Key points:
- While pandemic lockdowns forced a slowdown, large conference-sponsored youth retreats are seeing growth.
- Youth involvement in leadership at retreats is considered a key ingredient for success, along with inspiring speakers, music and activities.
- The Greater New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania conferences have created a “replicable, scalable model” of their IGNITE youth event to share with other conferences.
Amid recent reports of growing church involvement among young people in the post-pandemic age, United Methodist conferences in the U.S. also are attracting increasing numbers to their major annual youth retreats.
These lively gatherings offer stirring worship with youth-oriented discipleship messages from popular speakers; high-energy, contemporary Christian music; engaging dialogues, workshops and mission projects; and plenty of activities designed to foster fun, fellowship and faith formation.
Inspirational music and compelling lyrics draw ardent young listeners out of their seats and toward the stage to get closer to the artists and to one another.
“There were up to 15 large-scale youth events happening yearly in conferences a decade ago,” said Chris Wilterdink, director of Young People’s Ministries at United Methodist Discipleship Ministries. “There are fewer now, since COVID hit us. But there’s a confluence of things happening now because young people have always had a desire to be social with each other.”
In today’s well-attended, typically weekend retreats hosted by conferences and regional episcopal areas, he said he sees “a healthy reestablishment of habits and rhythms,” as more young people from churches of all sizes come together to connect with each other socially, emotionally and spiritually.
Wilterdink and his team are preparing now for the 2026 Global Young People’s Convocation, July 7-11 in Dublin, Ireland. The quadrennial event will gather more than 600 young United Methodists, ages 12-35, from 15 countries, to develop leadership abilities while learning to network, strategize and advocate for their concerns, including proposing General Conference legislation. The international gathering is mandated by the denomination’s Book of Discipline.
YOUTH 2027, the quadrennial U.S.-based United Methodist convocation, will follow in July 2027 in Dallas. There, youth groups and their leaders will gather to participate in high-energy worship, hear nationally known speakers and join in workshops and other activities.
Wilterdink feels that youth involvement in leadership at these events is a key ingredient for success.
“I always notice that young people respond most strongly to other young people being in leadership and on the stage, like when an authentic young person who was inspired by a mission service project can talk about the work they did or the money they helped raise,” he said.
Empowering youth to lead
The Missouri Conference’s UNITE, a major youth gathering that started in 2023, saw its attendance grow to the point that in 2025, the conference began offering two sessions, each lasting five days, at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri.
Jessica Sachs, who co-directs UNITE, also emphasized that putting youth leadership up front is essential.
“We empower them to lead worship, write and share prayers and poetry, and be the first voices heard on stage,” she said, adding that the practice has led to more youth leading worship and even preaching in their churches back home.
When event attendance grew from about 200 to over 300, organizers chose the university as their venue and event programming partner. They expect to draw nearly 1,300 youth and adults to the two sessions in July, which will fill the campus’ housing capacity.
“(Central Methodist University) saw the benefits of these gatherings and their interactions with our youth as a possible recruiting tool for future students,” said the Rev. Angel Garcia, conference youth and college-age ministry coordinator. “So, we started working in tandem, and it has allowed us to keep the costs down.”
At the first annual conference session he attended as a youth minister, Garcia discovered the “connection” he had heard about that brings leaders together to meet and network with each other. But something was missing.
“I looked around, and I was saying, ‘You guys know each other; you’re all friends … Why aren’t more youth ministry leaders here?’”
Researching church membership data across the conference and the denomination, Garcia learned that about half of Missouri churches don’t have a single student member from the age of 12 to 18, and that’s on par across the nation.
“Youth ministry can be a very siloing, lonely experience if people aren’t reaching out to others,” he explained. “So, the more we can gather and galvanize people by offering mountaintop experiences like UNITE, the more we can build relationships, share ideas, recruit more youth and adult leaders, and help them with our efforts the rest of the year.”
CURRENT, the Western Pennsylvania Conference’s major youth gathering, in February drew about 200 youth and adult leaders, although it was reduced from a two-night stay to one due to an incoming snowstorm.
“The best thing about CURRENT is that it is student-led from the start,” said the Rev. Amanda Mitchell, young people’s ministries coordinator. “Our youth pick out who they want to speak and also lead worship and breakout sessions. It truly is their event.”
The Holston Conference’s youth retreat, Resurrection, held each January in the Smoky Mountains at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. Though a severe winter storm limited its attendance to several hundred, the 2025 gathering drew about 3,300 youth and adult mentors from the conference’s East Tennessee, North Georgia and Southwest Virginia region, as well as other states and other denominations.
Sarah Thomas, president of the Holston Conference Council on Youth Ministries, said event organizers work hard to connect youth across the conference and engage them in planning Resurrection and providing leadership there — especially onstage.
“Having helped plan and lead retreats herself as a youth, she recalled, “I started crying that first time because I felt God’s hand over me, and that is when I knew I was dedicating my life to God. I wanted to do some sort of ministry; and that is a common experience with many of the youth who come.”
She said this year the offering taken at Resurrection is providing scholarships to help make the events more accessible for people who can’t afford them.
“Some of our (youth council) representatives went on stage to talk about how the Holston Conference has affected their lives, and why other people should give to be able to support this mission.”
Like other large youth retreats, Resurrection also engages youth in demonstrating and encouraging one another’s gifts and talents in worship, preaching and open mic competitions, among other experiences.
‘Spaces of belonging and authentic faith’
The North Carolina Conference has sponsored Pilgrimage, its large-scale youth gathering, for more than three decades. The 2025 event drew nearly 1,200 youth and adult leaders from across eastern North Carolina.
