Equipping and Growing Leaders
Each month, we send out a note from Erik reflecting on life in the church, current happenings, and more.
June 19, 2026
Dear City Church,
There’s something you should know about if you don’t already. It’s City Church’s Emerging Leaders Program. We launched this program about two years ago with the purpose of equipping and growing leaders for a variety of roles within God’s church and God’s kingdom. (You can read this blog post that introduced the program two years ago.)
Almost two years in, the Emerging Leaders Program has exceeded our expectations. First, God has provided a great cohort of emerging leaders in unexpected ways. Repeatedly, God has dropped people into City Church’s lap, asking us simply to be faithful towards those leaders he has supplied. Second, these emerging leaders have made a larger-than-anticipated impact on the life of our church, helping us expand ministry programs and provide key support to our existing staff.
Components of the Program
As you may remember, the Emerging Leaders Program at City Church has three components: Ministry Interns, Seminary Fellows, and Pastoral Residents.
Ministry Interns are men and women who serve part-time within the church, typically working between 2-10 hours/week. We’ve had college students and working professionals serve as ministry interns. This past ministry year, we had the following interns:
Justin Barnett, serving as our Children’s Ministry Intern, working closely alongside Katherine to provide discipleship to our 3rd-5th grade boys.
Faith Cho, serving as an Administrative Intern and supervised by Val Catrow, supporting the operational aspects of our church life.
Ben Owen, serving as a Youth Intern, under the direction of Adam Bailey, carrying out relational discipleship with middle and high school boys.
Seminary Fellows are men and women enrolled in an accredited seminary program, seeking real-world ministry experience as a complement to their academic training. Our seminary fellows have been the biggest surprise within our Emerging Leaders Program. This last year, we’ve had 3 seminary fellows:
Jessie Clapp, enrolled in a remote Master's program at Covenant Seminary, has developed our Twenty-Somethings ministry and also provided key support to the nascent RUF (Reformed University Fellowship) ministry at the University of Richmond.
Rachel Koh, enrolled in a virtual-learning counseling program at Westminster Seminary, has used her administrative skills to bring organization to several areas of the church, including our City Groups.
Nelson Zotoo, enrolled in a hybrid M.Div program at RTS-DC, is a full-time student who is gaining ministry experience preaching and teaching at City Church.
In addition to meeting regularly with their direct ministry supervisors, all of these Emerging Leaders meet for a combined cohort meeting once a month. Harrison, our Associate Pastor, leads these cohort meetings, offering training in Biblical, systematic, and practical theology. A big part of the cohort meetings is discussion of City Church’s theological vision—that is, why we do the things we do. Our hope is that through these discussions, we are replicating City Church’s DNA in the next generation of church leaders.
Although we haven’t had a candidate yet for the final part of the Emerging Leaders Program, later this year, we hope to identify and place our first Pastoral Resident. We want to help develop men who feel called to pastoral ministry, knowing that the academic training of seminary is best paired with practical ministry training in the local church. We also expect that a robust pastoral resident program will catalyze more church planting around Richmond. Although not all pastoral residents will end up feeling called to church planting and although not all pastoral residents will stay in Richmond long-term, we hope and expect that some will.
Support for the Program
To ensure the continued growth of City Church’s Emerging Leaders Program, we need your help.
First, we need you to recommend it to people who might be a good fit. This coming fall, we plan to have three ministry interns serving alongside our staff: one in Children’s Ministry, one in Youth Ministry, and one in Administration. We also hope to welcome a couple of high school-aged interns who will support our youth ministry. To grow the leadership pipeline for the church requires an earlier start than we’ve thought in the past—reaching into college and even high school.
Second, the Emerging Leaders Program requires resources—both financial and human. Because of the limited hours they work and their direct service in operational ministry areas of City Church, most of our Ministry Interns and Seminary Fellows are paid from the Personnel line of the City Church budget. In our upcoming FY’27 budget, the Emerging Leaders Program will add about $40,000 to our personnel line.
Given his unique visa situation as an international student, Nelson Zotoo is unable to legally work in the United States. Therefore, City Church has budgeted $35,000 for the next two fiscal years to support Nelson. This support pays his tuition at RTS-DC and provides a monthly living stipend (covering housing and food). City Church is committed to raising this support outside of our operating budget. If you would like to give a designated gift in support of our Emerging Leaders Program, you can do so through our giving portal or simply by including a note to that effect on the memo of a check.
As our Emerging Leaders Program expands, we also need human resources—namely, men and women who are willing to provide mentoring support to all of these leaders. While day-to-day supervision of their work comes from City Church staff and theological instruction comes from Harrison, these Emerging Leaders will benefit from church members who can help them discern their specific ministry callings.
God’s Varied Grace
Last Sunday, I preached about how we all must act as “good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10). The long-term success of the Emerging Leaders Program at City Church will take the gifts and support of our whole congregation. We need your help. Consider this my asking for your help. Perhaps you have a recommendation for someone who’d be a perfect candidate for our program. Perhaps you can give money to help offset our costs. Perhaps you can give your time to help mentor some of these young people.
Whatever it is, the formation of the next generation of church leaders takes all of us. I hope you’ll take some time to consider the role you can play.
Stay Well & Do Good,
Erik