Tuesday Travel Tip: Align Your Commitment

{Photo by Michael Sladek}

I am on the leadership team of an annual convention for Lutherans called the ELCA Youth Workers' Extravaganza. The event moves from city to city, and this year we met in New Orleans with almost 700 participants.

For participants, it can feel like the biggest family reunion they've ever attended, the deepest spiritual retreat they've ever been on, or the most qualified set of experts they've ever had access to. Each year, someone asks, "How do you do it?"

The E-team, as we call the leadership team, has equal commitments to excellence and hospitality. It's a good combination.

Excellence without hospitality means something really awesome on the surface which no one really cares about deep down.

Hospitality without excellence means that everyone is really nice, but nothing truly remarkable happens.

It takes both.

For the E-team, this means we bring our "A game" while still caring about each other and the participants. We want participants and vendors to only have to ask for things once, or maybe not at all since we already anticipated what they need. We want people to be impressed with our program but know they are heard when they give suggestions for the future.

We also show hospitality within our E-team by being super responsive, super communicative, and building trust by getting things done well and on time.

It also doesn't hurt that we all just like to be together.

It's a great place to live for one week a year.

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Superdome

Sometimes, someone asks you to volunteer for something, and its a helpful but somewhat mindless job. Other times, you wonder how you were so lucky to ride a volunteer position right into the front row of a huge event.

I heard that they needed a couple extra people for the Safety Team in the Superdome in New Orleans during the national youth gathering. I was given a yellow shirt and quick instructions, and we were off, standing between 37,000 teenagers and the intensity of the stage on the right, which over the course of five evenings featured loud rock bands, jugglers, a New Orleans jazz combo, and pyrotechnics. Lots of pyrotechnics. Quite a safety risk in a situation that was being handled by amateurs such as myself. One begins to wonder how its all possible that noone was hurt. People jumped around, rushed toward the stage, but also managed to stay "in bounds". Then I remembered that these are 37,000 teenagers that someone believed in enough to help them get to New Orleans in the first place. These are youth who raised the money, solicited donations, and cared enough to show up. That is the difference.

The Wichita Connection

I saw a lot of great friends while I was in New Orleans, but one that I was particularly excited about was a pastor from Wichita. We'd met years ago, but I reconnected with he and his family when I was in Wichita for eleven weeks performing in the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I attended his church throughout Lent, and actually contributed to the youth group's fundraiser to come on this trip to New Orleans.

A few weeks after I left, terrorism entered their church when a man came into the narthex and shot one of the ushers point blank. The usher was Dr. George Tiller, one of only three late term abortion doctors in the United States. I was quite shocked by the news of a murder during worship in the church I had been attending. I have had the congregation on my mind alot since then. Not everyone in the church agreed with what Dr. Tiller chose as a profession but they seemed to be able to provide a faith home for he and his family. One of his favorite phrases was "Attitude is Everything". The youth group chose to put that on their shirts for their trip to New Orleans. What an amazing tribute.

NoLa

I am in New Orleans for a week, staying at the Holiday Inn French Quarter. One of the people with whom I am working here read in a guidebook that all chains in New Orleans are somewhat lower quality than their counterparts elsewhere. My roommate pointed out that there would be no reason to make the rooms nicer considering what usually goes on in them, particularly around Mardi Gras.

This is my third trip here, and the second time for the Lutheran national youth gathering. The last time the national youth gathering was in NoLa was 1997. This time, it is the biggest event that the city has hosted since Hurricane Katrina with 37,000 attendees. It is sobering to think that people lived (and died) in the convention center and dome where we are hosting activities.

I heard one post-hurricane perspective from the volunteer driver who brought me from the airport to the hotel. He'd come to New Orleans as part of the coast guard and stayed here after retirement because he and his family love the food, music, and people. He'd also worked for FEMA over the past three years, and had occasion to bring people from New Orleans to Grand Forks, ND to show them how the town had recovered after their equally devastating 1997 flood. I am somewhat more familiar with the flood recovery in North Dakota and commented on what a great example that must be as a beacon of hope. He said that North Dakota's type of recovery would never happen in New Orleans because in Grand Forks the people decided that if their town was to recover, they needed to do the work and they did. He said that in New Orleans, many people just wait for someone to come and help them and do not put in the effort themselves. This is one person's perspective, but it is not what you hear on television. Even in this day and age of communication, you still have to go to a place to really get both sides of a story. This is why I travel.