Janice Tiedeck and Jamie McLeod were listening to a grant opportunity from the Synod of the Trinity in the spring of 2025 when an idea struck. As they listened, Janice, the moderator for the Presbytery of Carlisle at the time, began scribbling down notes for a youth conference that could be funded through this grant. Little did she know Jamie, who is Carlisle’s Presbytery Leader for Transformation and Vision, had been having the same vision.
“One of the things that has arisen for me since I had come to the presbytery, in almost every conversation I had to a person, someone would ask me how can we reconnect our youth with the presbytery?” said Jamie, who has been with the presbytery for two-plus years. “So that had been sitting in the back of my mind.
“The sense in the presbytery was that since covid, the connection with the youth had fallen off. I think that (Janice), being the moderator of the presbytery, had a sense of that and wanted to do something to bring that group back in the fold.”
With the Synod supplying the funding through its Fit-For-The-Future Grant, all that was needed was a game plan from the two presbytery leaders for this idea to become reality. Several months later, “Weave Week” was born.
“We started working together to plan what that might look like and came up with a vision for helping youth see what a missional church could look like in the contemporary time with all of the issues facing the world,” Jamie continued. “How can we best be better informed and how can we live into what Jesus is calling us to do and be about in the world? Weave Week sort of arose out of that conversation, and we’re really excited about it.”
A five-day overnight youth conference in central Pennsylvania aimed at bringing together high school-aged youth has spawned from these conversations. An event scheduled for July 7-11, these teenagers will be housed nightly at Messiah College and come together the next morning in different locations to hear about and discuss issues surrounding their everyday lives.
“We want youth to feel like church is a place where active ministry happens, and it’s not just passive in conversations,” Jamie said. “On the one hand we want to talk about the serious issues, we want to have space for them to ask questions and explore four topic areas that I think are critically important in the time we are living in right now.”
Each day, a different subject will be at the forefront of the conversation: racism, poverty, the environment and immigration. A different keynote speaker will address a topic each day, with conversations occurring around the mid-state in places like Harrisburg’s City Island and Gettysburg.
“Each day has a theme and keynote speakers,” Jamie explained. “Each morning starts with worship, and each day has a keynote speaker speaking on that topic. We have both local and more far-flung speakers coming in. The afternoon is some sort of hands-on activity, whether that’s touring the capitol, whether that is preparing a meal for an immigrant community that’s working in the Fruit Belt, or whether that’s looking at a poverty simulator and what it means to be poor in America today. Each day has a hands-on experience to pair with the keynote that they’ve heard that morning.
“We wanted to concentrate on areas that are important to the larger society that we live in but also that we felt like folks could all sign on to, that didn’t push anybody away. While they are serious conversations, they’re not wildly controversial. We really wanted to focus on issues that were ongoing in the larger society and giving youth a chance to explore what that looks like for them in their world.”
The evenings involve fun activities back at Messiah College, culminating with a day at Hersheypark to wrap up the week.
By targeting ninth- to 12th-graders, Jamie feels important conversations can be had with this age group that will soon be entering the world as young adults.
“We wanted to have serious conversations and begin to ease the presbytery into having serious conversations,” he said. “Part of what we wanted to do was look at how we can do that with teenagers. We really are interested in touching base on what’s going on in the world and having honest conversations about that. We thought high-schoolers would be the most mature group to handle that conversation.”
Registration closed at the end of April for Weave Week, with 31 youth registered.
“We’re really happy with the numbers,” Jamie said. “For our first time we’re pretty happy with having 30-some. We have folks coming from all over the presbytery to be a part of this. We’re really excited about the potential for it and where we go from here.”
There was a small registration fee involved for each youth who registered, but the Synod’s grant was instrumental in Weave Week being formed.
“The Fit-For-The-Future Grant was critically important for us,” Jamie said. “It’s covering virtually all of the costs. We wanted folks to feel like they had a little skin in the game, and so the $25 per person sort of goes to cover that sort of an experience, but really the Fit-For-The-Future Grant has been incredibly important for us to do this work. We could not have done it without it.”
Once Weave Week has been completed, Jamie and others will review its success and decide on where to go from here. It could be an annual event or an every-three-years gathering, similar to the denominational Triennium. Either way, keeping the momentum going is the key.
“We hope that something will spring out of this that is an annual experience for youth,” Jamie said. “I don’t know if we’ll do a full-fledged conference every year. We want to reconvene in sort of a youth group for the presbytery so that we have something moving forward, so that this isn’t a one-time experience but rather pivots into something more continuous and connectional for the youth in the presbytery. I just hope it springboards into something that’s more connectional for the youth moving forward.”
A reunion opportunity for the Weave Week participants will occur in late August during the Presbytery of Carlisle’s “Many Voice, One Song” gathering at Second Presbyterian Church of Carlisle. It will be a step toward creating continuous energy among the presbytery’s youth.
“I want to see the hands and feet of Christ emerging from our young people,” Jamie concluded. “I feel like part of the struggle for the church is how do we actively participate in ministry, and this is an example of how we can do it for our young and show them how that can work. I’m excited about our youth being part of the movement of the Spirit in the world.”