In this episode of the Pivot Podcast, hosts Katie Langston and Dwight Zscheile explore how collaborative youth ministry is revolutionizing the way churches engage with young people in Boise, Idaho. Pastors Bob Lewis and Mariah Mills share their journey of creating a confirmation co-op across four congregations, demonstrating how church partnerships can create vibrant faith experiences while sharing resources and responsibilities. Learn why "letting go of the expectation to do it all on your own" might be the most faithful approach to youth ministry today.

This conversation unpacks the practical aspects of collaborative youth ministry—from dividing responsibilities and planning retreats to embracing diversity and building authentic community across congregational lines. Whether you're struggling to maintain youth programs with limited resources or simply looking to enrich your current ministry, Bob and Mariah offer both encouragement and concrete next steps for creating collaborative ministry models that truly serve today's young people.

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Let go of the expectation that it has to be done on your own. There's still a sense of shame and a sense of failure that if a church isn't able to be all things to all people that it's their fault. I would say that it's if you recognize that your church is not able to do your own youth ministry programming, that's not a failure. It's faithful to recognize that.

So you can free yourself of the expectation that you must do everything on your own and be all things to all people. I don't believe that that's where the Holy Spirit's moving us. So if you need to do things together, do it. It is so worth it to do it together and not feel pressure to do everything yourself.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Pivot Podcast where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. My name is Katie Langston.

I'm Dwight Zscheile So on the Pivot Podcast, we discuss what we believe are four key pivots that God is calling many churches to make in the 21st century. And they are first a pivot in posture from primarily trying to fix institutional problems to listening and discerning where God is leading, a pivot in focus from membership to discipleship, a pivot in structure from

and a one shape or one size fits all models of ministry to a mixed ecology of inherited and new forms working together. And finally, a pivot in leadership from predominantly clergy-led lay-supported ministry to lay-led clergy-led ministry.

That's right. And today we are so excited to welcome Pastor Bob Lewis and Pastor Mariah Mills from Boise, Idaho, which I say is like the coolest town you never heard of or you've never visited, who are trying to reimagine together what youth ministry can look like through congregational collaboration. And so they're doing something really cool instead of each church in the area trying to maintain their own separate youth programs.

They've discovered the power of working together across congregations and their story illustrates how moving beyond kind of traditional, you know, congregation has to have their own program, one size fits all kind of model can open up new possibilities for engaging young people, building community, finding solidarity in town. And through their collaborative approach, they're not just sharing resources, but they're creating a more

vibrant faith experience for their youth and their families. So welcome, Bob and Mariah. Thanks for being with us to share your story.

Thanks for having us.

So tell us a bit about your context and Boise. I know that it is a place that a lot of people move to during the pandemic and there's been a lot of change there. But what is congregational ministry like in a place where your own Lutheran tradition is perhaps a lesser known branch of Christianity in that context?

So I came here from the Midwest. So first off, there's a lot less Lutherans and a lot less mainline Protestant folks to begin with. And I think, I mean, mainline Protestant folks are dealing with this across the board of trying to figure out how to speak truth and love to a dominant voice of Christianity that is very exclusive. But I do think that in that particular intensity and urgency,

There's been a sense among faith communities that we have to work together, that we have to collaborate. Collaboration is necessary for us to be able to speak the truth and love of who we believe Jesus to be and what Jesus would be wanting us to do in word and action.

I'm actually a Northwest native. grew up in Portland and went to Washington state. So I've served out here in Seattle area number of years, but I came to Boise from Northwest Iowa. So Northwest Iowa and Idaho, pretty, pretty similar with the, the overarching Christian ethos. The difference being here in Southern Idaho,

a strong LDS influence, but definitely more the conservative Christianity.

grew up in Logan, Utah, and I serve now in Southern Utah. Logan is right on the border of Preston, Idaho and lived in Moscow, Idaho for a few several years while my husband was in graduate school. So, yes, I can relate to a lot of what you've described about the kind of cultural milieu that you're in. in my experience, it has...

you know, some unique challenges, but also opportunities for sharing the gospel in really powerful ways for people who are looking for grace. So I think that's really cool. What kind of inspired you to start collaborating on youth ministry in particular across your congregations?

