God Answered our Youth Ministry Prayer in 2025!

Wednesday, December 17, was the final night for Solid Rock Youth for 2025. That night finished a season of youth ministry like we’ve never seen or experienced. We began the year in January, and again in September, praying a simple prayer, “Holy Spirit, come. Write a story we could not write on our own.”

We began 2025, with a leaders prayer meeting where we believe God called us, through prayer and discussion, to launch the new Alpha Youth Series in our youth ministry first, and in our schools afterwards. Through January, we prepared for Alpha with a series called Story. We preached about knowing God’s Story (meaning: knowing the story of redemption in the Bible), knowing Their Story (meaning: knowing the stories of the people we want to share the gospel with), and knowing Our Story (meaning: understanding our own salvation by Jesus). On the fourth week, just before starting Alpha, we had a concert of prayer and pinned the names of dozens of youth who did not yet come to Solid Rock Youth to a wooden cross, asking God to help us share the gospel with our friends and community.

We will never forget the next Wednesday night. It was February 19, 2025. We had been praying for nearly three years that one time God would allow us to have 100 youth on a Wednesday night. It seemed like such a large goal and we needed Him to move. For many years we had hovered at lower numbers of youth regularly attending. At our prayer meeting before Solid Rock Youth that night, we sat with anticipation and expectation. God was about to move in this generation of youth, and we could almost physically feel it. That first night was our largest night of Solid Rock Youth in our history. There were 103 youth who came!

Seeing the joy on the faces of those who invited their friends as they introduced them and showed them around was beautiful. Seeing awe during worship on the faces of those who were new was amazing. It was obvious to everyone that God was doing something new.

Over the course of the eight weeks of Alpha, we grew every week. Our attendance records were broken week after week. By the end of Alpha we had welcomed 48 youth as guests - 25 who had never been at our church (most had never been to any church before), and 23 who had only come once or twice but not in years. Our largest night of Alpha was our final night.

After Alpha we continued to see growth. We launched Circles, a discipleship strategy. Week after week, we saw new youth come visit on Wednesdays. Some came once or twice, others came and stayed. In the late spring, we took 100 youth and leaders to One Conference, several chose to begin a relationship with Jesus that weekend. From the end of Alpha to the end of the spring, we had welcomed 50 more youth, having grown since January 1 by almost 100 first time guests, and now with an average attendance of 125 weekly.

The numbers matter because they represent people. Each week of Alpha, we finished our video by inviting a high school youth or two on stage to share their faith story. Three minutes of watching a teenager explain how Jesus has changed their lives was incredible. Week after week, these were the most powerful moments on Wednesday nights.

Through the spring, summer, and fall, fourteen youth and leaders were baptized. Some had been church attendees and Christians for a while, but most had become followers of Jesus recently. Each story was beautiful and inspiring.

During the 2024-25 school year, we celebrated as youth in two more high schools launched Christian communities in their schools. We now had youth from Solid Rock Youth leading Christian clubs in three high schools.

Alongside the new Alpha Youth Series, Alpha also launched the Youth Leadership Collective - a new nation-wide mentoring program for grade 10s from January to June. Youth registered in trios of 2 youth and 1 leader - we had two trios in 2025, the first year. This was an incredible experience and propelled one of the youth to courageously be part of launching Alpha in her school this fall. When registration opened for 2026, we registered 5 trios, including 10 youth from three different high schools.

In June, after end of year and graduation parties, when summer came and things slowed down we all needed a break. Keeping up with a move of the Holy Spirit had taken all the energy we had. Through the summer, God provided rest.

As fall approached, we didn’t know what to expect. Would the youth who came in our Alpha and post-Alpha seasons in January through June return in the fall? Would the blessing of God continue? As we prepared for the fall we prepared with prayer. We began the fall in a way we had never done before. Our first night in September was a concert of prayer. When we gathered for prayer, 102 youth came. When we held our welcome back party the next week, 144 youth joined us, our largest night in Solid Rock Youth history.

