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Residential
You take youth ministry seriously. You shouldn’t have to do it alone.
Once a year, youth ministry leaders from every state and a dozen denominations leave the Friday-night grind behind and gather for four days of deep thinking, real friendship, and the kind of challenge that only comes from a room full of people who take this work as seriously as you do.
The Residential is YMF’s flagship formation intensive. It’s a live-in retreat built to go further than a weekend ever could. Choose a track that fits where you actually are, sharpen your theology and your craft, and walk out with peers you’ll still be talking to next year.
Four days · live-in · two tracks · optional accredited study through Ridley College
The problem
Youth ministry is lonely work, and most of it happens to people who feel like they’re the only one finding it hard.
You can be surrounded by your church all week and still feel unseen in the one thing you’re called to. The leaders who last aren’t the ones who try harder on their own. They’re the ones who stop being alone.
You’re isolated
Few people in your church understand what your week actually involves. The colleagues who do, are spread thin across other churches.
You’re running on empty
You carry the doubt, the tiredness, the quiet sense of floundering rather than leading, and the suspicion that it’s just you.
The system says it’s temporary
Youth ministry gets treated as a stepping stone to “real” ministry: under-valued, under-funded, and too easily abandoned.
Youth ministry can feel very isolated from both inside my own church and inside the broader Christian ecosystem. I’m coming to learn, be refreshed and be encouraged in a community who understands me.
Youth Minister, 1–3 years in
I want to be good at youth ministry, not just floundering around hoping for the best.
Youth Minister Volunteer, 1–3 years in
Why the Residential exists
None of us were meant to do this work alone.
That conviction is the reason the Residential exists, and it’s why it isn’t run from a stage. The people who lead it have felt the same isolation, sat through the same conferences that left them inspired on the drive home and flat by Friday, and never stopped doing the work themselves. Most weeks they’re still in a youth group, as a pair of hands, not the person in charge.
Dave Chiswell
YMF Trainer · leads the Youth in the Churches track
Dave leads the practitioner’s track with a working leader’s eye. He’ll take you through strategic models, leading a team, working with parents and pastors, and building a youth ministry that outlasts a single program cycle. He runs a local church youth ministry in Geelong, and trains the next generation of youth ministers with YMF. Nothing he teaches is theory.
Graham Stanton
Director, YMF · leads the Residential’s themed track
Graham leads the second, themed track and carries the theological thread across both streams. He directs YMF and the Centre for Children’s and Youth Ministry at Ridley College, and is one of Australia’s leading youth ministry theologians and researchers. As the focus of the themed track shifts year to year, the reflection stays anchored in theology.
Around Dave and Graham each year sits a rotating faculty bringing experienced youth ministry voices you’d rarely get in one room.
The Residential is small enough that it’s a conversation, not a broadcast. The theology is serious, and the formation is real.
How it works
Come as you are. Choose your track. Go deep together.
New here? You’ll get the full toolkit. Returning? It sharpens what experience has already taught you.
01
Come and live in it
Four days, on-site, all meals and accommodation included. No commute, no half-attention. You step out of your context so you can think about it more clearly.
02
Choose your track
Two streams run across the days. One is Youth in the Churches: the foundational practitioner track, covering the theology, strategy and leadership every leader needs. The other is a themed track that takes up a different question each year, going deep on where youth ministry is heading.
03
Come together
The whole room gathers for combined sessions, honest peer-to-peer conversation, and the Night of Hope, an evening of prayer and praise for youth ministry across Australia.
Optional — for those who want the credit
Turn the week into accredited study. You can apply to complete selected units in the awards of the Australian University of Theology through Ridley College, with the Residential as your first teaching block. FEE-HELP is available for eligible students.
Night of Hope
Every Residential stops to pray.
One evening, the whole Residential gathers with the wider church for prayer and praise for children’s and youth ministry across Australia. It’s the heart of the week. Not a concert, but a room on its knees for the next generation.
What’s at stake
The leaders who burn out rarely saw it coming.
Nobody leaves youth ministry because they stopped loving young people. They leave because the load got heavy and no one was carrying it with them They leave because the hard-won wisdom never got passed on, and each year started closer to zero than it should. Staying shallow and staying alone is how good leaders quietly drift out of the work the church needs them in most.
You can keep doing it on your own. Most people do. But “on your own” is exactly the thing the Residential exists to end.
It’s really hard to accidentally stay in youth ministry long-term. People will try to talk you out of it. They might not even realise they’re doing it. Don’t let them. Take it seriously. Do it well. And have so much fun.
Volunteer Youth Leader
What you’ll carry home
You’ll leave connected, equipped, and reminded why you started.
Ask people what they took from the Residential and they rarely lead with the content. They lead with the people — the discovery that they weren’t the only one, and a handful of peers they’ll still be leaning on long after they’ve unpacked.
In their words
Youth Minister
This week felt like a taste of heaven… I got to hang out with people who understand me and love what I love. It made me feel so seen, helped me grow in confidence, and lifted my eyes beyond what I’m bogged down in.
Youth Minister
We discovered that we all felt a little isolated and would work better if we talked more often.
Youth and Young Adults Worker
A really precious time with the people in my cohort. We’re all in a difficult season, so to be in one place to love and care for each other was amazing.
Children and Youth Minister
It was so much more. I didn’t just gain a few extra tools but refreshed and broadened my understanding of what young people are longing for.
Youth Development Director
Twice as good as last year.
- A network you’ll actually keep
- Practical tools for Monday morning
- Perspectives you don’t get everyday
- Your sense of calling, renewed
Next Residential
Residential 2027
We’re locking in the theme, the venue and this year’s faculty now. Tell us you’re interested and you’ll be the first to know the moment registration opens — before it sells out, which it does.
- When
- 21-24 of June 2027
- Where
- Ridley College, Parkville
- Theme
- TBA
- This year's faculty
- Graham Stanton, Dave Chiswell, and others.
- Cost
- TBA
- Accredited study
- DE011 “Youth in the Church” and a special TBA focus for DE204
- Tracks
- Youth in the Churches, plus a themed track set each year
Don’t do another year alone
The next room is already filling. Save your place in it.
You don’t have to keep carrying this on your own. Come and meet the people who get it, go deeper than a conference ever lets you, and leave with a year’s worth of company and clarity. Tell us you’re interested and we’ll be in touch the moment the next Residential opens.
Have a question? Email residential@ymfutures.com.au