Well, we walked into a situation where this had existed, in, in previous iteration before virus time, our, our, our synod Bishop, man, love was part of that, when she was pastor in Nampa and, it had a really strong following for many, many years here, and had a, a staff person at

one of the larger churches here in the Treasure Valley that ran it. then right around COVID time, all of the clergy and the lay leadership in these congregations left. so my first year here, I just did confirmation in the congregation here on my own. At that time we had a part-time youth director, which we don't have anymore.

but worked with her to do it in.

Yeah, I think that there were three of us that showed up either right when confirmation last year started or right in the middle of the confirmation year. So we were all kind of scrambling to try to just get through a year of confirmation. And then in the spring of 24, there was kind of a sense of like, okay, there's someone here and almost all of the churches in the Treasure Valley now, there is a sense of stability. And so I think in

opportunity now that we were out of this really massive transition period to start to dream and collaborate again in a way that I don't think they could have a year or two ago when there was so much transition happening.

So tell us a bit about how this collaboration works in practice. What does it look like? How does it function?

Well, there are four churches and we've split it up that each of us for confirmation, each of us have a responsibility. I have been more involved with kind of the planning and preparation, carrying out of the middle part of it, of the two hour period, splitting into small groups discussion. So.

Since I am driving from Horseshoe Bend 35, 40 minutes to try to make it to confirmation, I kind of end up doing the end part of our time together, leading some sort of concluding prayer or benediction. And then I've also been part of the retreat planning team. kind of at the beginning split into different teams to take on different roles. So there were some folks who are more on the logistics side to help pull together.

the old Facebook page that the Confirmation Co-op had to communicate with parents. There was a retreat team to help shape what our baptism and Reformation retreats were going to look like. And then a more curriculum-centered team that was going to talk about what the normal kind of lessons monthly were going to look like, how we were going to talk about the Ten Commandments and the creeds and the Lord's Prayer and what

that was all actually going to look like.

What are some of the gifts that you've sort of experienced together, especially maybe stories of growth or faith from the participants?

One of the churches has a large presence of West African immigrants. And so that's really been cool that we've gotten that group of kids involved in the co-op together. Those relationships have been really nice to see.

So what are some of the challenges you faced in coordinating this kind of initiative across different congregations and what role do parents and volunteers play in helping it all run?

I mean, there with any collaboration, there's definitely growing pains. There's things that we already know could be done better or that we want to work on to do better in the following years. But I think I've just really appreciated the encouragement from the parents and other lay folks from the congregations of the recognition that even though it may not be

right now, the peak of what it was four years ago, it's still incredibly valuable to keep doing anyway that this matters, that there's a reason that we're doing it. So I think the encouragement from them and the support from them is what has helped keep it going because there's an understanding that this is important for us to keep doing.

Do you have any stories either of transformation or of growth in faith where either you or some of the kids or some of the volunteers who are helping to kind of make this whole thing happen, where you, you know, where they have or you've identified, yeah, this is something that's really deepened their connection to God, their excitement about the gospel, their, you know, desire to follow Jesus.

It was a Luther retreat and Diane, the deacon, had him putting notes up on the door, you know, with things that concerned them life. And you came in and told us about some of them.

Yeah. They were kind of acting like Martin Luther, nailing the 95 Theses to the door of what they would hope the church to be or what they dream the future of the church to be. And there were all sorts of dreams and hopes of a church that stands in solidarity with the marginalized and cares for the immigrant and all of our neighbors.

and myself and Diane were just kind of blown away by the seventh, eighth, and ninth graders articulating in their own way a really rich theology of love of God and love of neighbor in really specific ways.

