Biography
My name is Jenn Surtees, I am currently serving as the Kids Pastor at Southridge Community Church in Niagara Ontario. Our church is a diverse community that seeks to care for, be in friendship with and engage those on the margins in our surrounding community. Across our 3 locations in the Niagara region, we seek to do just that, through our core programs of 24/7 homelessness services, partnering with migrant farm works, accompanying Indigenous communities and collective meal opportunities to support those experiencing food insecurity. Throughout my time in my role at Southridge; my team and I have worked to synthesize and develop the missional approach we have to ministry life through the lens of kids. Can kids have servant hearts? What does it mean to be missional? How do we teach kids to live like Jesus when most of our time with kids is program based? These are the questions that we are going to be creating dialogue around in my breakout session. With my experiences as a trained elementary school teacher as well as my 10+ years of overnight camp experience; together we will envision the way Jesus is calling the local church to lean into Jesus life of Love and engage our kids in that same lifestyle.
Workshop
A Dialogue of the Missional Church- Can Kids be Missional?
This is a dialogue introducing and discussing the experience of the missional church (using a case study of Southridge Community church – a church with an homeless shelter on site) and how being missionally driven and social justice focused influences and impacts kids ministry. This workshop would be highly discussion based since the idea of being a missional church is still emerging and there isn’t much or any research or literature about kids ministry in this church context. The workshop would be inspirational; encouraging leaders to engage kids and families in Missional living in their personal contexts, while also discussing how we can encourage our kids and families be increasingly others oriented as Jesus calls us to be
Date & Time
Date | Saturday, November 1, 2025
Time | 2:50 – 3:50pm
Location | 3
