When about 19,000 Lutheran high schoolers and some 1,000 adult mentors descend on New Orleans for five days, the economic impact alone is impressive: 38,000 room nights at 45 hotels, according to New Orleans & Company. When about half of those high schoolers participate in community service projects while here, the benefits to the city are multiplied immeasurably in terms of both palpable assistance and goodwill.
The even better news is that New Orleans seems to be giving the kids a ton of goodwill and great experiences in return, leaving them with a lasting sense of friendship for the Crescent City.
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has a historical connection with New Orleans, as the denomination’s forbears all arrived in this country via the port in New Orleans in 1839.
Amid a host of events, music and seminar sessions related to the participants’ faith, it is their community services, estimated at a stunning 150,000 service hours, that make the youth gathering far different from most group conventions here.
“Service has always been an integral part of youth gatherings for the LCMS,” said Mark Kiessling, director of the congregation’s national youth ministry. “Our youth are excited to put their faith into action and to get out into communities and serve in the name of Jesus.”
In addition to service projects at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the kids spread out all around the metro area for 86 separate events, ranging from projects helping coastal restoration to classroom-preparation efforts to neighborhood beautification initiatives and to work in multiple community gardens.
For instance, about two dozen high schoolers went to Gloria’s Garden on the grounds of the ArtSpace campus in Faubourg Treme, where 77-year-old Gloria Ward produces a plethora of collard, mustard, and turnip greens, spinach, kale and numerous herbs — all for free for the community and all while hosting fun events for neighbors, especially children.
There, one group painted paver stones that Ward will use to beautify a new barbecue patio within the garden. Another draped wet, cement-soaked cloths over plastic-covered buckets or boxes; when dried and turned upside down, the cemented cloths will be decorative flowerpots. Other students actually dug in the garden and did weeding.
“I’m here to get closer to God and closer to my friends,” said Lydia Schulze, a 16-year-old rising high school junior from Brooklyn, New York, who was busy weeding. As for the garden, she said “The lady here [Ward] is really sweet and it’s nice to be here to help her. ... This is really special, to be able to help people and to do it joyfully and not just because your youth leader said so.”
Lydia Schulze, a member of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Brooklyn, N.Y., pulls weeds during a servant event at Gloria's Garden on Monday, July 21, 2025.
Meanwhile, back at the Convention Center, hundreds of kids each day were donating blood, while others prepared food packets for the Orphan Grain Train organization that rushes supplies to disaster-stricken communities around the world, and still others allowed their long hair to be cut short for the Wigs for Kids program for cancer-stricken children.
Brodie Stone, a 17-year-old rising senior from Basehor, Kansas, gave blood.
“I think it’s a really cool opportunity,” he said. “The whole theme [of the conference] is ‘Endure,’ and the blood transfusions are going to a lot of people who are in a time where they of course are getting things like surgeries … or something where they are going through a hardship, and I think that by me enduring just a couple of minutes of giving blood, it can help someone endure something a lot worse.”
Walking amid thousands of kids at the convention center, one is struck by how visibly happy every one of them seems. Meanwhile, when they are out and about in New Orleans, the city is making a great impression. Stone, for example, compared it to the denomination’s last national gathering, which he attended in Houston three years ago.
Brodie Stone, a member of Trinity Family of Faith Lutheran Church in Basehor, Kan., donates blood on Monday, July 21, 2025, during a servant event organized by The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
“I’ve loved it,” Stone said. “Not to trash talk Houston, but it felt very empty and bland. ... But New Orleans has a lot more character, and I love the architecture style. Going through the French Quarter, looking at the old buildings, there’s just not many cities like New Orleans.”
Schulze, the New York junior volunteering in the garden, was just as enthusiastic. She rode on the Creole Queen on the Mississippi River, went to a museum, rode the streetcar and visited a cousin of hers who is a musician, playing violin in a restaurant.
“And I really have enjoyed all the murals,” she said. “They’re really cool. … It seems like the culture is really, like, vibrant.”
As these kids are giving New Orleans a wonderful boost in so many ways, it’s nice to know this city in return is providing some terrific memories, based on a uniquely exuberant civic character.