Want to start a youth group in 2026?

Emma Gaze

From zero to thriving: Limitless youth groups are breathing new life into churches, reaching unchurched teens and proving that with the right support, any Elim church can start from scratch. Limitless Pioneers’ Emma Gaze and her team share their stories.

Churches that invest in kids and youthwork will grow – even if they currently have no kids. That is Limitless Pioneers’ experience and it’s why they refocused recently in order to pour their efforts into helping Elim churches launch thriving youth ministries.

Starting from scratch is a scary prospect – seemingly impossible for many churches, admits team lead Emma Gaze.

“A lot of churches are reticent because they don’t have the confidence or they automatically count themselves out because they’re an older congregation or haven’t got any children,” she says.

“But we always say don’t do that – we’re here to help!”

Starting from scratch

How do you get started from absolute scratch? With existing links and by building relationships, Emma says.

“Cold starts are tough – young people will be thinking ‘who are you, why should I trust you, why should I come into your building?’ So we begin by tapping into churches’ existing networks, community links, relationships with schools and with people who use their buildings.”

Success stories

Working this way is what helped Emma launch a group in Blackpool a couple of years ago.

“They had a high school nearby so, with the school’s permission, we put tables out in the church grounds by the street and gave out free hot chocolate drinks as the kids walked past.

“From this we built trust and relationships, invited kids to our new group and got at least 20 on the first night. It’s grown and grown since, and they’re still running.”

Then at Kingdom Living Church in to work with any church interested in starting a group. “The idea is that youth leaders with a few years’ experience can be parachuted in to assist churches who ask for help, or support existing groups if they are encountering problems or need a bit more training.”

For Emma, this year will be about signing more leaders up to this bank and asking churches: do you want to start a youth work in 2026?

“I really believe the best way to grow your church is to invest in kids and youth work. If you’d like to do that, we can help – give us a shout!”

CASE STUDY 1

Father’s House Church, Lancaster

Limitless Pioneers worker Ben Ryan explains how he helped Father’s House Church in Lancaster launch a youth group in October

❝ Father’s House hadn’t had a youth ministry for a long time but last year decided they wanted to look at the next generation. They were perfectly set up to get started so they gathered a team of volunteers and in June I began training them.

Lancaster is an interesting city. Considering it’s so student-focused there’s very little for young people there. We’d normally try connecting with other youth things happening locally, asking what we can do to support them, but there wasn’t much going on.

We had an advantage, however. The church is very well known because it does a lot with the community. When they were broken into a couple of years ago there was uproar locally because the church does such good work, so the young people all tend to know where it is.

That makes it easy to tell them there’s a new youth group at the church which is warm, safe and a place to explore faith.

We launched at the beginning of October, inviting people via social media, flyers and conversations.

So far we’ve not had the biggest numbers – between two and six – but it’s been a real mix of unchurched kids, and four have come simply from those conversations on the street.

The church team have been absolutely fantastic. Often when you only have two or three kids it can be very discouraging but every week they’ve said, “Let’s keep going, we really believe God has called us to do this!” There’s never less than eight volunteers.

We’ve been like a drop-in youth group with free food and a warm space. We’ve done get-to-know-you games, Mario Karts, pool, board games and crafting. Youth culture is really changing. We’ve had lads who’ve come in off the street painting encouragement rocks and making origami birds!

We’d like to see around ten coming regularly so we can put a solid structure in place. The aim is to introduce some spiritual input from a video series and questions-based activities. It’ll be like a pre-Alpha since lots of them have absolutely no church background.

Everyone we’ve spoken to has been interested in the faith element. We hear about a quiet revival, and where once mentioning faith might have put young people off that’s not the case anymore.

CASE STUDY 2

Acorn Community Church, Whitley Bay

When Acorn Community Church in Whitley Bay got a new pastor with a passion for youthwork, Leanne Robson helped them launch a youth group

❝ Acorn Community Church is an older congregation and they wanted to change that, so they invited me in to share a vision for youthwork and help them recruit a team. I’m the youth leader at Newcastle Elim and Whitley Bay is only to support them as part of Emma’s youth worker bank.

We started with six weeks of training and sorted the practical side out too: what resources do we need? Let’s get table tennis equipment and a pool table.

We then worked on social media, posters, banners and leaflets and organised an outreach event – a light party – on Halloween night. We’d leafletted the area, then I took some of my youth from Newcastle out to meet young people in Whitley Bay to get the word out.

We had 13 people through the door that night who’d probably never been to the church before. It happened because a group of 12 to 13-year-old boys were trick or treating, saw the lights on in church before we opened and wanted to get some sweets. We said, “If you come back in an hour there will be free hotdogs, pizza, pool, games consoles, table tennis, a light party and music.”

We really prayed that God would bring them back. Half an hour after opening they reappeared and brought a few friends too. We’re excited to say we’ve had the same six young people attending every week since we started! Now we’re focusing on getting others into the building too. I love that in this group there are hardly any kids who are Christians. It’s fully from scratch and we can introduce them to Jesus.

Our plan is to bring in ‘God slots’, so we’ve been training the team to answer questions simply, honestly and openly, because a lot of young people are asking questions about faith.

Longer term, I’ve been talking to the church about moving from seeing these kids just attending on Friday nights to coming on Sunday mornings too. If a lot of younger teens came the church would have to look at putting on a Sunday morning session for them. If it was older teens they might have to look at how to make church more accessible for them. My heart is that young people would love coming to church and be attracted to Jesus.

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.