ELCA EmblemThe Lutheran is the magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.


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December 2008 issue
Features
Story by
Frank Waugh
Together to serve the poor
In Atlanta, ELCA youth join interreligious peers

The Atlanta Community Food Bank is a typical warehouse with cold, cement floors and the echoing voices of workers who run forklift pallets of macaroni and cheese to assembly lines—all to feed 42,000 people a week through partner nonprofit organizations. In July it was the site of a peacemaking experiment involving teenagers from Epiphany Lutheran Church, Suwanee, Ga.

While participating in an Atlanta service
While participating in an Atlanta service event in July, Lutheran youth talked and worked with peers from a variety of religious faiths.
The youth were there with peers from many faith traditions for a day of service sponsored by Emory University’s Youth Theological Initiative and Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based interreligious organization founded by Eboo Patel, an American Muslim. Such encounters are essential to world peace, said Patel, co-author of Building the Interfaith Youth Movement (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). It’s part of the imperative “for all communities within a diverse society to take responsibility for embracing a common life while maintaining their uniqueness,” Patel wrote.

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