CiC young Christian leaders' programme

CiC young Christian leaders' programme, September 2020 - August 2021

The Bible, church history and often our own personal experience, teaches us that God calls young people in every generation to take steps of faith for the advancement of His kingdom. Perhaps, like me, you can remember God's invitation and stirring in your heart when you were a teenager to lead or pioneer.

Here at CiC we are aware that there is a new generation of ambitious young people who are responding to God's call and seeking to impact the world. Last year, we became aware of the Lord prompting us to adapt our provision to meet the needs of emerging Christian leaders and support them to realise their vision.

This became a key focus of our residential in 2019 and CiC President, Hugh Osgood, used his keynote address to inspire us to work together to identify Christian young leaders and welcome them into our network. You can listen to the message here (scroll down to recordings from 2019 and listen to number 5).

We were amazed at your response. In total, members pledged just over £8,000, to enable us to pursue three objectives:

  1. appoint an Ambassador to recruit Christian young leaders;

  2. provide age-specific events;

  3. offer an incentivised approach to prospective members.


Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we had to postpone the Christian young leaders' programme and focus our energy on responding to the immediate needs of our members. However, we are pleased to announce that the Christian young leaders programme is now in operation for the next 12-months, with a view to several aspects continuing in the longer term.

There are several aspects that we want to draw to your attention.

Defining 'Christian young leaders'
The term 'young', particularly in church circles, is somewhat nebulous! Many of you have complimented me on my youthfulness, and with my 40th birthday in sight, I am entirely grateful for such encouragement! In reality though, we are looking for those who, are aged 18-25, have a sense of calling to some kind of Christian ministry, and desire to meet and journey with other, like minded individuals.

Christian young leaders Ambassador
Although I will be helping to lead this work, we seek to recruit one or two passionate, existing members of CiC, who are actively serving young leaders, and have a heart to help us nationally.

To find out more about this volunteer opportunity, please follow this link.

Christian young leaders online event
To provide an initial opportunity for Christian young leaders to meet with us to find out more about CiC and how we can help, we are hosting an online meeting on 3rd November at 19:30.

Please share this link with your young leaders and encourage them to attend.

Although the agenda has not yet been finalised, we sense it will be very much a time to explore with attendees how they, with support from CiC, can best inspire each other to enter into all that God has promised.

CiC Christian young leaders' membership option
In addition to creating capacity within CiC's staff team to pursue the above, the offering provided at the residential last year has enabled us to offer a free membership option to Christian young leaders for 12 months. We anticipate that many will join after the first event on 3rd November, but there may be individuals within your church, ministry or organisation that wish to join sooner.

So we now have a dedicated membership option that is live on our website, which you can access here.

How can you support the young leaders programme?

  1. Fulfil your pledge. If you made a financial commitment at the 2019 residential to support this work, but have not yet sent us your gift, please do so through this link to our dedicated fund.

  2. Advertise the Ambassador opportunity to any members you have who are working with young adults.

  3. Promote the young leaders online event in your organisation.

  4. Direct any young leaders who are interested in CiC to our website.


Finally, and most importantly, please pray for the success of this programme. Currently, CiC has just one minister under the age of 30, and the majority of our members are aged between 45 and 65.

Let's believe God together that, through this programme, we can welcome a new generation of individuals into membership and journey together.

Thank you for your support.

Yours in Christ Jesus,
Paul Garratt

CiC International