Our youth group is growing and God is working. Some of the highlights from 2025 included going through the new youth Alpha series, 5 baptisms, 4 graduates, and bringing back 7 of our 2024 graduates to start as youth leaders, four of whom started back with the new grade 6’s in May. I was ordained last year in March. We also added to the stats of youth leader marriages as we celebrated Nicholas and Amanda’s wedding in May.
Tuesday nights
Tuesday nights remain our busiest nights of the week. In May of 2025, and for the first time since I’ve been pastoring anywhere, we saw an increase in attendance before the end of the semester instead of a decrease. Typically, when the weather gets warmer and as the youth season comes to an end, we see a decrease in numbers, but we were seeing a dramatic increase. These numbers carried into the fall semester, and we’ve been averaging about 100 people out every Tuesday night, though we have a reach of approximately 200+ who attended in 2025. On Tuesday nights we start out with a game, then we get a snack made by Karen before we enter a time of worship. After worship there’s a message and then teens break off into small groups divided up by age and gender. We see a lot of growth happen in our small group times as students get a chance to dig deeper into the topic from the night.
Friday nights
Fridays continue to be our fun nights where we focus on building community. We’ve hosted a medieval murder mystery night called “The Quest”, we’ve had teens create their own short films, we’ve done karaoke nights, and have spent many Friday nights with YXH celebrating what God is up to in our city.
We finished out 2025 with a busy December packed with nights like our annual Christmas pageant, the Legacy banquet, our Choose Your Own Adventure night, a youth leader Christmas party and a giant youth banquet with a red 40 theme voted for by the teens.
Sundays/Youth Room
The youth room continues to be open during the 10:00 service on Sunday mornings. Eli (youth leader) and Levi (student) show up faithfully every week to run our youth room coffee shop. They affectionately call it “Eli’s Pizzeria and Café” but it’s “always out of dough”. They do an amazing job making the drinks and keeping me up to date on what supplies they need, as well as making the youth room a fun and welcoming space. It’s been such a gift to be able to train them and to offer drinks for free to the teens who come in. We’ve continued to build community in that space, while encouraging the teens to join us in the 11:20 service afterwards.
Grads
This past year we celebrated the graduation of four of our youth group teens. They chose a starry night theme, and it made for a really great event. Two of last year’s graduates are still involved in youth by serving with us. One has helped us to plan great events and the other comes regularly to help lead worship.
Retreats
Every year we take two retreats to Whispering Pines Camp; one in March and one in October. In March we had the Youth Alpha Holy Spirit weekend. In October of 2025 we had our highest ever attended youth retreat with 83 people in attendance. We only had room for 45 on the bus, but teens were so excited to come out to the retreat that their parents drove out anyone who couldn’t get on the bus. I’m deeply thankful to everyone who covered us in prayer, as there were no incidents that weekend. Candice and Lanny Meier came out as guest speakers. The theme was prayer, and by the end of the weekend every student had been prayed over.
In May of 2025 we were also involved in running the YXH conference.
Volunteers
We have amazing youth leaders who faithfully show up every week and make our youth nights possible. I’m thankful for each one of them and for how God brought them to our team with their unique giftings to serve and connect with our teens. We currently have a fantastic team of 25 youth leaders who love to serve together.
Thanks for praying
This is just a glimpse into some of what happens in youth ministry. Thank you so much for your continued prayer and support for our youth team and teens. Your prayers are very welcome. God is doing a good work here!
