
2025 YFM Conference
May 5 @ 2:00 pm - May 8 @ 12:00 pm
$350
Registration is now open for the 2025 Youth and Family Ministry Conference, sponsored by the NOW District!
Each year our district hosts a conference for Youth & Family Ministers to offer encouragement and connection and to equip leaders to do our best work together. If you are the person on point for youth and family ministry in your congregation – whether commissioned, full or part time staff, or volunteer – we encourage you to attend!
There are several new and different things about this year’s conference (though it will still be the same event we’ve come to know and love) – please review the following information before clicking to the online registration portal at the bottom of this page.
Registration Notes:
EVERYONE should register as a guest, even if prompted that “they’re recognized” and given the option to “log-in”.
We are not able to accept in-person payments at the conference. If you prefer to pay by check rather than online, please select “Pay In-Person” on the final page of the registration portal and mail your payment, with “2025 YFM Conference” in the memo, to:
NOW District
1700 NE Knott Street
Portland, OR 97212
Click Here to Register for the 2025 YFM Conference
New this year – 4 Day/3 Night event in Leavenworth, WA!
We have expanded our conference schedule this year so that participants will travel to the event on Monday, May 5, with programming beginning that evening. This will allow for full days of conference activities on Tuesday and Wednesday (as well as a half day of programming on Thursday). The Youth & Family Ministry Conference seeks to provide relevant leadership training, renewal in a retreat environment, and opportunities to strengthen old and create new friendships, and we hope this extra day will allow us to better balance those opportunities.
Click here to download a sample event schedule
We are also excited to be returning to Leavenworth, this time to the Tierra Retreat Center. Located five miles outside the city of Leavenworth, the TRC is approximately 2.5 hours from the SeaTac International Airport.
Tierra Retreat Center
2000 Sunitsch Canyon Rd
Leavenworth, WA 98826
Pricing:
The regular registration rate for our 4 day/3 night event is $350. A $25 Early Bird discount will be applied to registrations completed before February 28, 2025. There is also a $25 discount available for additional workers from the same congregation/ministry and spouses. If your ministry is able to pay the full registration price for each of your attendees, though, we invite you to consider foregoing this discount by selecting the regular registration option for each attendee to help us make this event affordable for everyone. (We currently don’t have a way to opt out of the early bird discount as well, but if your ministry so desires, those could be donated back via the donation portal on the NOW District website, indicating “2025 YFM conference” in the memo field). Thank you for considering this way to support our brothers and sisters in ministry, but please complete your registration at whichever available rate is best for your ministry!
Housing:
Housing includes a room in one of the shared Tierra Retreat Center suites. These suites are set up like a hotel with soap, shampoo and linens provided. They all have a private bedroom with queen-sized bed, a sitting room with a queen-sized hide-a-bed, private bathrooms, and a small kitchenette (French press included).
We will do our best to provide each attendee with a private sleeping space in a shared suite, but final housing arrangements will depend on our overall attendance numbers. In addition to the suites, tent camping and bunkhouse beds (one for men and one for women) are also available. These are offered with a $25.00 savings on your registration fee. To help with our arrangements, if you would prefer to bring your own tent or sleep in a shared bunkhouse (bring your own bedding, with access to main lodge bathrooms/showers) please use the code TENT25 or BUNK25 to indicate your housing preference and receive your discount during registration.
Transportation:
The Tierra Retreat Center is located five miles outside the city of Leavenworth, approximately a 2.5 hour drive from SeaTac International Airport. We cannot guarantee district-coordinated shuttle service to/from the airport, but will do our best to put attendees who plan to fly, in touch with one another and coordinate one shuttle option to/from the Tierra Retreat Center. If you would like to participate in this group transportation option, please coordinate your flights to arrive at SeaTac BEFORE 1:00 p.m. on Monday, May 5, and to depart AFTER 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 8.
Theme & Keynote Speaker:
Engage, Ephesians 4:1-6
Keynote Speaker: Rev. Dr. Chad Lakies
Rev. Dr. Chad Lakies is the regional director for North America at Lutheran Hour Ministries and provides leadership and operational management for the North America region. His primary area of scholarship is the intersection of church and culture in the North Atlantic world. He regularly speaks at national and international conferences for pastors, church professionals, and scholars and has published in several journals on the topic of faith and culture. Lakies most recently served as Department Chair and Associate Professor of Religion at Concordia University, Portland. He and his wife Bethany live with their two daughters in St. Peters, MO.
This year’s sessions with Dr. Lakies:
Engage Culture
How to reach out in a Secular Age
We live in a secular age. The culture is hostile. We weren’t trained for this and we feel unprepared. We’re frustrated and exhausted in trying to figure out how to offer a winsome and effective witness. What if there’s a better way? What if we can understand the culture better? What if there are helpful strategies for better sharing our faith? This presentation will help you better tap into the openness to the Gospel that’s all around us and teach you an effective strategy for outreach.
Engage Differences
How NOT to Let Issues Prevent Relationships
Race, Sex, Guns, Climate, Politics, Gender, Religion, Ethnicity, Vaccines, Poverty, and more. Are we letting issues prevent relationships? Data shows marriages are breaking because of disagreements. Family members are disowning their own kin for similar reasons. Why do we feel as if we MUST disassociate from people with whom we disagree? How can we model and foster relating to others in our fractured, pluralistic culture that bridges relationships, even if we can’t bridge ideologies?
Engage Identity
How to “Find Yourself” in a Secular Age
Every person tells a story to themselves about themselves—THIS is who I am. We’re encouraged to live authentically, to find ourselves, to become who we are, and to stand out. We’ve been told (and often tell others) that you can be whatever you want to be if you desire it strongly enough.
What if this path is a false form of freedom? What if becoming who we are is rooted in the gifts given by our creator? What if seeking to distinguish ourselves from others in our own authentic uniqueness actually means relying on others, recognizing our inter-dependence? What if identity is not a journey of becoming who we are but a movement of recognition and realization that our callings and relationships always already establish who we are? This presentation will offer an alternative vision for understanding authenticity and identity in our secular age.
Engage the Uncomfortable
Hospitality Beyond Boundaries
Outsiders are often perceived as a threat because of their differences. Sometimes we even think avoiding them altogether is best, because we’re fear they might “infect” us or lead us away from Christian faithfulness. Related to this, our churches often fear welcoming new families or members who might not be like us (immigrants, speakers of other languages, different color skin, politics, sexual orientation, etc. – all people for whom Christ died). Our reactions to this perceived threat damage our witness and generate distrust in outsiders.
In this talk I’ll press into the challenge of engagement with anyone we might consider an “other” in the sense that they’re not “like us” in ways we often expect. We’ll seek to see our current context as one full of opportunities to give witness to the hope that we have. We’ll reflect on the formative experience of worship as God’s chosen place for us to experience divine hospitality and simultaneously be shaped to give hospitality as a gift to others, especially those outside the kingdom.
Click Here to Register for the 2025 YFM Conference