The Leadership Project

The newly launched ‘Leadership Project’ embodies one of the key convictions that led to the establishment of Bridge Church Peckham; a desire to raise up and train young leaders who otherwise might not get access to gospel ministry training.

Wonderfully, this is a desire that’s shared with other local churches. The idea originated from our Co-Mission Cluster with Brixton Local Church (BLoC) and New Life Church Catford (NLC). Understandably, BLoC has thrown all its energies into the merger with Stockwell Baptist Church and so they’re not involved this year. But NLC is. And others are planning to join us.

New Life Church Catford co-pastor, Zim Okoli describes The Leadership Project as ‘a monthly intensive training course to prepare Christian men and women in South East London for ministry leadership’. He’s absolutely nailed it. We meet monthly on a Friday night after work at the new Globe Church space in Willcox House in Borough, central London. Our aim is to provide a number of key elements each evening.

First of all, is food. Let’s be realistic, some people are coming straight from work and they need to eat if they’re ever going to be able to concentrate! But given that lots of the course participants don’t know each other, it’s an opportunity to get to know one another and enjoy each other’s company.

Secondly, input. It’s not a lightweight curriculum that we’ve put together. We may have bitten off more than we can chew for any day of the week, let alone a Friday night! We’re working our way through 1 Timothy in leader-led expositions. We’re also exploring an interpretative tool to help us better understand and teach the Bible. Participants are required to have read a couple of chapters of a Systematic Theology coursebook and be ready to discuss key doctrinal issues in small groups. And then we have a ministry discussion.

Thirdly, ambition. We want to raise people’s aspirations for serving God in the local church and using the knowledge that they’ve gained for the benefit of others. It may well be that this serves as a stepping stone to them accessing further training at places like the Cornhill Training Course.

It’s early days. We’re only a month in. We’ve just done it once so far. And we didn’t manage to fit the doctrine discussion in because we started late and spent too long eating pizzas! But this first year is the pilot. We’ll respond to feedback and reshape it in response for next year. But it’s properly exciting.