Welcome to The Scaffold Project
Co-Create the Future of Youth & Young Adult Ministry
A collaborative cohort starting this August
At the Boulder Spirit Foundation, our mission is to invest in and facilitate innovative approaches to disciple-making among youth, young adults, and their families.
Today, youth are facing unprecedented levels of isolation. We firmly believe that young people need high-quality, in-person relationships to be healthy and whole.
But we also know the reality on the ground: coordinating those moments and making that face-to-face time deeply valuable is harder than ever.
Why "The Scaffold Project"?
In construction, scaffolding isn't the building. It is a supportive structure that allows the builders to reach high places safely and do their best work.
In youth ministry, you and your volunteers are the builders.
The Scaffold Project is a new, collaborative initiative to build a next-generation digital tool designed to handle the heavy lifting of coordination, admin, and content prep. It is the "scaffolding" that supports your leaders, freeing them up to focus on what matters most: showing up and building relationships with young people.
The Challenge: Reclaiming the Space of Character & Faith
Have you noticed how youth sports, school clubs, and music programs are increasingly pitched to parents as spaces for "character development" and "values building"? This proves that parents and youth are starving for moral and ethical guidance.
But character, ethics, and deep values are spaces the church used to own. Somewhere along the way, youth ministry in many places shifted to being mostly about games, pizza, and fellowship. While fun is important, we want to help churches reclaim our role as the primary space for real, deep disciple-making.
We want to move beyond just keeping kids entertained. We want to help you form young people who can navigate the ethical, moral, and spiritual complexities of the modern world.
The Reality: Supporting Our Everyday Builders
We know that the vast majority of people leading youth and young adult ministries are generous, dedicated volunteers who love kids but don't have seminary degrees or formal theological training.
If you are a volunteer or a part-time leader, you might only have a couple of hours a week to prepare. Trying to handle administrative logistics and develop deep, meaningful lessons on top of your day job is overwhelming.
The Scaffold Project is designed to bridge that gap.
The Opportunity: Three Areas of Support
We are co-designing an intuitive digital platform to act as your ministry's scaffold, focusing on three key areas:
Coordination: Streamlining event planning and logistics, freeing you from administrative headaches so you can spend your energy on relationships.
Content with Depth: Giving non-theologically trained leaders easy access to deep, substance-filled discussion guides, ethics-focused lessons, and weekly devotionals. (We use smart, background AI helpers to translate weekly sermon themes into highly engaging, age-appropriate youth content in seconds).
Communication: Keeping parents and families connected to what youth are learning, allowing the moral and ethical conversations to continue at home.
Who We Are Looking For
We want to assemble a diverse cohort of churches from across the Mountain Sky Conference.
We are looking for:
Volunteer & Part-Time Leaders: If you are a volunteer, a parent stepping up, a part-time staff member, or a pastor wearing multiple hats—your voice is the most important one we need.
Churches of all sizes: We are especially seeking representation from small and rural congregations to ensure this tool is practical for churches without large budgets or staffs.
Active groups: Churches with an existing youth or young adult group (no matter how small) who want to deepen their discipleship.
How the Cohort Works (The Commitment)
This is a 12-to-18-month collaborative project beginning in August. Because this is a co-development process, your real-world feedback will directly shape the features we build.
As a cohort member, you will:
Participate in periodic Zoom calls with other cohort leaders to share ideas and challenges.
Engage in occasional one-on-one feedback interviews with our design team.
Test new tools with your youth or young adult groups in real-time and tell us what works for your volunteers.
What You’ll Receive
While we are not offering direct financial grants, participating churches will receive:
Free Access: Full, cost-free access to the digital platform and the specialized youth tools you help create.
Personalized Support & Coaching: Hands-on technical support and strategic ministry coaching from the Boulder Spirit Foundation team to help your volunteers succeed.
A Seat at the Table: The opportunity to design a tool that equips everyday volunteers to do extraordinary, deep youth ministry.
Ready to Shape What's Next?
We will begin our initial brainstorming sessions in August. If you are ready to help us build a tool that makes deep, in-person disciple-making sustainable for leaders everywhere, please let us know you’re interested!