October 23-25, 2026
Athens, GA
A combination of both spiritual formation and leadership development, Cultivate brings people together to experience their God given purpose. As a youth pastor, you are responsible for the development of middle and high school students. Cultivate helps to support youth pastors to better develop high school students and adult volunteers to make disciples. Through assessments and hand on experiences, each person will gain knowledge and understanding on how to lead within their context.
Student leaders
Developing high school students to understand and leverage their God-given purpose affirms their identity, builds confidence, and equips them to make wise choices that honor their faith and serve others.
Cultivate will help your students with:
Grade Specific Breakouts
Team Dynamics
Spiritual Gifts
Hands-on Experiences
adult volunteers
Trained volunteers create consistent, safe, and faith-filled environments where relationships deepen, spiritual practices are passed on, and discipleship becomes relational and reproducible.
Cultivate will equip your volunteers with:
Discipleship & Leadership Development
Team Building
Culture Training
Teaching Framework
Followers of Jesus are called to live differently than the world. It’s not just because Jesus wants us to be different. It’s that the people of the world live in sin and sin desires one thing: to satisfy self. God desires that we love and serve Him. Not because He is selfish but because He created us to find complete satisfaction in Him and not ourselves.
Living for Jesus means our actions and words will be life giving to those around us. In the bible there are numerous moments that we see His people living differently than the cultures they were apart of. A few are Daniel, the Good Samaritan, Esther and David. Each of these people lived counter culturally by doing one thing: acting in obedience to God. It didn’t matter about the environment, the people or even the circumstances. Each of them responded by saying yes, through their words and actions, to God’s request.
At Cultivate, we are going to take a deep dive into how we lead and why individual obedience matters for those who follow us.
MACON JONES
SPEAKER
FAQs
Who can attend Cultivate?
Cultivate is designed for high school students (9-12th grade) who are currently leading in your student ministry or who you see have leadership potential. The content of Cultivate is focused on developing spiritual and practical leadership skills in these students through intentional small group discussion, breakouts, panels, main stage talks and worship.
How many adults do I need to bring?
You need to bring enough adults to provide transportation for all of your students attending the event. Our SWAT Leaders do not drive students, so each church is responsible for transporting students from the host site to host homes.
What are the lodging accommodations?
Your students will be placed in host homes in the Athens area with a trained SWAT Leader and students of the same gender from other churches. All of our host homes and leaders are background checked and are personal or church connections of SWAT staff or SWAT leaders. Youth Pastors and other church chaperones are placed in host homes in the Athens area with the adults from other churches.
What is included in the cost?
Each student and adult will receive a t-shirt and journal, as well as meals from Friday dinner through Sunday breakfast.