Ask Campbell Evans what keeps him up at night, and the answer comes quickly: the thousands of young Catholics across Sydney who are quietly showing up, leading youth groups, running small groups, and discipling their friends, thinking that they’re alone and without support.
Evans, mission manager for Sydney Catholic Youth (SCY) within the Sydney Centre for Evangelisation, is doing something about it.
On 28 and 29 March, at St Martha’s in Leichhardt, SCY will host the Purpose Leaders’ Summit, an event he describes as unlike anything the archdiocese has offered before.
“There are very, very few opportunities that you’re going to get to have a concentrated opportunity to grow your skills as a Christian leader,” Evans says. “We are just absolutely starving for those kinds of role models.”
SCY’s mission is to form young people and bring them into a deeper relationship with Christ, but Evans knows that the most powerful lever available is the formation of leaders, not just individuals.
“If you basically put into one person who’s just in their parish, that is great, and you see conversion in one person,” he explains. “But if you can equip and form a leader, then that person becomes a source of inspiration and direction and guidance for a parish, for a whole group of young people.”
Lay leaders, he argues, are among the most important people the church can invest in right now. “They’re the people that will really be forming and shaping what our church looks like in the future,” he says. “They’re the ones that will be flavouring and guiding how the rest of us are looked after and what the church feels like as we go forward.”
He draws a direct line between these grassroots leaders and the archdiocese’s core mission, Go Make Disciples. “These are the apostles,” he says warmly.
“They’re the ones getting coffee with their mate, journeying with people, discipling them, giving them authentic friendship. They’re there for a young person in a parish when they go through a tough time. That’s Go Make Disciples. Which is why this is such an important event, it’s pouring into the people who are constantly pouring themselves out for others.”
Evans says the program across Saturday and Sunday is “jam-packed and hard-hitting.” Day one opens with a liturgy with “all the bells and smells,” as he puts it with a grin, before Bishop Richard Umbers delivers a keynote address on the urgent importance of youth ministry, anchored in St John Paul II’s famous charge to young people: “[Jesus] asked much of you because he knows you can give much.” Practical workshops follow throughout the day, balancing high-level inspiration with on-the-ground skills.
The afternoon brings what Evans calls an “absolute powerhouse” lineup: Jen Healy, Milad Khalil, and Louisa Daniels, who will take participants through everything from Youth Ministry 101 to running workshops and weaving personal testimony into ministry. The day closes with Eucharistic adoration, confession and a celebratory dinner, honouring those who give so much to others.
Sunday brings Bishop Tony Percy, a subject matter expert on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, offering a formation session before the day moves into targeted, practical streams for youth and young adults ministry respectively, finishing with a Holy Hour.
“Every single one of those talks is going to be like a slap in the face,” Evans says. “It’s going to be hard-hitting. It’s going to be useful. Just nuggets of gold to pick up.”
Beyond the keynotes and workshops, Evans is perhaps most excited about something simpler: the moment when leaders look around the room and realise they are not alone. One of the Summit’s core purposes is to address the isolation that so many youth ministers experience.
“It’s so easy in youth ministry to get stuck in your silo, whether it’s your youth group or young adults’ group, and just to feel like there’s no one around to support you,” he says. “But actually, there are so many active, engaged young leaders across Sydney. This is an opportunity to connect them all together.”
The Purpose Leaders Summit is on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 March at St Martha’s, 38 Renwick Street, Leichhardt. Register via Sydney Catholic Youth’s Instagram page or at sydneycatholicyouth.org.
