Chicago - ELCA YA Network Gathering

From July 2024 to July 2025, I got the opportunity to serve as the young adult leader at my church, and it was awesome! I greatly appreciated finding the community of Young Adults that existed at Christ the King Lutheran Church and it gave me a new space to belong in after leaving the network of being a student at NC State, and leaving my parents’ house in SC again. It still came as a surprise to get asked to lead the group only a year after joining the group, and I focused on trying to maintain the group as it existed, and helping to make it a group that people would enjoy. My post ended in 2025 when my friend and new seminarian, Tyler Ruddy, joined CTK, and I was happy to give that role over to someone whom I knew would make sure it would continue. While it was an addition to my full-time job that I was potentially excited to have my back time-wise, two opportunities quickly formed for me afterwards.

First was an expansion of my volunteering as a youth advisor. I identified a hole with the CTK staff and the youth for a High School Bible Study space that allowed time for continued involvement after confirmation and a space for challenging high-schoolers who are ready to dive into more complex discussions than what they might find in a typical youth Sunday school class. From what I can tell, they greatly value being able to have more time as just the high-schoolers and are flexing their critical thinking and leadership skills.

The second opportunity totally found me! I was reached out to by Mark Hustedt, a good friend and Region 9 LCM connection for a new opportunity on the national scale. He was hired as the Young Adult Ministry Leader for the NC Synod and had been reached out to by the larger ELCA Churchwide Staff about the start of a new network and increased support by the ELCA to the growing young adult ministries all over the US. Mark was called to be a facilitator for Region 9 and asked me to be the Representative for the NC Synod!

The first step to being in this position was meeting for the first-ever ELCA Young Adult Network Gathering happening in Chicago in Fall 2025!

On October 9th, 2026, I headed out to Chicago alongside around 70 other synod representatives and network facilitators to get this thang started! The gathering’s main goal was to get us together in person to establish the network and start thinking on what young adults can do and be going forward. It was a glimpse into what the future of the church could look like when young adults are given space to lead, listen, and imagine together.

Coming from North Carolina, I carried with me the stories, questions, and hopes of the communities I’m part of—especially the young adults I’ve grown alongside in church spaces, camps, and Bible studies. Walking into a room full of other representatives from across the country, I quickly realized that while our contexts were different, so many of our experiences overlapped. We shared similar challenges—feeling in-between, navigating leadership in a changing church, and wondering how to create spaces that feel both rooted and alive.

One of the parts in particular I need to speak to is the impact of the music that weekend. From my experience, few spaces have ever compared to what it felt like to worship as a staff at my years at Lutheridge. This weekend took me right back there in a way I was not expecting, with songs that weren’t sung at camp, and amongst people I hardly knew! Being in a space of just Young Adults who were there because they chose to be alongside excellent worship leaders made that a truly special piece of the gathering.

Another stand out most was the openness and focus of the gathering. Oddly enough, the gathering was paired with the ELCA innovation team, who taught everyone there how the design thinking process worked. This is 100% home territory for me, and they were right on the money in how the design process can be used to build new systems and be a tool for representing all. This wasn’t just about programming or structure, though; it was about giving time for relationships to form. Conversations lingered over meals, ideas formed in and out of structured discussions, and there was a genuine openness to hearing each other’s perspectives. It felt like something shaped by the people in the room rather than just handed down to us.

Due to the number of things to accomplish and the state of the nation, especially Chicago, we were pretty much sequestered to the Lutheran Center and our hotel, even though Chicago was a city I’d never been to. The city was probably at its peak in dealing with the presence of ICE in the city. Sunday morning, before we headed home that afternoon, we visited St. Luke's Lutheran Church of Logan Square to have worship with a multi-lingual congregation dealing with the challenge of living in continued unprecedented times. It was another amazing space full of music and the holy spirit serving as a place to close out the weekend and head back into the worlds we came from.

I left the gathering with more questions than answers in the best way possible and a whole list of new Lutheran connections nationwide. More than anything, the trip reinforced that young adults aren’t just the “future” of the church—we’re part of its present. And being in that space in Chicago made it clear that when we’re brought together with intention, honesty, and trust, something meaningful can take root.

Since then, Mark, the rest of the representatives in Region 9, and I have met monthly to keep the momentum going and bring the energy and learnings into the spaces we come from.