What is Cross-Current?

What is Cross-Current?

The basic idea

Cross-Current is a network of learning communities, small groups scattered and connected that commit to learning with each other for two or three years.

Some of these groups are international and drawn together round specific professions, others are in specific locations drawing together people from any profession.

Within the groups the idea is to learn together, to be inspired to live differently for Jesus in our workplace, and to support each other between meetings.

What is involved in being part of Cross-Current?

Each group meets six times over two to three years. Meetings are for a whole weekend - sometimes starting Thursday night and sometimes starting Friday night, always finishing on Sunday afternoon. You need to be able to commit to the group, although we appreciate that sometimes life circumstances can change over three years.

Besides being at the meetings the group members should support each other between meetings with either physical or online meetings. There may also be some further reading for the groups to undertake.

What could I expect?

We want to help you grow in your understanding of the Bible, your relationship with God and your ability to see what difference living for Jesus makes in your specific work context.

Our weekends contain a mixture of Bible teaching, group study, case studies, personal reflection, peer mentoring, prayer and of course fun!

Cross-Current weekends are usually residential.

Who is Cross-Current for?


Cross-Current is for people who want to see how to live and speak for Jesus in their work environment; people who want to understand the difference it makes to say 'Jesus is Lord' on Monday morning as well as on Sunday morning; people hungry to grow as children of the living God.

What's the difference between Professional and City groups?

Professional groups are formed round an older believer in a specific professional field who has agreed to help the group learn to think how the gospel affects their own area of expertise. So the group for lawyers works with Sir Jeremy Cooke (retired High Court Judge UK) and focuses on how Christians can think about the legal profession, using our Cross-Current curriculum as a foundation.

City groups are set in one fixed location and draw together people from any profession or post-graduate field. These groups work exclusively through our Cross-Current curriculum, which is outlined below on this page. The group focus here is on growing Christlike character in our individual workplaces whatever profession we are part of.

What if there is no Cross-Current group for me?

If you are interested in being part of a Cross-Current group but there isn't one in your profession or your location, please click here to contact us and let us know. Sadly we cannot guarantee to help, but we may be able to connect you with others also interested in starting new groups.

To get involved explore our Cross-Current groups

Cross-Current Curriculum

Serving: redeeming work

Work is God’s plan and pleasure long before it becomes something we do. He makes us in his image and likeness to be creative, to take responsibility in the world, and to provide for others. How do we bring this perspective on work into our Monday-Friday routine?
Whatever you do work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord not for human masters…It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” Colossians 3:23-24

Related Reading >>>

Love: redeeming work relationships

The aim of salvation is for us to be reconciled to God, living in an ever-growing relationship with him. The God who made us made us for relationships, made us for love - to love him and to love each other - even our colleagues, bosses and rivals at work. How can we learn to do this effectively and without compromising our work?
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength...love your neighbour as you love yourself.” Mark 12:30-31

Related Reading >>>

Integrity: redeeming trust

Righteousness is part of God’s character and being righteous involves choosing what is morally best for any other person or community at any time. As Jesus’ followers this is not an optional extra, but it can be difficult to live out in our workplace when the culture is stacked against us.
For God made him who was without sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

Related Reading >>>

Generosity: redeeming money

Everything we have is from God, for God and can bring glory to him and blessings to others. That includes money. How can we learn to see money and possessions the way Jesus saw them?
The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” Psalm 24:1

Related Reading >>>

Humility: redeeming ambition

Christians can be shy of ambition. Is that how it should be? How can we seek excellence in everything we do and dream the biggest dreams, whilst at the same time view our identity and achievements in the light of our Eternal God’s majesty, beauty and power?
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:6-7

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Beneficial purpose: living and working for Jesus

In this module we bring together all that we have learnt so far to define a clearer mission for our lives. If we have 90,000 hours of work ahead of us, how does Jesus want us to use the skills he has given us to the maximum benefit of his creation?
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” Hebrews 12:1-2

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Cross-Current Distinctives

Authentic

The aim of Cross-Current is to help young Christian professionals become more effective ‘ambassadors for Christ’ in their workplaces (a phrase Paul uses to describe himself in 2 Corinthians 5:20). Ambassadors are official envoys who represent their country in the place they have been posted. In order to do their job well, they need to represent their own country well but also be aware of the culture they live in, not causing offence unnecessarily. The same principle can be applied to Christians in the workplace: we are called to be an authentic witness to Christ: to work to the best of our ability and to sensitively engage with the people and culture we live in. At work, most of the people we spend our day with know very little about Jesus and his good news. To be effective ambassadors, we need to know how to gently and consistently show the difference Jesus makes in our lives. Cross-Current aims to help young professionals grow in their ability to live as signposts to Jesus by being authentic witnesses and living lives of integrity.

Contextual

The transition into working life can be a time of great turmoil: new faces, new places, new expectations and a new questioning of whatever people thought was true beforehand. Of course you want to do your job well, to impress your colleagues, but often it can be hard to reconcile this new world-of-work with your trust in Jesus. This context, with all its pressures and uncertainties is the place where God has put young Christian professionals to make a difference, to be salt and light. No church minister can easily go into our workplaces, and most of our colleagues will not step into a church. But when we go to work we have the amazing privilege of being Jesus’ representative - his ambassador - in that specific context at that specific time! In Cross-Current we work from theology to practical application in each participant’s own work context. In this way the Cross-Current group becomes a praying support group for each of its members wherever they work.

