Youth Ministries
Introduction & Departmental Overview
Not only have young people committed their lives to Jesus Christ, but they are, where permitted, influencing their parents, guardians and the church at large to be authentic and Christlike, and to rediscover spirituality in the various cultural contexts of the BUC territory. Where engaged and empowered, young people have voiced their opinions and creatively championed inclusion, equity and identity issues with increased agency and a confidence that has shaped provision, ownership and involvement. Their acute sense of justice continues to confront any status quo that is of a contrary spirit.
At the least, the complexities that, honestly speaking, characterised the Youth Department as a result of the leadership vacuum before my interim appointment, while making it difficult to reflect on the Union’s strategic anchors and KPIs, also present the need to strategically reflect on both onboarding and offboarding, as well as any transitional processes where there is a vacuum in the directorate of the department. How best does the Union intentionally hold these processes in creative tension with the Union’s entities and with the Trans-European Division to ensure operational and strategic targets are continuously engaged?
However, the overwhelming growth of Club Ministries in the British Isles – and, with that, the climactic success of the Adventurer and Pathfinder Bible Experience as well Club Ministry camporees and calendar events – has stimulated a lot of membership growth within the BUC. This has been a highlight from a Club Ministries perspective.
The establishment, development and endorsement of Teens’ Ministry as a formidable, empowering, creative and highly engaging ministry stood out to fill a vacuum that has long presented itself in the organisational structure of the Church in the BUC.
The senior youth have thrived beyond measure with the personal, social, emotional and spiritual development of our young people in the BUC. At the heart of this development has been the synergy facilitated directly and indirectly by the empowering concept of the Union’s ministry and the Youth Department’s operational and advisory activity, as scarce as it was during this quinquennium. Tapping into social media platforms, senior youth networked, reflected and implemented programmes that strengthened innovation, involvement, relationships, belonging and spirituality.
Strategic Targets & KPIs
While all-absorbing operational demands easily eclipse strategic aspects of Youth Ministries, in line with its KPIs, the Youth Ministries Department can report qualitative outcomes such as improved collaboration between Youth Ministries and other departments within the Union. The same emphasis has been promoted among its entities.
Youth Ministries has embraced the need for advanced technological systems to ease registration and event management. Such systems allow for research to be conducted and statistical information to be gathered while bridging the gap between the missions and conferences in managing resources. We have identified and made preliminary arrangements concerning the Youth Ministries Management System currently used by both the North America and South America Divisions as a potential solution to the management of information across the British Isles.
Establishing a business strategy for the development of the shop has faced various operational and strategic challenges. Not only was it not engaged with early in this term to allow for a comprehensive business strategy, but there were also various constraints on time and resources. Evidently, the department’s overwhelming operational demands limit what the designated shop manager, who is also the Youth Secretary, can do. While profits have been realised from the shop, the shop’s clientele showed growing resentment over stock levels and shipping delays. It is also clear that late order submission contributes to delivery delays and increased numbers of complaints.
Consequently, the related KPI has not been delivered and needs to be underpinned by the development of a human resource and financial framework to sustain it. This may need to start with including the shop in the BUC Youth Ministries Director’s job description, as management of the shop is currently limited to the Youth Secretary, role who then has direct liaison with the Secretariat and the Treasury on shop matters. The advent of several ‘shops’ selling Pathfinder-related products needs to be part of the strategic thinking and the establishment of regulatory processes.
Target Assessment & Lessons Learnt
Leading Youth Ministries in the three missions in ways that shield the missions’ youth from experiencing the divide between them and our conferences has actually been critically supported by the conferences with their larger resource base. Holding the development of missions and their independence in creative positioning has been and will continue to be an important target of Youth Ministries in the Union.
Direct involvement in training, subsidising, and ensuring the missions’ Youth Ministries are aligned with the BUC, TED and GC objectives remains a primary role of the Union. The lack of an advisory addressing matters that relate directly to the relationship between the BUC Youth Ministries Director and the missions limits the ownership, involvement and strategic alignment of the missions with the higher organisations.
However, scarcity became a catalyst for innovation, development, and opportunity to move beyond traditional, resource-intensive methods in some cases.
