The Summer That Could Change How You See Everything: 

A Call for Youth to Engage in an Urban Experience Weekend (June 26-27, 2026)

Most summers don’t get wasted because anything terrible happens. They get wasted because nothing especially meaningful does. Days fill up, schedules loosen, and before you know it, weeks have gone by and you’re not really sure what you did with them, or if any of it actually mattered. This is true of everyone, but it can be especially true for youth!

A couple of years ago, we experienced a moment that disrupted that kind of drift.

I was in Galveston, Texas on a short-term mission trip with our church, and on our last day, Pastor Matt and I were sent out with three others from our team, two of them teens, into the community on what was called a “scavenger hunt.” At first, it sounded like a game, I was picturing selfies with fire hydrants and lawn ornaments. But it didn’t take long to realize the goal wasn’t really to find things. It was to start seeing things, and people, differently.

At one point, our group got completely lost. Not slightly off track—actually lost. We were on our way back to join the rest of our team. It was hot and humid, and while we enjoyed the hunt, we were ready to be done. On our way back we took what we thought would be a “shortcut.” We kept turning corners that led nowhere, hitting fences we didn’t expect, realizing we had wandered into a part of the neighborhood we didn’t understand at all. It was uncomfortable, confusing, and frankly a little frustrating. And it was right there, in the middle of that moment, that everything slowed down.

That’s when we noticed him. A man sitting just outside his home, leaned back in a white plastic chair enjoying the shade of a tree, like he’d spent a hundred afternoons right there watching the neighborhood go by. The heat was already pressing in, but he looked completely at ease. His name was Dwayne.

We started talking, and it didn’t take long before it got real. He began sharing about how broken things feel, how corruption shows up in places that are supposed to help people, and how hard it is to trust anything anymore. It wasn’t rehearsed or cleaned up. It was just honest.

And somewhere in the middle of that, the conversation shifted. Instead of trying to fix what he was saying, we were able to meet it, talking about the reality that the world is broken, and that’s exactly why the hope of Jesus matters. It wasn’t forced or awkward. It was just real. A normal conversation where the gospel made sense because of what we were already talking about. For some from our group, it was the first time they’d seen what a normal, everyday gospel conversation could actually look like outside of church. It wasn’t a presentation or performance. It wasn’t rehearsed. It was a conversation, and it changed how they thought about talking to people about their faith. One of the teens in that group who talked to Dwyane was Emma Norris. She was so impacted by that encounter that it inspired her to take her understanding of the gospel and her ability to communicate it much more seriously! That’s why we do these experiences! We want more young people to have experiences that shape how they see the world around them for the sake of the Gospel.

Afterward, we kept thinking one thing: there’s no reason we have to travel to Galveston to experience this with our youth. It can happen here. These experiences can happen in the places we tend to drive past, in conversations we don’t normally pause long enough to have, and in moments we might miss entirely if we don’t choose to pay attention.

That’s really what this summer comes down to. You’re going to have a lot of options. You can spend it doing what’s easiest, scrolling, coasting, filling your time with whatever’s in front of you, and there won’t be anything obviously “wrong” with that. But you can also choose something different; something more meaningful. You can step into experiences that stretch you a little, that challenge how you think, and that help your faith move from something you hear about to something you actually live.

That’s the heart behind our Youth Urban Experience weekend.

It’s not about cramming your schedule with activities or putting together something that just feels busy. And it’s definitely not about going somewhere to observe people from a distance. It’s about stepping into a posture of humility and curiosity. Learning to notice the realities people live with every day, asking better questions, listening more than you talk, and beginning to see people the way Jesus does.

There will be moments that feel unfamiliar. There will probably be moments that push you outside your comfort zone. But that’s part of the point. Growth rarely happens in the places where everything feels easy and predictable. It happens when you start paying attention in new ways, when you’re willing to engage instead of staying on the sidelines, and when your faith starts connecting to real people and real situations.

And along the way, there will also be moments you enjoy! Times of connection, laughter, and shared experiences that you’ll remember. But what matters most isn’t a schedule or a list of activities. It’s the perspective you walk away with.

Because summer will go fast. It always does. You’ll look up, and it’ll be August, you’ll be back to the grind of school schedules, and the question won’t be whether you were busy, it will be whether anything about you actually grew, shifted, or deepened.

A couple of years ago, a moment like that quietly changed the way some in our group began to see people. Not all at once, but enough to leave a mark, and to realize how much those kinds of moments really matter.

What if God has something like that waiting for you this summer? If you are a youth please consider signing up for this Youth Urban Experience. You won’t be sorry you did!

Don’t waste your summer. Register today!