At a Synod Gathering not so long ago, at a camp not so far away, were several youth leaders (the heroes) from various Lutheran churches in the city of Edmonton. Some of these youth leaders had small groups and wanted to work with some other groups to plan events, some just wanted to work together, and still others thought, "This sounds okay, why not?" So info was exchanged and everyone left the gathering happily ever after.
Not too long after the gathering (about a month, making it December), those who were at the gathering, plus a few who had been invited by word of mouth, gathered at a certain Red Robin (am I allowed to "print" that?) for lunch and to gather and see if anything could come of this new fellowship. The knights from Augustana, Hosanna, Mount Zion, Risen Lord, St. Albert, and Trinity assembled at the first Round Table, to begin something that could only be called EARLY (Edmonton and Region Lutheran Youth).
Hosanna had already planned for a "New Year's Kickoff" which it was planning on inviting churches around Edmonton to, and so this would be EARLY's first event...
At this "Kickoff" new churches were invited to join the knights already at the Round Table. Ascension, St. John's (Ardrossan) and Holy Spirit were these new found allies.
EARLY then had its second meeting at Trinity, where Ascension, Lord of Life and St. Paul's (Ellerslie) joined the Round Table. Trinity had a dance planned for Feb. and so this would be EARLY's "second event".
Our next meeting was at Ascension at the end of Feb.; the apex of EARLY involvement thus far. New knights were Calvary and Mount Olivet, and a total of ten Edmonton and area churches were in attendance!
Our next event was shawimming at WEM organized by Ascension, and a worship service hosted by Hosanna and it was a very successful event with about 160 youth! Crazy! The first of the solely EARLY events!
EARLY has grown to include, unofficially, fifteen churches and officially, fourteen churches. We played laser tag in April, and also welcomed Holy Spirit to their first EARLY meeting in the same month.
We grew to a size where we felt we needed structure, so we implemented a rotating chair position, where the host of the previous meeting chairs the meeting, and the host of the meeting is the vice-chair. Mark from Mount Zion became the "secretary/administrator" to keep the info flowing and the communication clear. A mission statement and logo was commissioned to give us focus.
We also felt it was time to look to the future, and to plan where we wanted to head. We also figured it was time to openly invite all Edmonton and area churches and so we hope that you can join us in our quest! And so with that we planned a "visioning/planning" workshop, and we hope that this will be the true Round Table, where we will take on whatever lies ahead and look to the future with faith, enlightenment, youthful zest and courage!!
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