New Christian Leaders Are Rising Up

Reaching the youth of the Holy Land is one of the most important parts of our mission. They are the generation that will carry the witness of the local church forward, and they are growing up in circumstances that make that calling extremely challenging. They need a strong, Christ-centered foundation and the support to follow Jesus faithfully in a deeply complex place.

In early August, the church in Cana held its summer youth conference in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem. The conference fills an important gap between VBS and young adult ministry, bringing together teenagers ages 13 to 18 for several days of worship, biblical teaching, and fellowship.

One of our favorite things about this conference is that it is designed and led by young adults who once attended it themselves as teenagers. They remember the impact those years had on their own faith, and now they are taking responsibility for passing that blessing on to the next generation.

There are moments in ministry when fatigue and discouragement can creep in. These young people give us hope. We see young adults stepping into leadership, taking ownership of their faith, and using their gifts to serve the church. We see teenagers growing in spiritual maturity and imagining how God might use their own lives.

This is what CHLF is all about: investing in local churches so that faith, leadership, and service continue to take root and flourish in the next generation.

We ask you to pray with us for the young people who attended this conference as they return to daily lives that remain complicated by conflict and uncertainty. Those few days together may have offered a welcome respite from the war and violence surrounding them, but those realities did not disappear when the conference ended.

Pray that they will know the nearness, love, and comfort of God. And pray that the theme verse from this year’s conference will become something they carry with them for the rest of their lives:

 “Surely God is my salvation;

I will trust and not be afraid.

The LORD, the LORD himself, is my strength and my defense;

he has become my salvation.”

Isaiah 12:2