“For many churches, it’s a spiritual anchor in their ministry year,” said Julia Royall Johnson, conference director of youth ministries. “Churches are again prioritizing shared experiences for their students; and youth are hungry for spaces of belonging and authentic faith.”
Johnson said one of the core tenets of the Pilgrimage experience is centering youth voices and leadership throughout the event. Besides the adult keynote speakers, the other voices on stage are of youth from across the conference who help plan the event, read Scripture, perform with the house band, offer testimony, guide worship and onsite mission activities, and share their artistic talents.
“Many of the students and their churches prepare for months,” Johnson said, “and for some it becomes a pivotal moment in their faith journey.”
While the next Pilgrimage is planned for Nov. 13-15, the conference keeps its youth engaged throughout the year in other, smaller gatherings and activities that foster relational skills and leadership development.
Maintaining that year-round engagement is another crucial component of growing youth participation.
“After my first time (at Resurrection), I asked, ‘Where do I go after this?’” the Holston Conference’s Thomas recalled. “There wasn’t much direction, especially for a young person who now felt called to ministry.”
In response, she helped design Life in Ministry: A Call to Action, a one-day discernment event for youth and young adults.
“It’s just one way we’re trying to help youth find a path and show them there are many different types of ministries other than being a pastor.”
The Holston Conference also hosts Youth Rally, a yearly fall event held at two conference camp sites in Georgia and Tennessee that is “led by youth for youth.” It features young speakers and young worship and activity leaders.
“I think that has really helped enrich the connection we have with each other around the conference,” Thomas said.
What they also experience at Resurrection, she added, is a sense of family with each other as they make new friends. Youth attend from Baptist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic and other faith groups, and even from disaffiliated former United Methodist churches.
“The youth walk around the convention center like we all know each other, no matter where we’re from,” she said. “You see young people giving their phone numbers or connecting on social media afterward. You really don’t stay just within your church group.”
Creating relationships and partnerships
The Arkansas Conference’s Veritas retreat this year drew over 700 students to a weekend of worship, diverse learning experiences, fellowship activities and faith formation with their peers. Guest attendees came from the neighboring Horizon Texas and Oklahoma Indian Missionary conferences.
“Events like this really bring the youth together and create relationships that will be needed to better The UMC as a whole,” said Lucy Tellez of Argenta United Methodist Church in North Little Rock.
Brittany Watson, the conference’s age-level discipleship coordinator, said Veritas “gives our youth an opportunity to worship God unabashedly in the midst of our United Methodist connection. They get an opportunity to live out the gift of the connectional nature of The UMC. My favorite part of every conference event is watching youth from across the state reunite with their United Methodist friends.”
DAKYOUTH, the Dakotas Conference’s annual fall youth event scheduled for Oct. 8-11, also focuses on youth leadership, discipleship and service. The 2025 retreat drew 112 participants from over 20 churches in North and South Dakota.
“While this weekend event enables students and adults to come together and grow in their faith, it also allows them to connect with other students from different communities,” said the Rev. Peggy Hanson, Conference Council on Youth Ministry president. “That might include exploring and looking forward to summer camp and retreat ministries, learning about our United Methodist-related Dakota Wesleyan University, or discerning if God is calling them into leadership at their church.”
While pandemic lockdowns posed a challenge to hosting youth conferences, the obstacles today are more familiar ones: rising costs and dwindling financial and staff resources.
“These big events are expensive,” said Eric Drew, Eastern Pennsylvania and Greater New Jersey director of young people’s ministry, adding that many conferences no longer have the staff, resources and organizing skills they need.
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IGNITE, a fall youth retreat launched by the Greater New Jersey Conference in 2014, was drawing thousands of participants before the pandemic.
Drew said that before 2020, the Northeastern Jurisdiction had about six major youth conferences, with as many as 14,000 youth attending per year, but “IGNITE was the only one that came back after the pandemic.”
The Greater New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania conferences now collaborate as one episcopal area, sharing programs and staff and cosponsoring annual IGNITE events. As a result, over 700 youth and adults attended the area’s IGNITE retreat in October 2025.
Looking beyond their borders to the needs of neighboring conferences, they shared IGNITE’s successful strategies and branding with the Peninsula-Delaware and Baltimore-Washington conferences, which also now work together as one episcopal area. Drew and his team helped them adopt the model for their use in 2025 and 2026.
More than two decades ago, Peninsula-Delaware and Baltimore-Washington each drew several thousand attendees to their separate youth retreats. They held their second, joint IGNITE youth retreat in March, with more than 1,400 youth and adult mentors in attendance.
“We figured out a replicable, scalable model and took a small team to help the Peninsula-Delaware and Baltimore-Washington conferences adapt it,” Drew said, adding that other conferences in the jurisdiction are interested in using the IGNITE model for their own retreats, but paying for it is a major limiting factor.
These collaborations may be one solution, which seems to be a denominational trend of affiliations and partnerships that is growing among conferences, general agencies and churches, driven primarily by declining finances and church memberships.
“Our collaborations are helping us to see that although many of our churches and annual conferences have fewer financial resources to invest, we have so much more when we work together,” Drew said. “And in addition to cost sharing, additional grant and fundraising opportunities are available.”
The Missouri Conference staff also invites visitors from other conferences to come get a look and feel for how UNITE’s model might work for them.
“We show them what we’re offering, and say, ‘If this could work for you, let us know and we can package it in a way that you could contextualize it for your area,” Garcia said. “We’re doing a lot of the creative heavy lifting, so they can just plug in and play what we’ve designed at no extra cost. That’s been an underlying goal, at least for me, to try and box it in a way that it can happen almost anywhere.”
Coleman is a UM News correspondent and part-time licensed local pastor in Greater New Jersey.
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