I sometimes think about how many obstacles our young people face when it comes to being all-in with Jesus. Compared to when I was coming out of high school, they’re coming of age in a culture that’s moved further from its Christian roots. They’re conscious of more financial pressures and are busier juggling work commitments. Christians are no longer the goodie-goodies; sometimes we’re the bad guys. So many challenges.
But that’s not what I saw this week at In The Vine. I saw a crowd of young adults, excited to be with each other. Keen to hear God’s word to them. Chatting eagerly as they wrestled with how a good God could allow suffering. Mike Roe, principal of Bible College SA, had just taken them through a deep dive on the topic, and the conversation carried on over pizza.
In The Vine started at the beginning of this year as a combined gathering of young adults connected to Trinity Church Unley and Trinity Church Colonel Light Gardens. Jack Page and I had both experienced the joy of seeing young adult groups forming at each of our churches over the past couple of years. We noticed that they loved hanging out with each other, which made heaps of sense given that many of them had been at youth group and on camps together (our two churches also have a combined youth group). We’d been seeing great value in meeting together as smaller local groups, but thought there might be more we could do together. Rather than waiting for each church to have its own larger group, we decided to meet once a month as In The Vine.
The larger group lets us do things we can’t pull off on our own: the young adults get to connect with a wider network of Christian friends. They can dive deeper into critical topics with the help of guest speakers from around town. Some find the larger group an easier invite for friends to check out. And, much to Jack’s and my delight, lots of them were keen to sing together too!
I’m so grateful for our partnership with Trinity Church Unley, and particularly for Jack’s leadership of this initiative, because we wouldn’t be able to do all this as a local group (as much as we love our regular Young Adults catchups at the Seyfang house!). We long for our young people to find supportive Christian friendships, and to wrestle seriously with the Bible as they work out who they are and what they stand for.
Our God has a track record of doing great things when it looks like there are too many human obstacles. Time and again he’s done that through the ministry of ordinary believers, lovingly opening his Word. It’s a thrill to see him working amongst our young people like that. Yes, following Jesus as a young person in 2026 has its share of challenges. Let’s pray that God might raise up the next generation of mature, all-in, Jesus-loving, Jesus-proclaiming Christians from the young people in our churches.
I can’t wait to see how he answers that prayer.
