Edgebrook Youth Together 2025 Annual Report
Submitted by: Hailey Bianco
The ministry of Edgebrook Youth Together was very lively in 2025! Our year together was filled with plenty of fellowship and fun during our weekly middle school and high school youth group meetings, plus many other activities such as: Enchanted Castle Lock-in, slip & slide kickball, high rope climbing and ziplining at Go Ape adventure park, a trip to Six Flags, competing in The Great Pumpkin Hunt, and a Christmas party with white elephant and holiday sing-a-long. Nearly all our events this year saw consistent positive engagement, which alludes to a strong foundation that has led to a culture of active participation and involvement. While event participation has grown across the board, our middle school program has seen the most encouraging growth. Especially seen when a group of 11 middle schoolers traveled to Covenant Point Bible Camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for the Junior High Fall Retreat. This was a huge testament to the growth of the middle school program, as our group size for this retreat nearly tripled from the previous year!
This past year, one of my primary focuses was to strengthen congregational partnerships and connect with the wider Edgebrook neighborhood. This is an important element for achieving our strategic goals of making EYT a ministry for the entire community. This year we kept the tradition alive in hosting our annual spaghetti dinner and silent auction, as well as our Candy Cane Lane Children’s Christmas Market. Both helped us invite the community in while raising money to support our ministry. In addition to our fundraisers, EYT also joined as a nonprofit partner at the North Branch Farmers Market this summer in order to connect with the Edgebrook community.
Another aspect of strengthening congregation partnership has been having all three congregations worshipping together. New this year, in February we hosted our first Youth Sunday ecumenical worship service, where all three of our congregations worshipped together, fully led by our youth – from the music, to the prayers, and even the sermon! Then in June, we hosted our fourth annual community Pride Sunday worship service, also fully led by our youth. This year’s theme was “queer joy as resistance.” This is always an incredible day for us to be able to publicly live out our mission of being a radically welcoming and inclusive ministry while sharing glitter blessings with one another.
My other focus this past year has been building service learning opportunities for the youth, continuing to emphasize our value of accompaniment. I also chose to begin hosting a few of these service projects as intergeneration, as another way to strengthen congregational partnership by creating opportunities for non-youth households to see the positive impact of EYT first-hand. This year, we partnered with The Night Ministry to pack 100 meals for our neighbors throughout the city of Chicago who are houseless. We also packed and shipped 31 care packages for the college students across all three of our partner congregations in time for their finals week. Lastly, over the summer, our high school youth spent a week in St Louis serving alongside several organizations and learning about the systemic injustices that have turned the area into a “food desert,” where fresh and nutritious food is inaccessible to many residents.
These youth have revealed God to me in new and exciting ways throughout all we have done together in the past year! For that, I continue to give God thanks for the ministry of Edgebrook Youth Together and all of the people who make it so truly special. I am incredibly grateful to get to have a hand in what God is doing through EYT and these youth! Thanks be to God!
