Here & Home
This article comes on the heels of the safe return of our team of 40 students and leaders from SRBC who recently attended the 2025 Youth Gathering. Without sounding too cliché, what an amazing week it was! Here & Home was the theme of this Youth Gathering, which was a great challenge to take everything we accomplished and learned throughout the week back home to apply in our local situations. In essence, we left California as missionaries!
The “Here” part pertained to us sinking our feet firmly into serving where we were needed throughout the week. We gathered with around 250 other students and leaders from NAB churches in the U.S. & Canada to serve Southern California in the name of Jesus. Our SRBC group split into 5 different projects, each with their own uniqueness and focus. We served at the Ronald McDonald House, Orange Park Acres, Miss Gail’s house, Cherokee Mobile Home Park, and at Magnolia Baptist Church. Three of these projects focused in the areas of Orange, and two in Anaheim. Both Love Orange & Love Anaheim are run by pastors in the local NAB churches there, which operate there all year long with their own volunteers.
A big take away from me was to hear so many of our service project organizers and those our teams directly served mention how hard the kids worked. This changed many minds about our current generation of teens and their willingness to work and serve wholeheartedly. What a cool testimony, which highlights the work that I saw our team do all week as well! Be sure to ask any of our team members where they served and what their most memorable part of serving was.
The “Home” part is still to come. We made it home physically, but the work of the Youth Gathering continues. I know our team comes home with a renewed and passionate faith and a heart to serve others. In addition to our service projects, this was spurred on by our nightly worship and teaching sessions. What a powerful sight to see over 200 teens in a chapel engaging in worship. This setting gave many of our students the openness to worship freely, without criticism or “looks” from others. As one student told me after a chapel session, “I felt like I could worship freely in that room. I felt like a big weight was lifted off me as I sang those worship songs to Jesus.” As you read this, you might agree. But this deserves more than just agreement, that is a big deal for a teen to be honest about and transformational as well! Our closing teaching of the week by Eric Samuel Timm challenged each student to use a “kingdom imagination.” They are wired to not keep this week to themselves. They are called to pray and act on the gift(s) God has given them to impact those in their homes, schools, and friendships. This was an amazing team, and I look forward to seeing what “Here and Home” looks like for each of them.
We look forward to sharing more ways that we saw God work on Sunday, August 17th at both our traditional and contemporary worship services. We’ll have a slideshow highlighting the work and the fun throughout the week, along with a few testimonies from our students and leaders. I hope we’ve said it enough, but thank you, thank you, thank you for investing in our teens prayerfully and financially over the past 6 months! We look forward to celebrating all that God did throughout the week and sharing more with you on August 17th.
Blessings,
Pastor Bryce
