By Steve Bertel
Brandon was going through some tough personal struggles.
On one front, three close members of his family had all passed away in a short period of time. On another front, his parents were divorcing; his mother, struggling with his father’s battle with alcoholism.
He had found at least a modicum of solace, sitting on the shoulder of a remote dirt road, deep in the Idaho wilderness, where he and other teens from a nearby church camp had been hiking. Their youth leader had sent the others on ahead, while he stayed behind with Brandon, sitting with him, comforting him, consoling him; the man reassuring the boy that, despite the challenges he was facing, God is still in control. And that God still loves him. Very much.
However, little did Brandon realize back then that, years later, those roles would be reversed. And he would become the comforter to youth.
Brandon Swain grew up in the little wilderness town of Challis, Idaho.
He was raised in the community’s Catholic church — serving as an altar boy; in fact, his grandmother even regularly played the organ in the church. But he fell away from his faith when he was about eight years old, after his parents’ marriage ended. “At that point in my life, even though I always enjoyed being a part of the church, I didn’t understand that much about God,” he admitted. “I was not reading the Bible, so I really didn’t know how to follow Him. And then, after a while, I simply didn’t go to church anymore. But I still believed in God.”
He met McKinsey years later while he was attending school in Boise and, in 2001, the couple got married. “We went through [the required] pre-marital counseling so we could be married by a pastor, because we wanted our marriage to be before God, not the state,” he said. “But, as for my faith, I was only going off what I had learned back in Sunday School.”
The couple later moved to Seattle. “At first, we were on our own. It was just the two of us. We’d hang out with friends, but it was more of a party culture,” Brandon recalled. But then, when the couple relocated to Portland, Oregon — because McKinsey landed her first job out of school there — their lives changed. For the better. They connected with another group of twentysomethings who were more directly plugged in to God’s Word. “And that’s when my wife and I found something we hadn’t really experienced before. We joined a Life Group, we started studying the Bible regularly … it was like a real church community!” he explained.
Through the new group, “We learned how each of us could become a better person, and how we could better deal with our struggles. It was an amazing time! We even learned how to reach out to communities in need. For example, we went on a mission together to help those whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. That was a real faith builder for both of us.”
As he and McKinsey built their family (they now have three adopted children), Brandon decided to pour himself into youth ministry. He felt that’s where God was calling him. Or, as he pointed out, “Even before I was a Christian, I really enjoyed being around young people, teenagers. I’ve always had a youthful spirit about me. I’ve always loved hanging out with kids, playing games, doing goofy stuff with them. I felt, if that’s the direction God wanted me to go, He would open doors.”
And He did.
When Brandon first got called into ministry, “I became involved in the worship music and youth ministry of a very small restart church in Santa Rosa, Calif.,” a city about sixty miles north of San Francisco, near the California wine country. “However, the church was so small, the only on-staff person was the pastor. So, some of the other parents — whose teenagers were in my youth group — and I got together and decided to do a ‘co-op,’ where we would rotate giving the Message to the kids, involving them in a Bible study, or simply playing games with them. I really enjoyed it. We all did. Our own kids were even involved in the program.”
After serving in the Santa Rosa church for some eight years, God opened another door for them. “My family and I were very involved in our church. The members were like family to us,” said Brandon. But, when his in-laws left California and moved back East, “We didn’t have any biological family in the Santa Rosa area anymore. My wife and I wanted our kids to really get to know their grandparents better, who live in Idaho. So we took it to God. If He wanted us to stay in California, we knew He would make a way for us. Or, if He wanted us to return to Idaho, we knew He’d make a way for us there. So we knew God was giving us His blessing, when He made it so we could return to Idaho.”
Settling in Kuna in 2018, Brandon continued his ministry work — this time, as youth pastor assistant at Stonehill Church, a nondenominational church in south Meridian. There, he had his first exposure to the group known as the National Network of Youth Ministries (NNYM) which, since 1981, has been working throughout the country to bring churches, pastors, and especially youth ministers and youth leaders together in neighboring geographic areas to network, share ideas, share resources, to learn from each other and, most importantly, to pray for each other.
“I immediately knew it was a good thing,” Brandon recalled. A good thing he wanted to be a part of. “I’m very much a networker. I love connecting people. I love sitting down and strategizing with other leaders. So I began praying about it, asking God what He had next for me.”
Brandon started his own network in 2020, when he became youth pastor at the E3 Church in Kuna. He served there for four years “with much success,” as he pointed out. But, when he decided it was time to move forward from that pastoral position, he felt led to help other youth pastors — and joined NNYM as an Idaho Area Coordinator. “It was definitely a calling from the Lord for me to take it on. I knew I was ready to pass my position [at E3 Church] to a new youth pastor. Not that I can’t relate to kids anymore. They’re super energetic … and I just don’t have the energy I used to,” he chuckled, “since I’m getting a little older now.”
And, just as in Matthew 9:37, where Jesus said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few,” “There is plenty [for NNYM] to do here in Idaho,” Brandon said, with an estimated 1,100 youth pastors in the state, 1,174 churches, and 522 middle and high schools.
But, keeping with NNYM’s mission to create “collaborative spaces for youth leaders to be personally encouraged, professionally equipped, and spiritually strengthened for faithful and effective ministry with the next generation” can be a bit of a challenge at times.
Many of Idaho’s small-town or outlying-area churches have minimal staffs, so taking on another ministry effort — even if it means helpfully networking with other churches in their areas — can sometimes be intimidating. “Some pastors think, ‘Well, this is just another time commitment for me’,” Brandon admitted. “So I work to help pastors and youth leaders see the vision behind NNYM, and how it can significantly benefit and bless their churches — and their youth. And why it’s so important for churches and youth ministries to work together to share resources with each other, to exchange ideas like ‘How did you handle such-and-such an issue?’ And, really, to have the mindset that it’s okay to share that you’re struggling with something as a church, it’s okay to ask for help; because, especially in churches with small staffs, both pastors and youth leaders oftentimes feel like they are carrying the entire weight of the church.”
Social media has an obvious significant impact on kids today. And not in good ways. It can create anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, even pornography addiction. So, as his statewide church network expands, Brandon is looking to set up more roundtable discussions, pastoral-specific training, virtual (video) conferences, and even more large-scale worship events where a number of youth groups can come together at a host church; all in the universal effort to not only help churches collaborate, but to encourage and support youth leaders and, in turn, to strengthen kids’ resistance to the social temptations and pitfalls prevalent today. And it’s working. Or, as Brandon pointed out, “At a recent local youth worship night event, we had some 100 kids show up, and about twenty came forward to give their hearts to the Lord. When you see that, it makes it all worth it.”
If you’d like to partner with Brandon and help support his work with the NNYM (93% of every dollar donated goes directly into the communities where the team member serves), or to join his prayer team, you can reach out to him at [email protected].
Steve Bertel is a multi-award-winning professional radio, television, print media, and social media journalist, who retired after a 30-year broadcasting career. Now a busy freelance writer, his debut suspense novel, “Dolphins of an Unjust Sea,” is available on both Amazon and Kindle. He and his wife of 42 years live in Meridian, Idaho. He can be reached at [email protected].
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