Although difficult to quantify, scarcity has also strengthened communication across teams. Consequently, youth across the BUC have enjoyed the privilege of working together formally and at times informally in creating something greater than either of them could have done alone. This process has been fundamental to the success of the youth work within the BUC.
Intentionality in differentiated soul-winning and discipleship has been successfully promoted and supported by the Union’s Youth Ministries. Tailoring the approach to evangelism based on the specific needs, background and spiritual state of the individual, rather than using a one-size-fits-all method, has been at the core of this department’s reflection and learning.
Achievements & Impact
In 2025 alone, more than 100 Bible Experience-related baptisms took place in the NEC. Likewise, some related baptisms also occurred in the SEC. Hundreds have also been baptised at Division, Conference and GC camporees and other events.
Following the successful NEC-hosted Union-level Bible Experience testing in Leeds in 2023, the BUC allowed the Scottish Mission to fully host the Pathfinder and Adventurer Bible Experience in a groundbreaking move that saw a mission plan and deliver the Union-level event, with more than 2,000 participants from across the Union gathering in Aberdeen for a unique Scottish contextualised experience in 2024.
Scotland’s Pathfindering also experienced some groundbreaking research for this target group in 2025, approved by the BUC in partnership with the Scottish Mission and Andrews University. It concerned bridging the acculturation gap between first- and second-generation immigrants. As immigrant families attempt to adapt to a new host culture, parents and children are prone to operate from differing cultural contexts influenced and worsened by unexpected differences in cultural values, practices and beliefs. The resulting cultural gaps can escalate into intergenerational cultural conflict, which is associated with a range of negative developmental, emotional and psychological outcomes for the youth. The two-generation study equipped families with a framework for improving family relationships and communication skills, with an immediate ascertained impact for this otherwise vulnerable but increasingly important subset of our membership in Britain.
The Youth Department held a Union-wide youth day of fellowship on Saturday 19 August 2023 at the Bethel Convention Centre, Birmingham. This was the biggest BUC youth event of the year, and it featured a host of amazing guest speakers and music. The main message was delivered by Dr Richard D. Martin from the Bermuda Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.
The joint BUC and Netherlands Union of Churches Conference (NUChC) Regional Youth Congress in Rijswijk, Netherlands saw lives being transformed, decisions for Christ made, mission perspective sharpened and a baptism conducted under the radiant blue sky at Heartbeach, The Hague in 2024.
The event helped kick-start an emerging four-year cycle in which our young people can enjoy an annual youth congress. These are due to occur at Division level as planned for this year (2026) in Valencia; at Conference/Mission level; and at regional and Union levels. Youth Congress is a special gathering that fosters encounters with God, encourages personal and spiritual growth, strengthens unity in Christ, and inspires young people to commit themselves to serving as part of God’s mission.
The Union-wide development of entrepreneurship skills, especially through senior youth merchandise, has received support from and been promoted by the Union, and it has been a growing success story throughout the Union. It’s been limited only by the initial injection of capital towards these projects.
Several teens’ and senior youth events and activities, including mission trips and days of fellowship, have been supported by the Youth Ministries Department and used as models for other entities and in our own division. From these, many young people have made a public confession of their faith by being baptised.
More directly pertaining to the Union, the missions have increased their senior youth and Pathfinder activities, with resounding success and decisions for Christ. The Irish Mission has made strides that we continue to support as it scales up its activities by having a full-time Youth Ministries leader.
The partnership with JD Sports Outdoor Division, Go Outdoors, established in 2025, has not only enhanced the department’s organisational reputation, but the initiative has been a foundational reference point for negotiating stronger partnerships with community organisations. The practical outcomes have been receiving and distributing 318 four-person tents across the five entities as Go Outdoors’ tangible commitment to making the outdoors more accessible for all BUC Youth Ministries departments.
Challenges & Departmental Response
Further to my reflection on KPIs above, in our bid to be inclusive, the Youth Department began a consultation among its Pathfinder advisory in 2025. With the GC due to release a new Pathfinder curriculum, essential to my vision for the department is the need to explore key terminology and legal frameworks related to neurodiversity and common neurodivergent conditions.
How best can this knowledge inform Adventurer and Pathfinder assessments as a pilot project that would grow towards examining how the Master Guide curriculum can be accessed at a more inclusive level for our diverse membership, with aspects such as reasonable adjustments being made to our level of operation?