Through the fall, we preached through two series. The first series, called Exit, and was rooted in Exodus and covered the call of God to Moses, the plagues in Egypt as God revealed his power, and the Red Sea crossing. This series showed the power of God as Rescuer for his people. All fall, we declared the words of God to Moses in Exodus 3 - “I see you, I hear you, I know you, and I’m coming to rescue you.” We pointed to the power of God to rescue. Our second series, called The Ten, took us through the ways God showed his people in the Ten Commandments that our relationship with Him is broken. In order to understand the desire to God to rescue, we needed to preach through the ways that our relationship is damaged. Through this season, week after week, we watched as our youth ministry community welcomed new youth as guests.

Every year, in October, is our annual youth ministry conference called Challenge. This year, 2025, was the 35th year our church held this event, which began as a dream of a young adult from our church in 1989. This year was one of our largest attendances for Challenge ever. With nearly 500 youth and leaders from almost 20 churches, we could see that God is moving in this generation elsewhere as well! We had to turn away roughly 75 more youth from several churches. It was an incredible weekend.

Through the fall, new opportunities and ministries were launched. Each week, as part of Alpha’s Made For This, a campaign to pray for all the high schools in Canada, we have had youth on stage on Wednesdays to pray for our schools. The youth-led Christian clubs at all three of our main high schools are growing. Youth from Solid Rock Youth have launched a weekly prayer room at one school. Youth are leading Alpha in a high school, and we have launched an after-school Alpha club for middle school youth. We held a training day, in partnership with Alpha, for youth who are leaders in their schools, and nearly 20 youth came from 7 high schools and 1 middle school. Youth in one of our schools held a Christmas worship service in their school recently at lunch. We preached on the damaging power of pornography during our series called The Ten, and announced new guys and girls Freedom Groups for high school youth that we are launching in January. There is so much to celebrate!

The growth during our Alpha and post-Alpha seasons was surprising. As people often are, we were surprised when God answered our prayers for more youth to experience the gospel. We were surprised again as God continued to bring growth through the fall. In fact, we saw even more new youth come during the fall than during our Alpha season in the spring. During the fall, we welcomed 53 more youth as first time guests who we had never met before. In the month of December, 167 different youth came to Solid Rock Youth at least once.

In the end, during all of 2025, there were 321 different youth who came at least once, 118 of whom had never been at New Minas Baptist or Solid Rock Youth before. Our average attendance for December 2025 is 52 youth higher than just once year ago in December 2024.

In addition, our Wednesday night children’s ministry has grown significantly over 2025 and our young adult ministry has nearly doubled this year. This fall we have partnered with Acadia Christian Fellowship to launch a weekly prayer room in preparation for launching Alpha on Acadia campus. We held a powerful worship night in November on campus to announce the coming of Alpha in 2026.

And so, Wednesday December 17 finished the most incredible season of youth ministry we have ever seen. God answered our prayers for 100 youth on a night, for the opportunity through the Alpha series to share the gospel with our friends and community, for continued growth this fall, for a growing team of leaders investing in youth (we have nearly double the number of youth leaders we had a year ago), for new Christian clubs in schools, and so much more. So many lives have been changed, and we are so thankful for all that God has done.

Telling the story of this incredible year from a ten thousand foot view shows the amazing stories of how God has been moving in our midst. What's missing in this version are the individual stories of how the Holy Spirit has been changing lives. We've seen many youth far from God begin relationships with him. We've watched youth who had never been to a church before become regular attenders on Wednesdays and Sundays. We’ve seen youth inviting their families to join them at church on Sundays. We've witnessed youth boldly sharing their faith and inviting their friends to come with them to Christian community at our church, youth ministry, and in their schools. We’ve seen youth who are school athletes start praying together with their sports teams in several local schools. We've seen many youth develop a greater passion for knowing God, for worshipping him, for reading the Bible, and for prayer. The stories of God's work in the lives of individual youth have been inspiring and moving!

As we finish 2025, and look ahead to 2026, we continue in prayer, but this time having had a taste already of the incredible goodness of God. Our prayer is the same, “Holy Spirit, please come. Write a story we could not write alone. Bring glory to God and make Jesus known, here in the valley and beyond in the lives of this generation.”