By John M. De Marco

EDGEWATER — One Friday night at Edgewater United Methodist Church, the buzz was reminiscent of the “Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon” routine, a kind of game to connect nearly any movie star with almost any film featuring Bacon.

Rex Hoffman, one of the church’s youth pastors, asked the teens to stand one at a time and tell the group which other youth first invited them to the “Lost and Found” Friday night outreach event. Each youth pointed to the person who had invited him or her. Those youth, in turn, identified the people who first invited them. Eventually, the core 15 or so kids of the original youth group were recognized as the ones who had set this conspiracy of invitation and hospitality in motion.

“I believe we had 121 kids that night,” Hoffman said. “It was awesome. Everybody was clapping.”

The church averages about 250 people in attendance and is located in an area of below-average-income households in southern Volusia County. Lost and Found began about a year and a half ago after Hoffman and his wife, Sarah, also a youth leader, sat down with the core group of youth and prayerfully ironed out a call for doing things differently.

“We had a vision, both us and the youth group, that we could reach pretty much all of Edgewater,” Hoffman said. “There were so many kids not being reached as far as after-school programs or sports or anything. We figured we had a facility we could do something with.”

The Hoffmans and the youth visited other churches’ coffeehouses aimed at young people, gathering ideas as they put the Friday night program together. The program was launched, and youth group members began to invite their friends. The program now averages about 85 to 90 teens per Friday evening.

Lost and Found features a game room, multiple screens displaying Christian music videos, low-cost food prepared by a dedicated volunteer and lots of space for teens to talk or be counseled.

The Rev. Anne Godbold, the church’s senior pastor, said 60 percent to 80 percent of the kids are unchurched.

“When they first started coming to us, they didn’t have any understanding of what a church was,” Godbold said. “One Friday night a couple of boys were sitting on a table. I asked them to please get off the table. They said, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘I’m the pastor.’ They said, ‘What’s that?’ These kids are really now beginning to ask questions of faith. They consider us their church, even though they haven’t come on Sunday morning.”

The church’s spring confirmation class will involve between 10 to 15 youth, with about only four of them part of the congregation, according to Godbold.

Godbold said many of the kids coming from outside the church community are growing up in broken and painful situations. “As they share their stories with us, it’s amazing how quickly they begin to trust you as an adult, when you’re present. They kind of look at me as the mama. At the same time, I’ve had young people share stories that are just heartbreaking. We can offer them prayer and support, and we can show them that not all adults act the way they have experienced adults in their own homes.”

Some of the youth have been referred to therapists. Local police officers also have pointed out that they have observed fewer teens loitering in the area on Friday nights, as well as a reduction in juvenile crime.

Last year, Edgewater’s senior high youth went on a spring break mission trip to the Bahamas and led Bible studies, while middle schoolers worked on homes in the Tampa community. This year the senior high group will lead Bible studies in Daytona Beach during spring break.