Cultural considerations related to inclusivity and financial challenges in securing professional guidance are anticipated; cultural education should take place to help people respect differences, with volunteers from within our community of faith pioneering the project to mitigate financial challenges.
Recommendations for the Next Quinquennium & Looking Ahead
Youth Ministries means to engage in collaboration with other departments and charitable institutes in exploring how best to support young people suffering from mental health and wellbeing challenges linked to cultural identity and intergenerational conflict. We should start with making counselling more accessible to our youth in the missions, as this is a key step to this initiative.
Extend the appeal of our uniformed body status and drum corps skills in Pathfindering so that we have more civic involvement and partnerships with organisations like Scouts and the Duke of Edinburgh Award across the Union.
Contextualise the Pathfinder curriculum to Scottish, Irish, Welsh and English peculiarities.
Further develop Teens’ Ministry to ascertain an enabling structure that best establishes it in the organisational structure, including for the missions.
For our intercultural British and Adventist contexts, there is a need for parents, local church leaders and pastors to cultivate not only self-awareness and psychosocial skills, but also emotional and cultural intelligence. These skills and qualities resonate with our young people. Our youth matter, and investing in such areas affirms them in their struggle against their existential challenges on their spiritual journeys. Understanding concepts like acculturation and intergenerational cultural conflict for our largely immigrant Church would be helpful in leading and understanding adolescence, teen life, campus life, singlehood and young adult life in families, with an emphasis on immigrant families that make the bulk of our membership.
Collaborate with other Union departments in achieving more elements of a shared vision, such as nurturing singles throughout the Union.
Strengthen the partnership with JD Sports and invite them to major events where tents and other equipment for outdoor living will be in use and the ethos of Youth Ministries will be demonstrated.
Establish the cycle of Division, Regional, Union, Conference and Mission-level activities into a predictable plan that allows fundraising, budgeting and a careful choice of events for families in their bid to support Adventurers, Pathfinders, teens, Campus Ministries and young adults.
Explore the relevance of research on the impact of religion on mental health and emotional intelligence among Seventh-day Adventist college/university students in our cultural context.
While previous generations have also demonstrated strong commitments to justice, the widespread access to information and the influence of social media have made today’s young people particularly vocal and visible in addressing issues of social injustice. In light of this acute sense of social injustice, present how the three angels’ messages, in their truest sense, are a call to religious, racial and social justice.
Reassert Pathfindering, its curriculum, activities, camps and Bible Experience as, essentially, the developmental discipleship model that sets it apart from other discipleship tools for our Union.
Acknowledgements
The term began with Pastor Kevin Johns as Director of Youth Ministries. Not until 1 July 2025, did I begin to serve in this role as Interim Director of Youth Ministries. Renatella Iunac has continued to faithfully serve as Youth Secretary, and she and Pastor Johns have helped to facilitate a form of transitioning. I am indebted to them for that.
Having been involved in Youth Ministries since 1999 in Britain and since the earlier 1990s in Zimbabwe, I have enjoyed continuing to serve with amazing Youth Ministries leaders, as well as starting to serve with some who are new to me within the BUC Pathfinder, Teens’ and Campus Ministries and the Senior Youth advisories. Each of these individuals brings a fresh perspective of the work and leaves an indelible mark on my spiritual journey within the context of Youth Ministries. Colleagues at the Union – the Union officers, including the Treasury team – have created fluid structures that have made operations more manageable. I appreciate you all.
The JD Sports partnership was not only sparked by one of our youth (Dumokuye Mahlangu from the North England Conference), but it was further explored and asserted by yet another young person, Abigail-Wright Stephenson, in her role as BUC Project Manager. I am very grateful to these young people.
The heavy doses of grace, love and sacrifice by parents, volunteers and church boards and their pastors have each advanced the work in ways that will probably remain untold. Thank you for all you do in service to our Lord and Saviour.
Ultimately, it is to God that all the honour and glory go for the wisdom He gives, for the work accomplished, and for all prospects and challenges that form character. May He be allowed to have the final say in all our reflections and envisioning. He’s great at aligning us with His will when we allow Him to do just that.