It began with a monthly soccer night. For the past few years, youth from several churches in the Hispanic Region have gotten together once a month on Saturday nights to play soccer. These sports nights easily drew upwards of 70 people every month. Last year, a shared thought stirred among youth leaders from Spanish-American, Huntington Park Spanish, El Camino A Cristo Spanish, and Eastmont Spanish churches: What if they brought youth together in this collaborative way, but for vespers?
Last October, a few months after those initial conversations, Spanish-American church was preparing for their weekly vespers. That same group of youth leaders decided to use that gathering as a trial run for a joint vespers with multiple churches, and they invited people to come. By the end of the night, about 40 people attended—four times the usual Around 30 Churches Collaborate for Monthly Youth Vespers in Hispanic Region amount of attendees at the weekly vespers.
The next joint vespers, hosted at Huntington Park Spanish church, saw about 60 people, with additional churches participating. After this, a call was made to youth leaders at these churches to see if they’d be interested in doing this regularly.
Jonathan Ortiz, a youth leader from Eastmont Spanish who was a part of the initial planning, recalled how they came up with three core tenets for this United Vespers: The group is Christ centered, a social network of youth leaders, and a support for churches.
Attendees circle around the sanctuary for prayer.
“We wanted to introduce youth leaders to other youth leaders to show them that, ‘Hey, you’re not alone in all this,’” Ortiz said. “Some churches are struggling with bringing and retaining youth, and some churches have a lot of resources and potentially can help out other youth groups. We wanted to make United Vespers the doorway where a youth leader can come in, sit down, meet everybody else, and come out of there supported. If they need to rebuild their youth group or create programs, they can find the people to help them within that group.”
United Vespers is a collaboration at every turn. There isn’t one designated leader; leadership rotates as each church hosts the vespers. Host churches aren’t expected to handle every aspect of the program themselves. Multiple churches will work together by handling one of the areas—such as music, the speaker, food prep, or an icebreaker activity—to put on the vespers each month.
United Vespers officially launched this January. Right now, around 30 churches are actively involved, and the number of attendees has rapidly grown, averaging 150-200 people every first Friday of the month. The vespers are comprised of primarily Hispanic Region churches, but the program is expanding.
“It’s nice to spend time with youth from other churches,” Jocelyne Rojas, co-youth leader at Spanish-American, said. “That’s what happens once a month. You see everybody come together, and it brings just a level of joy of fellowship. My hope is that it continues to grow, not just in numbers but in unity and in spirit.”