Spotlight

Enduring in Christ

The 2025 LCMS Youth Gathering brought 20,000 youth and adult leaders together in New Orleans under the theme “ENDURE.”

Photography by Erik M. Lunsford | Fall 2025

On July 19, some 20,000 youth and their adult leaders trekked through the muggy streets of New Orleans to the Superdome for the opening Mass Event of the 2025 LCMS Youth Gathering. Over the next four days, participants learned how to “ENDURE” in Jesus — the Gathering’s theme drawn from Hebrews 12:1–3 — as a people and to the end.

Between daily Mass Events, participants attended Bible studies and sessions from pastors, missionaries, church workers and educators around the Synod. Members of the Created Male and Female Task Force led sessions on topics related to sexuality and gender. Other speakers presented on TikTok, loneliness, theology, dating and more.

Participants also took part in servant events and hands-on learning opportunities. They brought supplies for local pregnancy resource centers, donated blood, assembled Braille Bibles, decorated care packages for cancer patients, and made sock animals for children in area shelters and hospitals. Youth also had the chance to ask questions about full-time church work and see real-time images of a baby in utero during a live ultrasound experience.

In his sermon at the July 23 closing worship, LCMS President Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison said, “Don’t look to yourself for anything. [Jesus] says to His apostles, ‘I chose you; you did not choose Me.’ Without Christ, we are dead … in our sins, and He has raised you up, every one of you. You have been grabbed by the Word in Baptism. … Wherever you go … Christ is with you. Forever.”