Across the Midwest Conference of the ECC, young people are asking significant questions: How has God made me? Where are my gifts needed? What might God be inviting me to do?
At the same time, the church is asking questions of its own. Nearly half of active Covenant pastors will reach retirement age within the next decade. Who are the leaders God is raising up? How will we recognize them, encourage them and prepare them?
This year, the Midwest Conference hosted two new experiences designed to help us respond: Leadership Basecamp and Exploring Call for Youth. Although the events looked very different – one took students into the Colorado wilderness while the other gathered them at Covenant Cedars Bible Camp in Nebraska – they shared a common conviction: Young people are not simply the leaders of tomorrow. God is already working through them today.
These events gave students space to listen to God, discover their gifts, practice leadership and take their next faithful steps. They also reminded the rest of us that developing young leaders is not only about creating programs. It is about people who notice, invite, encourage and make room.
Leadership Basecamp: Learning to Lead on the Trail
This summer, 12 high school students from across the Midwest Conference gathered in Buena Vista, Col., for the first Leadership Basecamp. After two and a half days of preparation and orientation, the group headed into the wilderness for three days on the trail.
As they reflected on the leadership of Moses, students took turns guiding the group, leading devotions, setting up campsites and offering one another feedback. They explored their personalities and gifts while learning to lead in an environment that required trust, courage and teamwork.
Their reflections captured what they discovered: Leaders ask for help. Leaders slow down and reflect. Leaders don’t walk alone. Leadership begins with our identity in Jesus. Leadership is not a position to achieve but a posture to embrace.
“The questions they asked and the community they built in seven days gave me great hope and expectation for how the Church will move forward in the next generation,” shared Pastor Nate Powell, one of the Basecamp leaders and lead pastor of Hillcrest Covenant Church in Prairie Village, Kan.
Exploring Call for Youth: Listen. Discern. Respond.
This fall, the Midwest Conference hosted Exploring Call for Youth, the first retreat of its kind. Over the weekend, students heard call stories, explored spiritual gifts and personality styles, practiced listening to God and talked honestly with trusted adults and one another about where God might be leading them to use their gifts in and outside the church.
Students were not pressured to leave with their entire futures mapped out. Instead, they followed a simple process: Listen. Discern. Respond. Each student identified one next faithful step – something they could keep listening for, someone they could talk with or a practical way to begin using a gift.
A powerful moment came when students received “I See in You” messages from parents, pastors and youth leaders. Their faces changed as they discovered who had written to them and read the gifts, qualities and signs of God’s work others had noticed.
They were not simply receiving compliments. They were seeing themselves through the eyes of people who knew them, loved them and had listened to the Holy Spirit on their behalf. Some of those words may become seeds God continues to grow for years to come.
Students also heard about opportunities to practice their gifts now, including serving at Covenant camps. Jake Kumpost from Covenant Cedars reminded them, “You are not the leaders of tomorrow. You are the leaders of today.”
Through the One Covenant Community Lilly grant, conferences, camps and Covenant institutions are working together to build more pathways for people of all ages to explore God’s call. What we learned through this first Midwest Conference retreat will help shape an Exploring Call for Youth model that can be shared across the Covenant.
Exploring Call 2.0 in the MWC will give students opportunities to continue discerning in community and put their gifts into practice.
Next summer, UNITE will keep the momentum going through a leadership track and an exploring call cohort for students discerning a call to vocational ministry. (Church and youth leaders, begin watching now for students you can personally encourage to participate.)
How Will We Respond?
Research into Covenant pathways toward ministry confirms what many of us already know: Programs can create the opportunity, but people make the difference. People move people.
Will we notice the gifts of the young people around us? Will we tell them, “I see this in you”? Will we give them meaningful opportunities to lead, a seat at the table and enough grace to learn through some inevitable messiness?
Someone did that for us.
Watch for invitations to Exploring Call for adults next spring, Exploring Call for Youth next fall and the next Leadership Basecamp. In the meantime, begin where you are. Notice a young person. Name what you see. Invite them to try something. Walk beside them as they listen, discern and respond.
Young people are rising up to use their gifts. How will we respond to this moment?
Our Postcards from the Midwest Conference are short and encouraging looks at what God is doing in churches across the Midwest Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church – Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, western Missouri, Nebraska and Wyoming. We’re celebrating faithfulness, fresh vision, and the beauty of ministry in all shapes and sizes.
