Pasadena Seminary Initiative Launches National Campaign to Keep Young People in the Church

A new cross-denominational campaign launched by the TENx10 Collaboration — housed at Fuller Theological Seminary on North Oakland Avenue in Pasadena — is calling on churches nationwide to rethink how they engage young people, arguing that personal relationships, not programs, hold the key to reversing a years-long exodus of youth from the Christian faith.

The initiative, called Relationships Win, provides free resources and coaching to help church leaders shift their approach from program-centered youth ministry toward what the collaboration describes as “relational discipleship radically focused on Jesus,” in which individual adults in a congregation intentionally invest in the faith development of young people around them.

TENx10 was founded by Kara Powell, a Pasadena resident who serves as executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute and chief of leadership formation at Fuller Seminary. The collaboration formally launched in October 2023 in Chicago and now includes a coalition of Christian ministry organizations and denominations that work across racial, cultural and denominational lines.

A Response to Research on Youth Disaffiliation

The campaign is grounded in research from the Pinetops Foundation, a Seattle-based private foundation whose 2018 report, “The Great Opportunity: The American Church in 2050,” estimated that roughly one million young people walk away from the Christian faith each year in the United States. That report, which drew on data from the Pew Research Center, the Baylor Religion Survey, the Public Religion Research Institute and Gallup, projected that between 35 million and 42 million young people raised in Christian homes could leave the church by 2050 if current trends continue.

According to a TENx10 press release announcing the Relationships Win campaign, Powell said the data makes clear that decades of investment in youth programs, events and curricula have not been sufficient to form lasting faith in the next generation.

“We’ve spent decades pouring resources into youth programs, events, and curricula,” Powell said in the press release. “And the data is telling us clearly: it’s not enough. We are well intentioned, but we are not forming lasting faith in the next generation.”

What the Campaign Offers

The Relationships Win campaign is designed to equip senior ministry leaders with free, practical resources and coaching aimed at a fundamental shift in approach: from relying on structured programming to fostering intentional, one-on-one relationships between adults and the young people in their congregations.

According to the press release, the initiative uses trained guides and peer cohorts to build what it describes as a person-to-person movement, operating at both the institutional and individual level.

Pastors Keedren and Keturah Boston, identified in the press release as family pastors at Northwood Church in Keller, Texas, and ministry practitioners with Future of Faith, described the campaign’s core idea.

“What Relationships Win does is shift the paradigm for senior church leaders, helping them see that when adults build real, intentional one-on-one relationships with young people, that’s what actually forms lasting faith. Not the programs. The relationships,” the Bostons said, according to the press release.

Pasadena Roots, National Reach

Fuller Seminary, which has maintained its main campus at 135 North Oakland Avenue in Pasadena since 1953, serves as the institutional home for both the Fuller Youth Institute and the TENx10 Collaboration. The seminary, founded in 1947, is one of the largest multidenominational seminaries in the world, serving students from dozens of countries and more than 100 denominations.

In January 2026, Fuller announced it had received a $17 million gift from Lilly Endowment Inc. to support the ongoing work of TENx10 — described by the seminary as the largest gift in its history. That followed a $10.7 million grant from the same foundation in late 2022 and a separate $10 million grant in late 2024 to establish the TENx10 Faith and Service Project. The collaboration has also received funding from the Pinetops Foundation and other donors.

According to Fuller’s January 2026 announcement, TENx10 reached more than 10,000 congregations in 2025 and planned to reach 12,720 faith communities in 2026. The collaboration reported it had engaged more than 300,000 ministry leaders through national awareness campaigns, conferences and digital outreach.

Focus on Underserved Communities

The press release states that TENx10 is particularly committed to equipping leaders of color, bi-vocational pastors and volunteer youth workers serving ethnic and cultural minority congregations in both urban and rural settings. The collaboration’s free resources are intended to be practical and accessible regardless of congregation size.

TENx10 describes itself as a coalition of more than 200 diverse U.S. ministry organizations and denominations, according to the Fuller Seminary announcement in January 2026. Its project leadership team includes representatives from organizations such as the Asian American Christian Collaborative, Life.Church, the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry, Princeton Seminary, the Pinetops Foundation and Youth for Christ, among others.

More information about the Relationships Win campaign is available at relationshipswin.org. Information about TENx10 is available at tenx10.org.