here are a couple of my facebook albums with pics from montreat. GOOTH, feel free to post your public links as comments to this post for others to see.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=367&l=00c39&id=305700031
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=366&l=954eb&id=305700031
Click on the “comments” below to see more albums from other GOOTH.
*this is me recollection of the birth of the word GOOTH, while some of the details may be wrong or backwards, this is the general story. i apologize if its long, it takes time for such an amazing name to take root*
gooth. what a crazy word right? well we are a crazy group of youth, but where did this name come from and why is it such a big deal? it all started a long time ago ( about a year and a half ago) in a land far away (the high school room)….
In the fall of 2006 Jay, our newly installed associate pastor, threw out the idea of naming our fabulous youth group and so we took a Sunday evening to brainstorm among our separate middle and high school groups for possible names with the goal of coming together at the end and discussing our favorites. I personally thought that this was just a filler activity, something to keep us busy, little did I know how this fun brainstorming session would change our youth group forever (or at least the next few years). The high school room was particularly full that night and so there were a lot of side convorsations and very few serious ideas being mentioned…things like “cupcakes” and “frogs” i think made it on the board and I was starting to get frustrated when a few of the boys in the back started to talk about combining some of our favorites into one word. group of youth i think was already on the board and so they started playing with that…grouth….groyth….gyouth….and then gouth…wait no it’d be funnier to spell it gooth. I remember discussing the spelling of our newly invented word for a good 10 minutes. but there it was…GOOTH.
I’m not sure what it was about this word but the high school youth quickly became obsessed with it. Jay had told us that the name could not become official until everyone had a chance to discuss it and come to a consensus (jay later informed me that “it was an exercise of using consensus as much as it was a way to choose a new name”), but the high schoolers didn’t care. We had decided that this was going to be the unofficial name whether or not anyone liked it. When it came time for the actual “consensus session” we were able to convince everyone that gooth was the best choice for a name and it became official on january 14th 2007.
after that the name took off. Gooth became this wierd word that instantaneously bonded anyone associated with it. jay, who might have missed his calling into marketing director, ran with it and had gooth tshirts made, gooth magnets, business cards, postcards, even this nifty blog.
I truely believe that God cares about things even this small and so I think that God had a hand in the naming of our group because without some kind of divine intervention i’m not sure that a) our youth could have agreed on one name and b)it could have had this effect because honestly….GOOTH? its crazy word…but then again, we are a crazy group.
much love
Chelsey McElwee
