Known, Loved, and Not Alone: The Heart of Junior High

Inside Valley Christian’s Junior High Spiritual Formation Office, where questions are welcome, and Jesus is too.

The Years that Shape a Lifetime

Walk into a junior high hallway, and you can feel it: the energy, the awkwardness, the snack-fueled confidence, and the quiet searching tucked behind it all. For Anna Messersmith, campus pastor serving Valley Christian’s elementary and junior high, those middle school years are not a warm-up. They are the main event.

“The ages of 10 to 14 are some of the most formative years of an individual’s life,” Messersmith said. “This is a crucial time in life, and junior highers are not to be overlooked.”

That conviction shows up in the daily, intentional work of the Spiritual Formation Office (SFO): creating space where students can hear the gospel, ask honest questions, and build genuine relationships. Messersmith put it simply, and with the kind of clarity that feels like a steady hand on a wobbly bike seat: “Everyone is being formed by something, and junior highers are incredibly formable. I strive to make sure they’re being formed by what lasts: the Holy Spirit, God’s Word, and relationships that help them grow.”

Faith and Fun, on Purpose

At VCS, spiritual formation in junior high is serious, but it is not solemn. Messersmith loves the way students are invited into a faith that is both meaningful and engaging.

“What I think makes the VCS approach to spiritual development so unique for specifically the junior high age, is the way that we combine faith and fun together,” she said. “Chapel includes fun games, stories, and lively music. Spiritual Emphasis Week includes lunchtime activities with crafts and snacks that relate to the theme and overall message.”

And then there is Convocation, the annual, outdoor, whole-community kickoff that feels less like an obligation and more like a shared exhale.

“Convocation is like a summer music festival meets church,” Messersmith said. “It is an amazing outdoor worship event where the whole Valley Christian community, students, parents, staff, alumni, teachers, friends, neighbors, gather together for an evening of encouraging worship, a message, prayer, and to spiritually kick off the school year together.”

There is dessert. There are kids sprinting across the football field. “Somehow it’s always the most beautiful sunset simultaneously happening,” she added. “It is an amazing time!”

A Question that Would Not Let Go

Programs matter, but stories make it personal. Messersmith shared a student story that has stayed close to her heart: a female student from a Hindu background, whose parents are both not Christians. 

She came as a Warrior for a Day in fifth grade and was a Shadow during a chapel message. The speaker for chapel that day was junior high teacher Mini Kommu, who happened to share her testimony of growing up Hindu and converting to Christianity. The student shared that Mrs. Kommu asked a question in her sermon of “out of the 330 million Hindu gods, how many of them died for your sins because he loved you”.

That question stuck. It stirred. It started a journey.

When the student started at VCS junior high, she found room to wrestle, room to learn, and people who would not flinch at the student’s curiosity. Through Spiritual Emphasis Weeks, Discipleship Tracks, weekly chapels, and many meetings with both Messersmith and Mrs. Kommu, she “accepted Jesus as her Savior during our Easter chapel in April 2025,” Messersmith said.

The Power of a Pathway and a Place to Belong

By the time students leave eighth grade, Messersmith often sees something beautiful happen: faith moves from inherited to owned. “A big change that we see as students move throughout junior high is that they make their faith their own,” she said.

That growth is not accidental. VCS builds weekly rhythms that help messages move from a stage to a student’s real life. One favorite addition this year is small group Bible studies inside Bible classes, where students discuss and reflect together.

And relationships remain the heartbeat. “Almost 30% of our junior high students say that they became a Christian because of a relationship with someone at Valley Christian,” Messersmith said. Junior highers,” she believes, are hungry “for a place to belong and for a place to be known without a fear of rejection.”

It is why she loves the everyday moments most: “to talk about all things, whether it be about their math test, their crush, their friendship dynamics, or what they think God is teaching them.”

Because in the middle of the loud, weird, hilarious junior high years, VCS keeps offering a steady message: you are known, you belong, and you are deeply loved.