Presbyterian Youth Triennium registration is now open
July event will include inspiring speakers and uplifting music
Registration for Presbyterian Youth Triennium 2025 is in full swing. This year’s theme, “As If We Were Dreaming,” indicates that the national gathering of Presbyterian youth, which happens only every three years, is a dream come true.
With an all-star cast of preachers, recreation leaders and musical talent, the event feels more deserving of the title of festival than conference. The Co-Moderator of the 226th General Assembly (2024), the Rev. CeCe Armstrong, will headline the four-day event from July 28-31 in Louisville, Kentucky.
Author and activist the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow will also be a featured preacher. When he was elected Moderator of the 218th General Assembly in 2008, Reyes-Chow was the youngest to serve and the first Asian American ever elected.
The Rev. Dr. Peggy Jean “PJ” Craig, who will be another featured preacher at the event, will also preach from the personal experience of being on the margins and among the marginalized.
“Growing up in rural Alabama as the only Asian kid in town around other than her brother shaped her curiosity about marginalized places, community and belonging,” Craig’s biography says. She pastors Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Germantown in Tennessee, “a church dedicated to serving their immigrant and Latinx neighbors.”
The Rev. Dr. Jerry Cannon, Vice President for Ministry Innovation at the Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), will wrap up the roster of stellar preachers. In his 28 years at C.N. Jenkins Memorial Presbyterian Church in Charolotte, North Carolina, Cannon mentored more than 20 young people who received a call to full-time ministry.
Proclaiming the Word is essential to the joy cultivated at Triennium, but so is the recreational fun. “Play and recreation is an extraordinary way for God to show up in our lives,” said Christian Antwi, who comes from Austin, Texas, to serve on the Presbyterian Youth Triennium team of recreation leaders, along with Eric Dillenbeck, Omayra L. Gonzalez Mendez, and Joanna Wilkinson.
Dillenbeck works as the director of work experience programs for Youth Opportunities Unlimited, a youth workforce development organization in Cleveland. As a marketing director with news and television experience, Ruling Elder Gonzalez Mendez counts creating, designing and organizing among her strengths. Working as a graphic designer and co-founder of an event space in southwest Missouri, Wilkinson is a certified youth minister in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church; has served in various roles in churches, presbyteries, camps and conferences; and has been involved with Presbyterian Youth Triennium in various capacities over the years.
No festival is complete without a soundtrack, and 2025’s will be provided by The Nettletons 2.0, a band birthed at the 2019 Triennium. The band got its name from the hymn tune for “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” when this group of musicians, leaders and lovers of the church came together to bring an eclectic mix of musical gifts to lead music during the 2019 Triennium and again in 2022 at the NEXT Church gathering. The band describes their repertoire as blending “familiar favorites with fresh new sounds, always aiming to reflect the global church.”
Registration for the event is open through June 13. For more information, visit the Presbyterian Youth Triennium website.
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