Stepping Into a New Season of Leadership - Mark Watson
In September 2025 I formally took on a new role for me as Centre Director. Having started my journey into youth ministry as an 18 year on a gap year with Cambridge & District Youth for Christ, it’s both an honour, a privilege and also slightly surreal to now be sitting here writing as the director. Whilst a big step up, God has, as ever, been so good and faithful in calling me into this role and positioning people around me who are incredible sources of wisdom and encouragement.
In the midst of challenging times for recruiting youth ministers in the UK, it has been such an answer to prayer to welcome Clare Cronin as our new Senior Ministry Manager in September 2025. She has a wealth of youth work experience and has settled brilliantly into the team.
Over the past few years, we have been developing a new vision and goals for our work. This culminated in October where we held a vision launch and commissioning event. It was a huge encouragement to me personally, and a great opportunity to gather many who know and love Youth for Christ and members of our team to worship, pray and lay out our future plans. I am hugely grateful for those from St John’s who travelled from Birmingham to be part of this special event.
Our vision is to offer every young person in Cambridge & District a pathway to fulness of life in Jesus. You can find out more about our vision and goals here… https://cambridgeyfc.uk/our-vision/
I have been trying to take the opportunities that come with stepping up into this new role to meet with local church leaders and visit them on a Sunday to share more about who we are as Cambridge Youth for Christ and chat about how we can serve the local church. I have already had the opportunity to share and preach at a number of local churches with more coming up in the diary so I would appreciate your prayers for these. I would also love prayer as I continue to settle into this new role.
Fort Rocky
In February we drove the A11 to Eaton Vale just outside of Norfolk for Fort Rocky 2026. We took 43 young people with us who are connected to 11 different churches and projects across Cambridge and St Neots.
Our theme for the weekend was Fort Rocky: Race Across the World. Think travel, backpacking, maps and exploration. Every great journey has a departure, a destination and a journey in the middle. We used this to unpack the Good News of Jesus and the ideas of God at the beginning, God in the middle and God at the end. It was a privilege and joy to see three young people stand up on Saturday evening to say they wanted to follow Jesus for the first time, with another 21 young people standing to recommit their lives to Him.
Alongside testimonies from our young leaders, great talks, lots of fun and games there was plenty of time for the youth workers who had brought their young people to connect with them in small groups to pray together and discuss the theme of the weekend.
As ever the great British weather was unpredictable. The rain held off for us on Friday and we had a gloriously sunny day on Saturday for our wide games, climbing activities and the football cage. Sunday brought a change in weather with heavy snow for about 45 minutes which started laying on the ground. Whilst the young people rejoiced and excitement levels rose; the team were working out what we would in the eventuality we got snowed in. Thankfully the roads were clear and safe to travel home on.
Please pray that Fort Rocky has an ongoing impact on youth leaders and young people in their local churches and communities.
Open House
For the last few years, we have been delivering our mentoring programme in a secondary school in the south of the city. This is run in partnership with a local church. Over the last year we have been dreaming with them about setting up an open access youth drop in after school one night of the week in the local church as a safe space for young people to promote positive wellbeing, build healthy relationships and share the love of Jesus. Excitingly, we were able to launch this new Drop In in September 2025. It started with small numbers but has been consistently growing and now has around 15 young people every Wednesday evening. This is a mixture of young people we have met in the school and through the mentoring programme and some from the local community alongside some of the young people already members of the local church. We are excited to see how this could grow and opportunities to build deeper community. Please pray for opportunities to share the love of Jesus in this space through our actions and words. Pray for curiosity and questions from young people that lead faith conversations.
In our city centre Drop In we have been experimenting with our faith exploration group called Discover. Having done this only on a Thursday evening previously this term, we have started offering Discover for 30 minutes after each drop in. Young people are welcome to leave but if they choose to stay, we offer them a free hot chocolate and then have an opportunity to open up faith conversations. We have been using a great resource from British Youth for Christ called Yetti. Using topic and image cards, questions, captions, and prompts, Yetti covers a whole range of themes, from superheroes and climate change, to dating, and time-travel. The wonder of Yetti is that it isn’t just a fun game to provide everyone a ‘jolly good’ time, but also a resource that can be used to connect with God, wherever young people may be in their faith.
In January 2026 we launched our mentoring programme into a third secondary school in partnership with two local churches from that area. This is a school which has huge
amounts need and is in one of the poorest areas of the city. We have approached them previously and have long dreamed of having a presence in the school. We approached them again in the autumn of 2025 and God has answered prayers in opening the door for us. The programme has only been running a few months but has been really well received by the school.
As ever, I am hugely grateful to the support from St John’s. It is a constant encouragement to me, and I know that your prayers are powerful in the work we do.