A Conversation with Jess Liles
In August 2023, Deacon Jess Liles took on the role of director of youth ministries and director of the ELCA Youth Gathering. She is working side-by-side with Deacon Tammy Jones West, who currently serves as the director. Deacon Jess will take the reins following this summer’s Gathering in New Orleans. The Connect Journal recently sat down with Deacon Jess to talk about her role and her perspective on the work she’ll be doing.
Connect Journal: Tell us about yourself . . . your history and where you come from?
Jess Liles: I was born in Fargo and grew up in North Dakota. My dad’s job moved us to the far northeast corner of North Dakota. I was only a quarter mile from Canada and about 18 miles from the Minnesota border. It was a super small town called Neche. It was tiny tiny tiny tiny. There were five stop signs and seven streets in the town and there was only one stoplight . . . in the whole county. My graduating class was six people, including myself.
From there, I went to Minnesota State University in Moorhead. I was an elementary education major. My goal was to be a teacher. I went through the whole program. And then, I met a friend. Her name is Shera Hill. She is currently a pastor in North Dakota.
Shera connected me to the Lutheran Campus Ministry at Moorhead State. We got pretty involved. One day, she said, “I think I’m going to go to seminary.” I was said, “OK, cool. What does that mean? What is seminary?” I had no idea. She didn’t know what she was going to do? Maybe a pastor, maybe a diaconal minister? She invited me along to tour both Luther and Wartburg seminaries.
I was planning on teaching, but as the government got more involved in how teachers were supposed to teach and what we were supposed to teach, my interest there faded.
So both of us wound up at Wartburg Seminary.
I did the two-year program and became an associate in ministry, now called a deacon.
At Wartburg, I met Joe Liles, and we got married. We have two kids, Caylee, who is 14 and Landen, who is 12. Right after a seminary, in 2011, Joe got the opportunity to go plant a church, and we were called to Arkansas. We got to be a part of The Neighborhood Church, a new mission start. We had our first worship service at Easter of 2012. And we’ve been here ever since.
I was asked to be a part of the Youth Gathering’s Interactive Learning team in 2009 and have been involved ever since. I remember at one of the meetings, watching Heidi Hagstrom, who was the director of the Gathering then, at work. And I remember thinking to myself, “It would be really cool to have Heidi’s job someday.” Sometimes, things we don’t ever think are going to happen end up happening!
CJ: Your position now is more than the Gathering. You are the director for youth ministries for the churchwide offices. What got you interested in that role?
JL: I wonder a lot about what the thread is that runs through all of our ministries. What is the common link? From children’s ministry to youth ministry to young adults and camps—what ties us together?
When I graduated from seminary, my goal was to go back to my super small town in North Dakota because there was no one doing youth ministry there. I wanted to go back to the small town and minister to all the children and youth. None of the churches had anyone doing this work. There was no one to bring youth to a Gathering or to camp or to an event. That’s where my heart’s been at.
And so now, it’s been remarkable to be within a space where we can start to dream and think about what that looks like for the larger church, and how do we start collaborating maybe in ways we never have before?
CJ: You’ve been in your role since August. What have you observed so far?
JL: I think there is a deep desire . . . for something new, something different. And a deep desire for collaboration.
I think our young people desperately want to belong. I think COVID-19 taught us a lot about who we are and our ways of life and what really matters to us in the moment. And there’s just this longing for community, where young people know that someone knows them and that they can talk about whatever.
Another thing we keep hearing is that our adult leaders don’t feel equipped, and they’re unsure of a path forward, or they feel like they don’t have the training they need. So, how do we empower the leaders in church to do the work? Not to have all of the answers but to discover together.
CJ: When you look ahead five years, what do you think is possible, and what do you hope for?
JL: My biggest hope is that the silos of our church are no longer there. I want us all sitting in the same room, having the same conversations and working towards how my piece of the puzzle is going to help your piece of the puzzle, and there is a deeper connection. And we’re reaching spaces that we never have before. I want all of these different elements to connect and then to support.
CJ: What are the things that get in the way of this kind of collaboration?
JL: In a podcast interview I just listened to, Dr. Tod Bolsinger said that “we’re not going to predict but experiment. The future is going to be built by small experiments that people are going to learn from. People are going to learn from things we can’t even imagine. We’ll move forward more when we focus on the pain points rather than the vision, to solve the problem.”
We desire change. But we desire comfort even more. And there is comfort in the past. And when change challenges our level of comfort, we choose comfort. So we resist change. We resist taking risks.
If we’re going to be bold, then we need to take some risks and move towards change.
CJ: How do you define success in ministry?
JL: That’s a great question. When my tenure in this role is done, and I’ve walked away from everything, I hope that there would be a culture of collaboration—not only among those working in faith formation at the churchwide office but also in organizations outside of churchwide offices that focus on faith formation—that everything that we’re doing is in collaboration with each other that we’re in step together.
And if all these organizations connected to faith formation are working together toward young people connecting with and loving Jesus, whether it’s through a congregation or a camp or a service learning project or the Gathering . . . if that happens, I feel like we will have been successful.
CJ: Ok, lightning round questions:
JL: Ok.
CJ: What’s your favorite food?
JL: I love Thai food.
CJ: Good choice. What’s your favorite movie?
JL: I love all of the Marvel movies.
CJ: Excellent! Is there a show that you do not miss?
JL: Oh, that’s a hard one. I think “The Good Place.”
CJ: What is your NFL team?
JL: The Vikings.
CJ: Are you a morning person or a night person?
JL: A night person.
CJ: Thank you, Jess, for spending time with us!
JL: Thank you!
Deacon Jessica Liles can be reached at Jessica.Liles@elca.org
Connect Journal 