the end of high school and thinking about what I want to study in college,” Gruenberg said. Through the experiences she had at the Gathering, she’s been “thinking about becoming a teacher and all the ways I could impact a child’s life.”
The 2024 Youth Gathering, held in July, brought together nearly 16,000 young Lutherans in New Orleans. The event’s three days included training and service projects in which ELCA youth groups partnered with local nonprofits.
Those partnerships allowed ELCA youth to learn about the service and justice work being done in the New Orleans area, even as the nonprofits’ team members learned from the youths’ congregations. Gruenberg’s congregation, Faith Lutheran in South Beloit, Ill., met with Malik Baloney, founder of Let’s Be BIGGER (LBB), an organization that seeks to improve the quality of life for the next generation in rural and underserved communities through innovative educational experiences.
“Let’s Be BIGGER is about finding common ground and ways for people to have experiences that make them happy to be alive and appreciate the people around them,” Baloney said.
The trip will allow young people to not only reconnect with friends they made during the Gathering but also explore a world beyond their own.
Like other youth groups at the Gathering, the Faith delegation got to hear from Baloney and LBB representatives about the organization’s work. When Gruenberg heard Baloney chatting with JoAnna Patterson, pastor of Faith, about the church potentially hosting LBB participants, she knew she wanted to help.
“My parents own a farm where they train and show horses, and they also do a yearly outreach day to students at Rock Valley [College in Rockford],” Gruenberg said. “The students come learn about horses and how my parents started a business from scratch. This day was always inspiring for the students and made me think that they could do something similar with the kids from Let’s Be BIGGER.”
Baloney is currently planning for a group from LBB to visit South Beloit for fellowship with the Faith community. He believes it will allow young people to not only reconnect with friends they made during the Gathering but also explore a world beyond their own.
“That’s what Let’s Be BIGGER is,” he said. “It’s about community and people evolving, finding new relationships that we never saw ourselves having, creating partnerships with people that we’ve been told aren’t partners.”
Mutual learning
A delegation from St. Paul Lutheran Church in Red Wing, Minn., made a similarly meaningful connection during the Gathering, with the New Orleans nonprofit the Roots of Music. The organization teaches music history, instrumental performance and ensemble performance to children from low-income households, ages 9 to 14.
After returning from the Gathering, Amy Larson, pastor of St. Paul, got a call from the Roots of Music’s accompaniment coordinator informing her that two program participants the Lutherans had met were traveling to Red Wing for a musical instrument repair program. They needed help with housing and transportation, so Larson and her congregation sprang into action.
“St. Paul’s quilters got going, and these beloved women have a text-message exchange that lit up with all the different things we could donate,” Larson said. “Someone was going to get gift cards, another was making quilts for their beds, and our youth moved furniture to the house [where they would stay] for them.”
“Making a connection to Let’s Be BIGGER has inspired me so much.”
Larson said the two students from the Roots of Music have become an important part of St. Paul’s youth community, creating a bridge between the Youth Gathering and life in Red Wing.
“It was so powerful for kids who are sort of sheltered in Red Wing to experience the diversity and the story of the Roots of Music in New Orleans,” she said. “And with these two young folks here now, they’re learning even more about how much they have in common, because a lot of our kids are musicians. There’s a personal connection but also this broader sense of being part of this larger world and church.”
That kind of lasting connection exemplifies the mission of the Youth Gathering. For attendees such as Gruenberg, relationships forged at the Gathering can lead to even more.
“Making a connection to Let’s Be BIGGER has inspired me so much,” Gruenberg said. “Seeing Malik’s persistence to create change and community has shown me that I want a career that creates community and change as well.”
