In Springtide’s site visits for our What’s Working project, leaders shared their wisdom and insights from years of experience in youth ministry.  Five themes—fun, purpose, inclusivity, integrity, and adaptability—shaped our inquiries during these visits. While these are universal concepts, each manifested differently in both theory and practice, providing a rich landscape of best practices in youth ministry.  

What does adaptability look like in youth ministry?  

These site visits show that it means listening carefully to those being served, offering the activities that best support spiritual growth, and being willing to pivot when selected approaches don’t work. Adaptability means approaching ministry work with an expectation of success and embracing failure should it appear. 

Leaders we interviewed say that before anything begins, a leaders’ mindset must be aligned with adaptability. In Washington, D.C., GatherDC works to connect Jews in their 20s and 30s to the local Jewish ecosystem. Managing Director Alexandra Tureau Meyer believes change is inevitable when working with any youth population and having a learning mindset that embraces flexibility and agility sets an organization up for success.  

“GatherDC was actually started as a grassroots, lay-led conceptand we still have a lot of that grassroots thinking embedded in the values of our organization,” Alexandra says. “So, I think that mindset has really allowed us to keep pushing the needle on not being afraid of change. We have this concept of trying things out, failing fast. We don’t put a lot of weight on failure. I think that’s a very sort of like Silicon Valley idea, but there’s no reason it can’t be used in the nonprofit space or, you know, and at any organization really. And that allows us to listen, to try new things, to say what worked, what didn’t work, and keep moving forward.” 

Examples of Adaptable Programming in Youth Ministry 

Adaptability often shows up in how leaders develop programming. As director of youth and College Ministries at First Presbyterian Church of Ft. Lauderdale, Chandler Gelb creates an idea and allows student and parent feedback to shape it. She’ll also accept the outcome if an idea doesn’t work out in practice. 

“If it doesn’t work, we would love some feedback but also know that when we try things for the first time, it’s typically messy,” Chandler says. “It doesn’t always work as smoothly, but we can’t be afraid to fail, and we need to be okay to try new things out. And so there will be growing pains, but it’s part of it, and we’ll do it together. And that’s kind of the philosophy that we work with. It might be messy, but life and ministry is messy, and we’re going to be on the same team.” 

Pastor Eric Barnes of Second Reformed Church understood that scheduling a bible reading group for teens in the early hours of Tuesday morning was a gamble, but he also knew that 6:30 a.m. was one of the only times young people’s schedules were open.  

“When deciding to first do it, I sort of just took a chance,” Eric says. “Let’s try 6:30. And [now] parents will tell me it’s the one day of the week that they don’t have to wake their kids up. And I keep thinking to myself, ‘It’s only donuts. And we read the Bible.’ At times, I think, what’s the secret sauce? Or what’s the magic here? And I don’t know. It is simple. And I think in part we read interesting things. We’re really playful with what we do. And then community ends up being built.” 

How Adaptability Can Transform Your Ministry 

Sometimes the integration of one single element can transform an experience for young people. Juan Escarfuller serves as the executive director of Instituto Fe y Vida, the organization that leads Engaging Stories, a week-long event for Latino/a young people to develop their faith formation. Juan says that the flow of their nighttime activities—cycles of prayer, testimonials, preaching, and short reflections in small groups—are linked together with an element many teens use to engage and communicate with one another: music.  

“There was music related to the witness. There was music related to the question,” Juan says. “There was music that was responsive to what were the issues and questions that the very young teens were raising themselves…[I realized] there’s something about music being integrated into the experience of reflection and prayer that just really kind of allowed them to release. There’s something physical, there’s something high energy. And that music—the way the team has incorporated it has made all the difference.” 

Sometimes adapting means creating something altogether new. Marshela Salgado-Solorio knew she didn’t have a critical mass of teens to start a youth program where she serves as associate minister at University Christian Church . Yet, she knew her friend Melissa Tucker, a youth minister at nearby Normal Heights United Methodist, was receiving repeat requests from parents to start one for their youngest members. The two of them came together and created SD United, a youth program for both their churches and any young people across the city who wanted to join. They quickly realized that curriculum for the program they wanted to create—one rooted in inclusivity and justice based on Jesus’ teachings—did not exist, so they built their own.  

“We really thought that if we were going to build a community that was unique, especially the open and affirming part, the inclusivity part, we had to be intentional about that,” Marshela says. “And that meant that it had to be built into what we were teaching on a weekly basis. So in the end, we realized we really just needed to make it our own… [we] sat down together and just brainstormed and charted and all sorts of things. And miraculously, it always comes together really easily.” 

Adaptability can also look like setting a process and then allowing the outcomes to emerge. The Reverend Andrew Kellner, program director for  Servant Year  believes that one’s search for purpose is not a straightforward or narrow path, and when young people enter the program, the discernment questions they ask of themselves and others will shift. When that happens, how they move forward and who joins alongside to accompany them changes.

“I don’t think purpose is a linear thing,” Andrew says. “It’s about becoming. We talk a lot about becoming, and as we grow and as we become and as we live into our purpose, new questions evolve. [A] part of our retreat cycle that we run is reframing those questions along the way in the year and helping the members to see that as a pattern of living. It’s not just something you do when you’re here, something that I have to do. It’s something that each of us have to do across our lifespan.” 

Trevor Beauford: An adaptable mindset 

Trevor Beauford, Founder and Co-Leader of The Place, knows all about adaptability. He took his idea of creating a space for young adults who’d moved away from the churches of their youth and invited young people to co-create alongside him. Together they embarked on creating a new type of experience, but with no money and no denominational backing, they didn’t know if it would work. Today, The Place is thriving in two US cities and continues to reach more and more young people who want to experience God in a different way. In this clip, Trevor discusses how to adopt a posture and mindset of adaptability.