So what advice would you give to churches that might be considering doing a regional collaborative approach to ministry like this?

jump in. I've been doing collaborative youth ministry stuff for 25 years. Get together, start talking with folks and be organic about it. Try something simple first. Don't set your bar so high that you're never going to be able to attain it. It can be as easy as doing a trunk or tree thing together. We worked up in Seattle, we did whole servant trips together.

We go to the Bay area with two or three different congregations and two or three different leaders and do that. But don't start there. Work into it. Let the relationships build naturally and be open to new ideas. Don't come with your own agenda. Be open to the beauty of collaborative stuff is that you get the gift of the other.

in Iowa was wonderful. colleague was from the Congo, the Methodist pastor in town, and we did confirmation together.

I would say let go of the expectation that it has to be done on your own. Katie, like you said at the very beginning, I think there's still a sense of shame and a sense of failure that if a church isn't able to be all things to all people, that it's their fault. I would say that it's, if you recognize that your church is not able to do your own youth ministry programming, that's not a failure. It's faithful to recognize that.

So you can free yourself of the expectation that you must do everything on your own and be all things to all people. I don't believe that that's where the Holy Spirit's moving us. So if you need to do things together, do it. It is so worth it to do it together and not feel pressure to do everything yourself.

Yeah, I think that's really powerful. Just in the congregation that I serve here in Southern Utah, we also collaborate... We're the only ELCA congregation within 150 miles, right, in St. George, Utah. So we collaborate across denominational lines for youth ministry and for other things like that. And it sort of just reminds you that like...

you don't own the church, right? The church is God's and that the fellowship that we have with one another is enriched by the relationships that we're able to build across congregational or, you know, Bob, like you were saying, even denominational lines and sort of this kind of

post-Christian world that is emerging. Sometimes I even think our denominational, not the denominational distinctives exactly, but it's way more interesting to us who are on the inside than to the folks who don't even give two thoughts in a day about God or Jesus or those sorts of things. And the less gatekeeping we can do and the more openness to

trying different things and collaborating and experimenting and letting the Holy Spirit lead, I think that's helpful. And I think those of us maybe in contexts where we're not surrounded with a ton of people from our same tradition, that sort of forces us into those kinds of explorations a little more. And maybe it's uncomfortable, but maybe it's also a good thing, you know?

I've served in big churches too and my advice to them is maybe they don't see a need, you know, to co-operate. But your experience is going to be so much richer if you do. This cooperative ministry is not just for small congregations. It can be for large congregations and you can really find a lot of blessings in it.

So what dreams do you have for the future of this ministry? Anything that the spirit seems to be stirring?

It seemed like there was a lot of momentum coming off of the youth gathering. Something that was really great about the youth gathering last year was most of the churches had their youth go in a group together. There was a group of over 20 youth that went to the youth gathering together and became really close when they came back. And since then, I've really been thinking about what it looks like to have a joint opportunity for our high schoolers.

Right now, once confirmation is over and students move into 10th grade, there's not a whole lot for them in terms of community for just the youth, just high schoolers. So I would love to explore what it would look like to have a joint youth group together. I feel a lot for the high school students and

The pressures on them are exponential to what I experienced 10 years ago, and I would love to give them a space where they can just laugh and know that they're loved. God knows we all need that, but I think high schoolers especially do.

you.

The opportunity to really build on those relationships, right? Form when they're together in confirmation, when they're taking trips together, you know, the youth gathering, other things, going on retreats, to be able to continue to nurture them in faith and in relationship. That sounds like that. That makes sense as sort of a natural evolution of the experiment.

Well, thank you so much for just coming on and sharing how collaboration can open up new possibilities for ministry and community building. I love what you said about how it doesn't have to be something huge, right? It could be taking something that every congregation feels like they need to do and just do it together and see what kind of emerges out of that. So just appreciate you taking the time today to share more with us.

Thank you so much.

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