Catholic Spirit writer Maria Wiering reports on the National Catholic Youth Conference in Kansas City, MO.
![Jeannie Bross-Judge and Steve Angrisano at a planning meeting Friday.
This afternoon I went behind the scenes at NCYC and got a look at how everything is directed from behind the main stage (in what feels like the deep, dark Sprint Center basement).
Jeannie Bross-Judge, a parishioner at St. Therese in Deephaven, has been working with NCYC to create programming since 1997.
“It’s amazing how much of NCYC comes out of Minnesota,” she told me.
Brad Jacobsen, 45, works in Web and Media Services at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, and he takes his vacation time to work with the technology that it takes to put NCYC together. He’s done every conference but one since it came to Minneapolis in 1995.
It’s the people that keeps him coming back, he said — both his co-workers and the performers.
“They’re like old family,” said Brad, a parishioner at St. Ambrose in Wodbury.
Being among the NCYC crowd helps to renew Brad’s faith, he said. It’s also a professional challenge that he enjoys, he said.
He works alongside of Jeannie, who is on the program team and a marketing consultant. Jeannie’s background is in liturgy and the performing arts — the perfect package for NCYC.
She works closely with two other women with MN ties: Marilee Mahler of St. Therese in Deephaven and Kate Cuddy, a MN Catholic sacred musician who has since moved to Illinois. Together they unite ideas with liturgy, performance arts and music.
They call their group “the YaYas,” taken from “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood “ by Rebecca Wells.
Basically, these three write the script for NCYC. Everything that’s said on stage (that’s not a keynote talk) is written by the hand of Jeannie, Marilee and Kate.
Although the script is finished in May, the tweaking continues through the conference itself. The whole process is very collaborative, she said. Today, Jeannie and Marilee were hashing through 10 minutes of script with a group of ten people, including MC Steve Angrisano.
Then she rushed off to work on the PowerPoint for the evening’s general session.
Three-and-a-half weeks ago, when the conference team realized that they had more registered youth than the Sprint Center could hold, Jeannie took up the challenge of directing the technical logistics in the Conference Center Ballroom, where the groups are taking turns sitting during the general sessions. (The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of St. Cloud are there tonight.)
“I’ve just had so many ‘God moments’,” Jeannie said, referring to things that have come together at the last minute or unexplainably work out during the conference, which she attributes to divine intervention.
Jeannie believes working to create these large Catholic events is what God created her to do, she said. “We’re all gifted differently, and I know this is a gift I’m called to do… . It’s when I’m most balanced and at peace in my life.”
She has moments of great satisfaction throughout the conference, when she momentarily steps back from preparing for the next cue or technical move — “when I see people genuinely engaged in prayer — a quiet moment or when people are clapping their hands,” she said.
Or, when she sees an idea that began around a kitchen table grow into an actual choreographed moment in the conference. “That’s awesome,” she said, “and it’s not about me. It’s about being a vessel.”
She’s seen almost 15 years of conferences, and it does make a difference for the youth that comes, she said.
“We have so many things that pull us away from our faith, and my own faith has really sustained me through my life,” she said. “If we’re not doing our part in the church to keep it going, it will die out.
“It’s the voice of God in the wilderness,” she said, referring to Mark 1:4. “[The youth] are in the wilderness out there. We’ve got to be John the Baptist out there.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ktfwd9wFRj1qaqjb7o1_500.jpg)
Jeannie Bross-Judge and Steve Angrisano at a planning meeting Friday.
This afternoon I went behind the scenes at NCYC and got a look at how everything is directed from behind the main stage (in what feels like the deep, dark Sprint Center basement).
Jeannie Bross-Judge, a parishioner at St. Therese in Deephaven, has been working with NCYC to create programming since 1997.
“It’s amazing how much of NCYC comes out of Minnesota,” she told me.
Brad Jacobsen, 45, works in Web and Media Services at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, and he takes his vacation time to work with the technology that it takes to put NCYC together. He’s done every conference but one since it came to Minneapolis in 1995.
It’s the people that keeps him coming back, he said — both his co-workers and the performers.
“They’re like old family,” said Brad, a parishioner at St. Ambrose in Wodbury.
Being among the NCYC crowd helps to renew Brad’s faith, he said. It’s also a professional challenge that he enjoys, he said.
He works alongside of Jeannie, who is on the program team and a marketing consultant. Jeannie’s background is in liturgy and the performing arts — the perfect package for NCYC.
She works closely with two other women with MN ties: Marilee Mahler of St. Therese in Deephaven and Kate Cuddy, a MN Catholic sacred musician who has since moved to Illinois. Together they unite ideas with liturgy, performance arts and music.
They call their group “the YaYas,” taken from “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood “ by Rebecca Wells.
Basically, these three write the script for NCYC. Everything that’s said on stage (that’s not a keynote talk) is written by the hand of Jeannie, Marilee and Kate.
Although the script is finished in May, the tweaking continues through the conference itself. The whole process is very collaborative, she said. Today, Jeannie and Marilee were hashing through 10 minutes of script with a group of ten people, including MC Steve Angrisano.
Then she rushed off to work on the PowerPoint for the evening’s general session.
Three-and-a-half weeks ago, when the conference team realized that they had more registered youth than the Sprint Center could hold, Jeannie took up the challenge of directing the technical logistics in the Conference Center Ballroom, where the groups are taking turns sitting during the general sessions. (The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of St. Cloud are there tonight.)
“I’ve just had so many ‘God moments’,” Jeannie said, referring to things that have come together at the last minute or unexplainably work out during the conference, which she attributes to divine intervention.
Jeannie believes working to create these large Catholic events is what God created her to do, she said. “We’re all gifted differently, and I know this is a gift I’m called to do… . It’s when I’m most balanced and at peace in my life.”
She has moments of great satisfaction throughout the conference, when she momentarily steps back from preparing for the next cue or technical move — “when I see people genuinely engaged in prayer — a quiet moment or when people are clapping their hands,” she said.
Or, when she sees an idea that began around a kitchen table grow into an actual choreographed moment in the conference. “That’s awesome,” she said, “and it’s not about me. It’s about being a vessel.”
She’s seen almost 15 years of conferences, and it does make a difference for the youth that comes, she said.
“We have so many things that pull us away from our faith, and my own faith has really sustained me through my life,” she said. “If we’re not doing our part in the church to keep it going, it will die out.
“It’s the voice of God in the wilderness,” she said, referring to Mark 1:4. “[The youth] are in the wilderness out there. We’ve got to be John the Baptist out there.”
