Launching 20,000 Extraordinary Kingdom Leaders by 2020

Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada’s ten year vision statement is as follows: Launching 20,000 Extraordinary Kingdom Leaders by 2020.

What this means is that by the year 2020, Inter-Varsity hopes to have 20,000 Extraordinary Kingdom Leaders (E.K.L.) be part of and graduate from their Inter-Varsity communities and be “launched” into churches, workplaces, homes and beyond!

What defines an “Extraordinary Kingdom Leader”? Exemplary women and men who have learned to integrate their faith and life. They are people who carry their vibrant and contagious faith from our camps and campuses, to their families, churches, communities and vocations. Wherever they find themselves, they become recognized as spiritual leaders, possessing in increasing measure, a love for God, and a love for people. Inter-Varsity’s alumni are missional, committed to scripture, to prayer, and to worship. They are life-long influencers, and shapers of culture from a Kingdom paradigm. Extraordinary leaders are intentional about bringing the kingdom to whatever circles they travel in. We would describe extraordinary leaders in the following blocks: They passionately love Jesus and lay down their lives for the sake of the kingdom. They are growing in character (fruits of the spirit, ie: love, joy, peace, etc); they are becoming self aware; they are dealing with sin and hurt in their lives. They have entered into the practices: scripture, prayer, community, evangelism, generosity.

How do we hope to achieve this?

Well, the division of Inter-Varsity that I work for, Campus Ministry (which includes High School, International Students, Undergraduate and Graduate Student Ministries) is responsible for launching 10,000 of these Kingdom Leaders in the next 10 years (the other 10,000 will come from Inter-Varsity’s various Camp Ministries).

There are about 100 Campus Fellowships throughout all of Canada, and there are roughly 100 Canadian IVCF staff. In order to achieve the goal of 10,000 Extraordinary Kingdom Leaders by 2020, each fellowship would need to launch 100 E.K.L.s in total or roughly 10 E.K.L.s per year!

In order to achieve this goal, some changes need to be done in how we do ministry, we need:

– To get in the mindset that before our fellowships have 75 people, we are pioneering!

– To have a consistent invitational posture.

– To drop as much of a deadening structure as possible.

– To focus on small groups and have the large group develop from them, rather than the other way around.

– To call each other deeply (towards God and out of sin) and be intentional about our own development.

– To continuously partner with and disciple students so they disciple more students and those students disciple more students.

Exciting? Yes.

Scary? Yes!

Impossible? No. I believe it is entirely possible to achieve this goal, and even the very act of striving for an ambitious goal causes us to be BOLD and take risks that we might not take if we only worked towards an undefined goal!

Please pray for the various Inter-Varsity Campus ministers who are in the process of casting this vision to their students.