Sent Out Beyond Your Recall

By Pastor Colin Grangaard, YAGM Alum
First Lutheran Church of Crystal, Brooklyn Park

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

(Rainer Maria Rilke
Book of Hours, Book I, page 59)

It has almost been 20 years, but if we looked through my photos together, I bet I could still come up with all their names. Eddie played Celtic football until he blew his knee out. Craig was close to my age (at the time) and had the funniest sayings from a brief stint in the Navy and his home in Aberdeen. Lee gave me cooking tips I still use every day. Tom was called “Mr. President” because he’d been in recovery the longest and had a way of setting the new guys straight. For a year, I was welcomed as a volunteer at the Bethany Christian Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland, through the ELCA program, Young Adults in Global Mission (YAGM).

That’s where I learned how our faith practices can save and sustain lives. The Bethany counsellors taught me how to pray from the heart. Every shift change, the staff and volunteers would gather for a handover. Craig’s dark mood or Lee’s distracted preoccupation during our AA/NA step meetings would come up and then be incorporated into our prayers.

That’s where I heard my call to ministry. Traveling overseas was initially the appeal, but I hadn’t imagined how the experience would change me. During my year, I saw redemption, the forgiveness of sins, and the work of the Holy Spirit. I saw healing and transformation up close and in person.

Years later, and after another long-term overseas experience, I remember turning 30 in my first ordained call at Trinity Lutheran Church in Moorhead, MN. It was right about that time that I began to notice that my call to young adult ministry had become less a call to spend time with peers and more another ministry of accompaniment in the midst of the big milestones of young adulthood.

Ten years after my own YAGM year, my wife and I were called to return to the close-knit YAGM community, this time as YAGM Country Coordinators. My family and I lived in Jerusalem from 2015 – 2019 alongside six to eight YAGM volunteers among the Palestinian Lutherans of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL).

The Jerusalem/West Bank iteration of YAGM falls within a six-mile radius. We were privileged to see each other often as we accompanied ministries of the ELCJHL. My wife and I provided educational retreats, hospitality, and a safe place for rest and reflection while staying pretty hands-off… or at least meddling as little as possible. We trusted that despite each year’s challenges, in the midst of complex and conflicting narratives, that the experience itself would do its own work on each of the volunteers – and us. After all, the YAGM program has a way of making big shadows in which the participants and the Spirit move.

“You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me.”

It is exciting that the Minneapolis Area Synod will soon be sending out three young adults to YAGM orientation for a year of new experiences. Izzy Demarest will be heading to Argentina/Uruguay, Kristie Olson will go to Central Europe, and Masame Fletcher will be heading to the UK (I heard she might be going to Edinburgh!).

You, too, are invited into their journey. Each young adult is tasked with raising at least $5,000. We are grateful that the YAGM program is made possible through the generous support of members throughout the ELCA. Please also consider accompanying these individual young adults in their year of service through sponsorship. Through regular newsletters and social media posts, you will get to witness their growth and work as the year — and their lives — unfold.