04/27/2026
✝️Why student ministry?✝️
God directed my steps into student ministry back in high school. I became a Christian through a high school junior preaching Ephesians 2. However during my sophomore year, most of my friends left the church and deconstructed their faith in Jesus. I did not know how to answer their concerns and that troubled me in the deepest parts of myself. My youth pastor Jim offered a path forward without leaving questions behind, saying, “Bring your honest questions and trust that the Gospel is bigger and Jesus is always better.” That trust set me on a discipleship trajectory towards Bible college, deeper formation in Christian thought and philosophy, and ultimately to the beauty of student ministry in the life of the Anglican church. In walking with my peers, I discovered the life of God at work in young people.
But more than my own story, I love that Holy Scripture never attests to a ‘junior’ Holy Spirit or a ‘junior’ Gospel. Young people are catechized and invited into the fullness of the Gospel story and the life of God. Age and stage appropriate methods do not mean that we have to dumb it down! Youth/student ministry exists to meet students we haven’t yet met, to call students to respond to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to form students in Christ, and to send students into their world to join the Holy Spirit in building the Kingdom. We get to partner with parents and the whole household of faith to follow Jesus daily with our young people! Yes, they need us to grow in Christ, but we also need them to grow into full maturity and to fulfill our mission.
