Rev. Lauren Jewett is our new ACM for Youth, Young Adults, and Education

By Rev. Lauren Jewett

This week begins my role as the Associate Conference Minister (ACM) for Youth, Young Adults, and Education here at the Northern California Nevada Conference. I am thrilled to begin this new role and am so proud of this conference for taking a courageous and spirit-filled step towards serving the needs of our youth and young adults, who are very much the present of the church, not merely its future.

A little bit about me:

For the past three years I served as Director of Spiritual Engagement and Campus Minister at CA House, one of the UCC’s affiliated campus ministries, serving the Davis higher education student community. In that role I had the opportunity to work within an ecumenical and Multi-faith context, as CA House is affiliated with the UCC, UMC, and PC(USA) and is the home of the multi-faith living community, an intentional community housing 40+ students from incredibly diverse backgrounds. In this role I worked closely with ecumenical partners including the United Methodist Campus Ministry Association and the ZOE progressive campus ministry network, as well as campus partners like the UC Davis Cross Cultural Center and LGBTQIA+ Center. Most of the students I served did not come from faith backgrounds related to the denominations CA House was affiliated with, but instead were seeking refuge from faith groups that had caused them harm, or were raised atheist or agnostic and yet were seeking a belief system of their own, or were from non-Christian faith traditions and found a home and place of belonging at CA House. Before serving at CA House, I completed a CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) Residency at UC Davis Medical Center during the worst months of the pandemic, and with a focus on pediatric chaplaincy.

In these roles and throughout my 15+ years of working with youth and young adults, I have witnessed firsthand both the deep need of youth and young adults to have spaces of belonging, and the vast scarcity of places that are truly welcoming of the fullness of their identities. As a church which celebrates diversity and not merely affirms but celebrates the spectrum of sexuality and gender identities and expression, we have the opportunity and obligation to serve young folx in their beautiful fullness, and to build partnerships across denominations and with other organizations serving young people in our communities.

My hope in this role is first to assess the state of youth and young adult ministry conference-wide. If you are someone working with youth and young adults in your ministry context, please reach out! I would love to talk with you about your work and what support and resources you may need. The Youth and Outdoor Ministries committee has already been working to revive youth ministry conference-wide, beginning with our IMMERSION: SF experience over Presidents’ Day Weekend 2025. I also hope to work with our conference siblings in the Western Region to develop regular cross-conference service trip and immersion opportunities, and through everything, work from a standpoint of relationship-building and collaboration.

Stay tuned in the new year for opportunities to connect and collaborate with me around our shared work to support the youth and young adults in our conference and region.