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We explore why Trevor Sill at The Bridge Christian Church combines junior high and high school and how they rebuilt midweek around one big night and weekly small groups. Trevor shares wins, missteps, and the practices that turned constraints into a discipleship advantage.

• Reasons for combining ages including space, staffing, family rhythm
• One big night monthly plus weekly small groups structure
• High schoolers as culture carriers and mentors
• Onboarding fifth graders and the move-up pathway
• MIX as a relational fast-forward for incoming sixth graders
• Teaching at a shared level with age-specific application in groups
• Handling pushback and aligning leaders to the vision
• Stories of student-led impact including a new sixth grade FCS
• Electives on Sundays for deeper age-targeted study
• Whole-church Wednesday ecosystem that connects parents and students


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BTE 5.08 Middle and High School Separate vs. Together: Part 2 with Trevor Sill and Brittany Shoemake

Middle and High School Separate vs. Together: Part 2 with Trevor Sill and Brittany Shoemake

Hi, I'm Brad Warren. This is Beyond the Event, a youth ministry podcast presented by Christ and Youth, where we help you maintain momentum between the mountaintops. Uh today's guest is Trevor Still. He is the youth pastor at the Bridge Christian Church in Carthage, Missouri, right down the road from us. And he's going to be uh talking to us about why it is beneficial for them to do junior high and high school programming together. If you missed our last episode uh with Michelle Cruz talking about the opposite, having youth ministry split by junior high and high school, you can go back and listen to that one as well. These two will kind of exist in a pair together. Uh but before we do that, I am joined by the elusive.

Brittany, do make I have like you're impossible to get on here. This is well hold on. Let's let people be objective.

Let's let people in on your scheduling of meetings habit.

Let's talk about all the things that you have done in the months of September and October. Wait, how many how many countries have you been to in the months of September and October?

Technically, yes. I like it. Republic of Ireland. Yeah, okay. Got it.

Republic of Ireland. So that'd be in the South and then Northern Ireland.

In our offseason. Just gallivanting all over the world.

Yes. We uh we were doing some site visits and checking in with some of our partners there and also talking about some new opportunities with them as well.

So yeah, it it was a good time to do that. Good time to have some extra time with our partners like that. Uh with teams there. Um so a little bit just more intentional time that we can get with them. So it was fun. And then I I also got to go to Connected.

So from our our CIY Europe team, they put on a youth worker conference in Ireland.

Is it more like wilderness or YMS? Or kind of a combination of the two? I would say it's a combination. Okay.

It really is. So, and there were 65, 70 youth workers there.

Ireland, which is incredible. So it was good. Saw people there that I've seen through the years of doing work in Ireland, and then some of our partners were there too. So yeah, it's great. And got to hang out with our CIY Ireland team.

Um, that is wonderful. Uh, so I wanted to have you on like four episodes ago to talk about your summer, you know, and just see how like well we got to get like an engage or we got to get like a move summer update, a mixed summer update, and I was like, well, we'll get an engaged summer update. Um, but then I did a bad job of scheduling the podcast. And uh here we are in December, and I'm just now asking you about your summer, but well, it takes a lot of lean power to think back. No, it's actually kind of fitting for engage anyway.

Because like it's a year-round thing. Like we talk about summers and like there's a high concentration in the summer, but it's like really we get to reflect on kind of 2025.

2025 for engage. Uh yeah, that's funny because our mind is already in 2026.

So not so. Um 2025. I know that that's the year we're in, but it feels like that was years ago.

Um, it was great. We had the highest number of spring break trips that we've had. So had took several teams um to we had three back-to-back-to-back weeks in Northern Ireland at Riot, um, which was exciting. I mean, that would have been coming out of two years ago. Uh, Riot was the ministry partner of CIY as a whole. And so we got to to talk about them a lot. And then so having so many teams get to come over and actually support and be with them in person was really encouraging. And the the Riot team loves that. All of the students that are at Riot come to the youth center, get to see more of American teens that are their age, their peers that they get to hang out with. So um, yeah, so that was great. And then into the summer we had had several teams. It was different for me, I'll say this. And as I've been having conversations, I this was my first summer at CIY. So been here for 18 years now. That was my 19th summer. That's crazy. 19th summer, and I was not on a summer engaged trip.

So first time ever. So I got to go and bounce around at several moves and popped in at mix. So yeah, it was a little bit of a different summer for me, but how was that?

Yeah, it was it was good. Yeah, it was good because we I mean, we have such capable leaders that are leading the teams. We know that that's not all just reliant on our engaged team and our engaged staff. And so we have other leaders that are incredible that that well you did it.

You would you also did all three spring break trips, right? Like you just stayed in stayed in Northern Ireland for a bit. Yeah.

So yes, I got to see see those three teams come in and just see how that transition would be with the back-to-back.

Including uh past and future podcast guest.

He was the the middle one, yes. They were they were team number two coming in.

And that was their second time going back to Riot. So that was even uh a sweeter deal too, when you can have uh a church that partners multiple years at the same mission partner and get to build a relationship, yeah, yeah. Seeing that relationship get to continue. And a few of the same students, even that came back from they had been two years earlier with you. With me. Look at that.

How fun was that? Yeah. I love Tyler. I love that church. Yeah. I'm sure he's listening to this. Hello, Tyler. Thank you for going on an engaged trip. Um faithful listener to be on the event. Um okay. I wanna do I I I have a couple of like uh I kind of want to do like lightning round and just ask you a couple of random questions about international travel.

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