Adulthood is better than youth.

In a culture that idolizes youth and extends adolescence, we have better news. Youth aren’t at the pinnacle of life. If they enter into real, mature adulthood, laying childish things aside, the best is yet to come.

We recognize that adulthood isn’t the same thing as the social markers of adulthood, like turning 18, earning sex, leaving home, or becoming financially independent. No, it’s really about being devoted to becoming someone who has liberty and uses it well. Who has authority and uses it well. Who is secure in their identity and loving to their neighbors. Who is ready to face the biggest things in life — romance, grief, mystery — directly. Mature adults have all these qualities and are appropriately recognized by their community.

Living as someone with liberty, authority, identity, and mystery is incomparably better than all the pleasures of youth. We think that’s something that youth long to know.

Christian adulthood is best.

We believe that an adulthood placed in Christ is the only kind of adulthood that can be finally, fully satisfying and efficacious. We seek to help youth see that all their biggest fears and desires about adulthood have their best answer in Jesus.

But even more than that, we seek to show youth that the Christian life is not meant to be static. Just as every Christian must be born again, so also every Christian is called to grow up again until they attain to the fullness of the stature of Christ. God isn’t content with delivering us from sin and death. He will keep working in our hearts, souls, minds, and strength until we are absolutely free, full of authority and power (even over the angels), secure in the love of his family, fully knowing and fully known, and endowed with a peace and joy that cannot be taken. By the power of the Spirit, we get to never stop growing up.

We’ve neglected these truths.

This good news — that Christian adulthood is available and beautiful — sounds completely new to most of the students who show up to camp. We’ve neglected to come alongside youth as they enter adulthood, or to boldly proclaim what Christian adulthood could look like. As a result, most Christian youth leave church as they become adults. They don’t have a vision for how Christianity could accommodate all the complexities of adult life, so they “fade away.”

Now is the time to end our neglect of adulthood.

We’re creators of immersive events — based on rites of passage — for Christian youth.

Our camps follow a careful seven-part structure based on anthropological insights into rites of passage from all over the world. They’re designed to help the youth who are attending feel like they are the main characters in a story that’s being built around them, and to encourage them to lay aside a childish identity and begin to identify as adults. From start to finish, they’re intricately planned.

We’re proud of our model, and we know of no comparably designed events.

We’re advocates and supporters for churches and families.

We design our events with the careful recognition that we are only playing a small role in the lives of the youth who come to us. We resist the urge to construct mere emotional “camp highs” or to think of our role as more important than it is. Every camp ends with a day of commission and planning for our youth’s return to their home communities.

We aren’t a church. We’re a mere Christian community, focused on adulthood.

We’re committed to pointing youth back to their Christian traditions of origin for teaching on divisive topics, to calling them into adulthood in the context of their home communities, and to modeling faithful commitment to our own traditions. We understand none of this, however, in a way that would conflict with our welcome role as mandatory reporters of suspected abuse.

We maintain a “mere Christian” identity by affirming the Nicene Creed as true and historically factual, submitting to the Bible, and living in the way of the Trinity. We work with any churches that do that too. Learn more at this link:

Our Beliefs

We zealously call and train youth to seek the truth, making the faith their own.

It isn’t enough to give youth our ideas right now. Unless they learn to think and learn for themselves, their Christian thinking will be dependent on us. That’s dangerous, first because we won’t be with them through the challenges and questions of their adulthood, and second because we can’t predict what questions or cultural issues will come up in the next few years. Our current ideas aren’t sufficient for their future challenges.

No, in addition to good, clear teaching, youth need a chance to learn how to think and ask questions for themselves. That’s why all our events center around mentor-led discussions. We help them see that Christian communities of inquiry can give them the grounding they need to grow up in Christ, even after they leave us.

We boldly curate experiences of nature and culture that stretch youth’s minds and hearts to equip them for deeper worship and service.

Too often, youth experience Christian contexts as places of censorship: spending more time talking about what not to watch, listen to, or do than on providing new experiences of the world. But exploration is a necessary part of every person’s transition into adulthood. You can’t form an adult identity without exploring further than your parents and childhood leaders took you.

We aim to be wise guides who unlock the world for youth. It’s youth ministry on offense, not defense. Curating, not censoring.

As a result, youth leave our camps with greater joy and confidence, and with new avenues for worshipping the God whose glory fills the world.

We joyfully call youth to imitate the virtues of Jesus in the strength of his Spirit for the glory of God.

Christians aren’t just born again in Christ; they’re called to grow up in him too. (Eph. 4:11-16) That’s good news: God isn’t content to leave us as we are; he longs to sanctify us in the image of his Son. And sanctification isn’t burdensome. It’s a font of life and growth and joy.

Too many Christian youth don’t see how wonderful it is to follow the way of Jesus, allowing him to change them. We help them desire Christlikeness, and to seek it through intimacy with him.

Above all, we help youth live prayerfully, recognizing that it is God who saves, sanctifies, and glorifies them.

Prayer is the primary activity of the Christian life. Repentance is a kind of prayer. Worship is a kind of prayer. God longs for our prayers, and he promises to respond to them.

In prayer, we join Jesus, who “lives to intercede for us.” And being with Jesus means being safe, being enlightened, and being transformed, whether we feel like it’s happening or not. No place is better for us than the place of prayer.

That’s why prayer is our top priority for the youth who come to Passage. If we had to pick one thing to help them on the way into adulthood, we’d pick prayer. We long for them to be people who can turn to the Trinity no matter what pain, confusion, or fear they face. We trust God to meet them when they do. We trust him to guide them into the life of his Son, into Christian adulthood.