The GCF Leadership Experience is a collaborative project that grew out of the desires of local churches and ministries to nurture their children’s ministry leaders. The core planning group comprises nine people from India, South Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, USA, Canada and Australia. They represent eight significant local and global children’s ministries, all of which recognise that most churches and ministries are unable to provide this level of leadership development on their own. The group is drawn from a range of evangelical denominations.
The GCF Leadership Experience core planning group was nominated by a wider consultative group who helped to frame the Leadership Experience, its value and its content. This group represents a further seven ministries including academic institutions across three continents.
The GCF Leadership Experience serves local churches and ministries that are sharing the Good News of Jesus at grass-roots level. It seeks to strengthen their leadership and so ensure their long-term Kingdom effectiveness. At the same time, the Leadership Experience has the vision to serve the global church by helping to raise a generation of children’s ministry leadership around the world who will work together so that all children have the opportunity to experience the love and grace of Jesus, and to follow him.
While a focal point of the Leadership Experience is the time at the four-week intensive, the rest of the course is designed so that the participant can continue their full-time employment throughout the year. For some, that will be within children’s ministry, but others will have secular employment while volunteering their leadership within a church or organisation.
The Leadership Experience will intentionally link learning to the needs and experiences of the ministry to which the participant is already contributing. It will seek the advice of the ministry in which the participant is currently working so to ensure that the learning and assignments are relevant and appropriate.
The Leadership Experience is a community where a small group of passionate leaders receive focussed training from Global Ministry leaders who live with them during the Intensive Residential.
