Lilly Winiarski first got involved in YoungLife when she was in high school. Winiarski, now a senior at Calvin and a YoungLife volunteer leader, remembers the feeling of “just being dumbfounded that this person who’s in college — who I find so cool — wants to hang out with me.”
YoungLife is a national ministry organization with branches across the country, including three in Grand Rapids. According to student staff leader and Calvin senior Lily Vander Ark, the biggest piece of YoungLife’s ministry is “contact work:” sending college leaders into local middle and high schools.
The end goal of this contact work, according to Vander Ark, is to get the students situated in a church, while the short-term goal is to create community and familiarize students with Christ. Associate regional director Matt DeHoog echoed this sentiment, saying that “we try to go where the kids are, and get to know them, before we even talk about faith.”
Vander Ark described the goal of YoungLife as being “[to] meet students where they are most comfortable, rather than making them come to us.” According to Vander Ark, YoungLife fills a gap for some students who don’t feel comfortable in a traditional youth group. DeHoog agreed, saying that the ministry “prioritizes relationships over programs.”
YoungLife at Calvin is now in its 13th year, and the future looks positive, according to DeHoog. On September 25, YoungLife staff welcomed over 20 Calvin students to a new leader training session. The goal of these training sessions, according to DeHoog, is to equip students with the ability to serve and minister to high school students across the region, and to enable them to share about Christ after graduation.
DeHoog attributes the organization’s success to its culture of inclusion and welcoming: “College students want community and belonging…and we want to keep providing that. We’ve been seeing an increase in kids who want to be involved because we keep providing for them.”
Student leaders also emphasized that YoungLife is a space for community among college students. “I think it’s very accessible if you want to be involved,” said Winiarski. Vander Ark said the same, adding that “it doesn’t matter what your personality is or who you know — it’s a space just for anyone to be welcomed into… whether you want to lead or you don’t.”
The program also provides an opportunity for students to develop as leaders in the church, according to Winiarski and DeHoog. Winiarski said that “when you are discipling students younger than you, you receive a lot of blessing from that.” DeHoog added that the YoungLife ministry model “helps develop spiritual leaders,” and allows student leaders to live more deeply into their own faith.
