Equipping the Church to Reach 'Each' Next Generation.

What an audacious statement: “Equipping the church to reach each next generation.” It reminds us that our mandate is not simply to look back at past successes and try to replicate them today.

While Pulse does help churches reflect and learn from history, our work is not just about running events for young people. 

Camps and mountaintop experiences are valuable, and we do offer those, but our role goes beyond that. It is not even limited to understanding today’s young people and helping congregations think about how to reach them—though that is certainly a key part of what we do.

The mandate implied here, and one that is vital to being a community that cares deeply about sharing the Gospel with our world, is to help shift the narrative of denominational identity. To see and understand ourselves as a people with something significant to say about who Jesus is. We’re not finding young people to fill fading congregations. We believe that the gospel of Christ still matters in 2025 and the UCA still has something important to say about it! This requires us to foster a culture of ‘next.’ To build momentum towards the future. To see ourselves again as pilgrim people, on the move across the diversity of age and culture our nation represents. To have a momentum that calls each next generation into a loving relationship with the Christ we know. 

So, we start by looking for the stories of hope, the experiences that can shift paradigms, and the resources to curate that will help us keep building the church of today and setting the culture of tomorrow. Many such stories are emerging from our Growing Young Consultations. From Bondi to Dubbo and Canberra to Alstonville, congregations around our Synod are taking time deeply discern how the Spirit is calling them to engage with young people in their communities.  

Another such story was Jindabyne Uniting Church, where 250 young adults gathered every Monday night of the snow season. There, they experienced both the practical gospel over dinner and the spoken gospel as they shared time with one another and had opportunities for pastoral conversation and prayer. Pulse ran an annual trip, taking young leaders from other parts of the Synod as a mission immersion experience to Jindabyne, where they participated and found inspiration.

The group that went in 2024 were excited to “see what was possible, even in small communities that didn’t have a minister in placement,” and by the fact that young people found “so much value in that church and its service… they were there to get the most out of the experience… the openness to spirituality – regardless of faith background – within the vast group that were there, was a big surprise.” In 2025, another group of young leaders were taken to the Snowy the week after the Synod gathering. 

As we have travelled and visited the various corners of our state meeting with congregations and leaders of ministry with young people, one thing keeps coming up that you would like to see more of - discipleship materials and curriculums for your Kids and Youth ministry spaces.

Two of our emerging gen workers, Paige Owen and Ella Evans, stepped up to the plate and created some incredible curriculums for kids’ ministry at the start of this year. The resources are Big Lessons and Bigger Questions and Who Do You Say That I Am.

Beyond that, we are working towards a release of a major curriculum project in 2026 that we believe will both be a blessing and add a Uniting Church voice to this space. 

In addition to this, some things to look out for are a year of leadership and discipleship for young adults called ‘Renew’ launching in 2026, and regional ministry cohorts you can join to learn from others who are leading in their local churches.  

Finally, my ask of you today - pray, pray, pray! While a lot of this sounds programmatic, and it needs to be to build structure and momentum, none of it happens without a significant and continuing move of God’s Spirit in God’s church.

No matter how young or old you are, we can all commit to praying for God to do something new and amazing in our midst as we seek to reach the generations of our neighbourhoods with the Gospel of Christ.