Territorial Youth Department Launches EQUIP Online

Beginning with the Territorial Youth Workers Conference (TYWC) and now the EQUIP conference, the Southern Territorial Youth Department has been facilitating in-person gatherings for decades with the aim to inspire, encourage, and train current and future youth leaders of The Salvation Army. In May 2025, they launched a new and valuable digital resource, EQUIP Online, with that same goal of strengthening the youth leadership forces in the South and beyond.

Majors Matt and Jamie Satterlee, territorial youth secretaries, began to dream of an online catalog of training resources while serving on staff at National Headquarters. They garnered consistent feedback from the field on leadership growth and development as one of the central and ongoing challenges of youth ministry.

“We want our youth leaders to feel confident in their ministry, and we want them to feel empowered,” says Major Jamie Satterlee. “This is a way that we can help them to feel the best prepared that they can be. Whatever we can do to help a person feel more comfortable and confident and empowered in their ministry just leads to more effective youth ministry and effective discipleship.”

“Divisions schedule local officer training sessions, and we have the in-person EQUIP Conference every other year,” Major Matt Satterlee adds. “However, this is too infrequent to really support the building up of our local officers in youth ministry. EQUIP Online will really change the game.”

EQUIP Online is a growing catalog of training courses and other assets for local officers, volunteers, soldiers, young adults, and corps officers of The Salvation Army. EQUIP Online courses are also cost-free and available beyond the geography of the Southern Territory, with Emma Edelman, territorial ministry leadership development & camp program coordinator, serving as the principal contact for the initiative.

“We can help the youth leaders across the territory to feel like they know what they’re talking about and to help them know what they need to do,” Edelman says. “Also, we can help them to lead, teach, and disciple our kids.”

“We have already seen soldiers outside our territory take advantage of this training,” says Major Matt Satterlee. “Our hope is to see trained, holy, spiritually mature local officers in youth ministry leading every young person in the Southern Territory to be saved by Jesus, discipled by Jesus, and made holy in Jesus.”

EQUIP Online courses are housed in Litmos, a learning management software (LMS) that also hosts Safe From Harm training, the territory’s method and curriculum for ensuring the safety of children and vulnerable adults in our programs. Six training sessions, including titles like “Young Adult Ministry 101” and “Foundations of Trauma Informed Care,” are available now, with several more in development.

The Territorial Youth Department is also working with the School for Leadership Development at the Evangeline Booth College to provide continuing education units (CEUs) for some of their courses. All training sessions can be accessed anytime and anywhere, and they are tailored to fit the needs of Salvation Army leaders, with an express focus on Salvation Army ministry and programming.

“The plan is to add new courses to the catalog on a quarterly basis,” says Edelman. “We want to develop a robust curriculum that covers many different ages, programs, and topics.”

Courses are written and developed primarily by the Territorial Youth Department, though they plan to include other Salvation Army personnel, as well as experts from outside the organization. Most courses can be completed in less than one hour, and the training sessions are selfpaced with the ability to pause and restart as needed. These courses can also be repeated at the discretion of the trainee, and a mobile app allows for courses to be taken while on the go.

“We encourage the field to provide feedback, as well as any ideas or suggestions for future courses,” says Edelman. “Our priority is to ensure courses are meeting the needs of the field.”

One of the overarching goals and prayers of the Territorial Youth Department is that each corps in the territory have a YPSM (young persons’ sergeant major), a corps cadet counselor, and a junior soldier sergeant. Major Matt Satterlee references this as a “big, ‘only-God-can-dothis prayer,’” and he indicates that EQUIP Online is “one way we are stepping out in faith that the Lord can and will answer it.”

Registration and additional information for EQUIP Online can be accessed through the QR code or by visiting youthdownsouth.org/registration-equip.

“We may not see the fruit of what we do today, tomorrow, a year from now, or ever. We may never directly see it, but God is using it,” Edelman says. “We have to trust that no matter what we are doing and however we are pouring into people who we are discipling, God is using that for good. We want to really focus on that and give you as many tools as possible to be able to continue to pour into our young people.”