Acts Alive 2026: A New Benchmark for Jesus Youth Programs (BJMM063)

 Acts Alive 2026: A New Benchmark for Jesus Youth Programs

JY Saskatchewan Regional Conference

(Dr. Edward Edezhath, September 2026)

Hepburn, Saskatchewan, Canada · 29 August 2026 · 320 participants · 10.00 a.m. – 8.30 p.m.

Some gatherings you attend; others quietly rearrange your sense of what a gathering can be. The Jesus Youth Regional Conference at Hepburn belonged to the second kind. Nothing about it announced itself as an experiment. Yet by the time the last song faded at half past eight and three hundred and twenty people walked out into the long prairie evening, something had been demonstrated rather than argued: a single day, well-conceived, can carry the weight of a retreat, a festival and a family reunion at once.

A day shaped like an arc

The design was deceptively simple. Registration opened early and unhurriedly, with volunteers welcoming people by name and directing them toward a gratitude tree, where each participant wrote a note of thanksgiving and an intention for the land, for families, for the young. Before anyone spoke from the stage, everyone present had already done something. That small act set the grammar for the whole day.

The opening moved through a countdown, a warm land acknowledgment and conference prayer, and a procession carried by community representatives bearing the cross, the banner, candles, and flowers—symbols placed together to form one visible image of unity while the theme song, Alive, filled the hall. Two short videos located the day within something larger: one on Jesus Youth as an international movement, one on the movement’s own story in Saskatchewan. Fr. Michael's welcome and the Archbishop’s blessing anchored the morning, and the keynote named the three words the day would turn on: celebration, communion, mission.

What followed was not a lecture. A word-cloud gratitude activity put the room’s own vocabulary on the screen. Round-table sharing sent each table into three small groups, each with a sealed envelope holding a jumbled picture puzzle; the verse was revealed only when the puzzle was solved, and the sharing grew out of the solving. A time of vibrant praise carried the morning into lunch.

Lunch carried an agenda of its own. A dedicated time of fellowship brought senior leaders, Saskatchewan leaders and clergy to the same table — the Archbishop, eight priests, one deacon and three religious sisters. The leaders spoke about Jesus Youth, its mission and its presence in the province; the guests responded with warmth and appreciation. Beyond the formal exchange, the hour did what agendas rarely accomplish: it let people know one another, so understanding between the movement’s leaders and the region's clergy grew out of the meal rather than the program.

The afternoon divided the hall into streams — children, junior youth (9 – 12 yrs), youth, young adults and families — and gave each its own question. The young adults took up “Sifting Through the Noise”: technology, media and the distractions of a saturated world, and what it means to be human and fully alive in the age of AI. The youth stream explored ‘digital distraction’ and the ways technology and social media can shape our minds, choices, and attention. Through reflection on Scripture and the purpose for which we are created, the session encouraged youth to use technology wisely, remain grounded in God, and recognize their God-given potential. The children and junior youth worked on “Bold Decisions” — courageous choices rooted in Catholic values, recognizing truth and goodness, and choosing to draw closer to God under pressure or in difficulty. The family stream turned to God’s plan for marriage and family, the person, the family, and the community as three cornerstones, and the place of the elderly; this was followed by table discussion and a panel in which clergy, laity, and married couples answered the same questions from different vantage points. Each stream was creative and dynamic in its own register, and each left room to connect, learn about different vocations, and build community. The closing session opened with drama, moved through a global mission video and a keynote on mission, and gave a full hour to music. During that hour, participants prayed a brief sending-forth over one another in groups of three — perhaps the single most quietly effective moment of the day. The conference concluded on time with the announcement of ACTS Alive 2027, followed by a slide expressing gratitude to all the collaborators and volunteers.

Who was in the room

The most striking feature of Hepburn was not the program but the participation. Grandparents, families with small children, students, professionals, newcomers to Canada, and long-settled prairie families; first-time attendees and veterans of two decades in the movement—all in one hall, for the whole day. Priests, religious, and senior Jesus Youth were not brought in for a slot and driven away; they stayed, ate, listened, and were listened to.

Two design choices made this possible. The first was the decision to hold a one-day event. A weekend residential program silently excludes the young mother, the shift worker, the elderly couple, the family that cannot afford two nights away. A single Saturday, ten to eight-thirty, asks for a great deal of a day and nothing of a life. Attendance ceased to be a negotiation.

The second was multi-layered, community-based mobilization. Nobody was invited by a poster alone. People came because a zonal team called them, because a family brought a family, because a prayer group traveled together, because a parish network passed the word along. The room reflected the movement’s actual social structure rather than its mailing list.

There were no celebrity speakers. The voices came from within the Jesus Youth family — a pioneer of the movement, the Ecclesiastical Advisor of Jesus Youth Canada, an Animator of Jesus Youth Canada, the Chaplain of Jesus Youth Saskatchewan — a deliberate combination of lay and ecclesial experience. The choice kept the focus off any single personality and on the movement's relational, communal character. The conference read as a family sharing what it has received rather than an event built around a name.

From podium to participation

The organizers understood something that many well-intentioned programs miss: faith enrichment does not scale with stage time. Almost every input from the front was paired with something the participants themselves did — a puzzle, a word cloud, a table discussion, a prayer in threes, a procession. The podium set direction; the room did the work. This is harder to organize and far more fragile in execution, which is why it is worth naming as a benchmark.

Art carried much of the theology. Drama, music, video, and visual symbols were not decoration between sessions; they were the sessions. Joy, play and celebration were treated as a legitimate mode of formation rather than a reward for having endured formation.

The invisible architecture

Three things held it together and deserve their own mention.

The program team’s vigilance. A day this dense survives only if someone is watching the clock without worshipping it. Sessions were trimmed and stretched in real time; the day ended at the announced hour, with no segment feeling amputated.

The visible teamwork. Volunteers, families and teams worked in plain sight — registration, AV, music, hospitality, children’s care — and children and young people were given real service roles rather than symbolic ones. Serving became a form of participation.

The food. It sounds like a footnote. It is not. A culturally sensitive menu, planned for the actual communities in the room, told people they had been thought about before they arrived.

What made it work — and what travels

For teams planning their own regional programs, these are the transferable elements:

1. Prefer one full day to a partial weekend. Ease of attendance is an inclusion strategy, not a compromise.

2. Mobilize through existing community layers — families, zonal teams, prayer groups, parishes — rather than through publicity alone.

3. Pair every input with a participant action. Budget as much design effort for the table as for the stage.

4. Build the day for four generations at once — streams that separate for depth and converge for celebration — and let seniors, clergy and religious stay for all of it.

5. Draw the speakers from within the family. Voices the room already trusts keep the focus on the movement rather than on a name.

6. Treat art, drama and music as content, not as filler.

7. Give people something small and personal to do for one another — the sending-forth in threes cost three minutes and carried the day home.

8. Let the practical details preach: the menu, the name tags, the staggered lunch, the volunteers who knew where the washrooms were.

9. Keep a flexible, time-sensitive team on the clock so that flexibility never becomes drift.

Hepburn did not attempt anything unprecedented. It did the ordinary things of a Jesus Youth program with unusual attention to who was in the room and what they were asked to do while there. That is what makes it a benchmark — and, happily, what makes it repeatable.