Consistent

The way we behave and the things we say are influenced both by our worldview (the unshakeable beliefs about life and the universe) and by the culture in which we have grown up and in which we now live and work. Integrity is when the fruit of our lives - what we say and do - is consistent with the root of our lives - what we claim to believe. If you planted an appleseed in the ground and came back twenty years later, you would expect to find a beautiful apple tree in exactly that same spot. But if you found a banana tree there instead, you would know something had gone wrong! It’s the same for our lives. What we say and do should be directly linked to what we claim to believe as Christians.

Theological

Cross-Current begins with God. We want to know our God better and to see his character as part of our worldview: he is good, generous, just, loving and so much more. If we created a series of rules on good Christian living, they might work in one context but not another. But if we focus on the character of God, we learn from his character about how to live in different circumstances. Our prayer is that his Holy Spirit would open the eyes of our hearts and minds to know him better. As we get to know him better, he will begin to transform our values, vision and virtues to be more like his.

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Professional Groups

These are mentoring groups within specific professions where 12-16 people commit to meet together twice a year for three years to learn from older believers how to think Christianly about their professions.

Within each group we are privileged to have an older believer with a working lifetime of experience thinking through their profession from a biblical perspective. We call these friends our Inspirers because we are asking them to inspire the next generation of Christians within their professional field to learn to use their intellect to think through the impact of their Christian faith on their profession. Since 2012 we have run more than 20 different Professional Groups for young adults from Europe and the former Soviet Union.

This is a unique mentoring experience where you can benefit from a lifetime of biblical wisdom passed on to you. Explore the different groups we have been running and get in touch.

City Groups

City Groups are mentoring groups for young Christian professionals, drawing together people from different occupations who live in the same area. The aim is to help them become more effective ambassadors for Christ in their workplaces, professions and societies by encouraging them to stand firm in their faith, develop mature Christian character, and grow in awareness of the opportunities to bring Christian influence. Each group makes a commitment to meet for 6 weekends over 2 or 3 years, and to support each other in peer mentoring conversations between these meetings. Find out more about the content of the Cross-Current program here.

Browse our list of current City Groups below. If you can't find one in your home town please contact us to see if we're planning to start one near you soon. If you'd like to set up a group yourself we're always looking for more local leaders and will provide you with all the training and support you need to start a new group.

If you'd like to join a group, please fill in the form below.

No group for you? Click here to tell us how we can help.
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Pray with us

If you came on this page you might be someone who practices prayer and wants to pray. Wonderful! There is something fundamentally wrong if we perceive our prayer time as a distraction from our daily business, duties, work; if we pray only to scream “SOS” to heaven! We come in prayer to understand God’s heart for people, and for this world, his calling, to see his loving care and to glorify him. 

We really appreciate you praying with us for the next generation of young professionals. It is the main thing – and the best thing – we can do together in partnership with God. It is not just about trying to get something from God so we can do the work, it is about asking that his will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Our workplaces are a vast wasteland where the Gospel needs to become real. Christians in different professional fields are representatives of God’s kingdom in their work. This is the mission field where missionaries are not pastors or youth leaders, or any kind of cleric, but Christian professionals. Here are some ways you can pray:  

First, please pray about your own faith and for the people you are working with, that they will see God in your life and will open their hearts to receive him and his love.
Second, remember in your prayers the emerging generation of young Christian professionals. On behalf of them, ask God that they will understand God’s calling in their work and will learn to live as signposts to Jesus, pointing those around them towards him, through the way they speak and the way they live at work. 
Third, pray for multiplication in this ministry, both for the identification of future group leaders throughout Europe and Eurasia, and also the ability to serve other countries who want our help to prepare their young professionals for a life of serving Jesus at and through work.
Fourth, please pray for our practical needs: for safety when travelling, for safety of families back home, for the Lord to provide the funds and the advocacy we need to achieve the potential of this work. For more information about our financial needs, please visit
DONATE.
Fifth, please have a look at our DIARY page to see what meetings are coming up. Pray for the Lord to use us to serve his people in order that his glory may be known and his kingdom come in the different places where our people live and work.

We will post prayer letters up on this website, but if you would like to be added to the list to receive prayer updates 3-4 times a year, please fill in the CONTACT form.

Thank you for your partnership in this work. Here is a quote from a recent email from one of our stuff in Eurasia: “In these years of prayers I was thinking a lot about graduates from our ministry. Most of them lost their faith in Christ after graduation as they moved to a new stage in their life because they couldn’t find support for their faith from a Christian community. Some of them became nominal Christians because of lack of support in church, some of them became agnostics or atheists because there is no strong intellectual group of believers who will discuss with them deep questions, some of them became Muslims because of the pressure in their workplace or persecution from their own family. Seeing all these needs of graduates, I feel a deep passion, urge and spiritual desire from God to serve graduates not only in my country but also in neighbouring countries where I have a lot of friends among Christian graduates, and they have the same struggles and issues as graduates in my country.”

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Help us invest in the future...

Cross-Current is helping the next generation of Christian adults learn how to address the major issues of our time within their professional contexts from a Christian perspective.

We believe this work is vital to provide a robust Christian influence capable of speaking with clarity into the sectors that will shape future society.

We are currently working with around 500 young adults from 25 European and Eurasian countries, and have been invited to develop new work in 18 more countries outside Europe and Eurasia. Within 1 year we will be working with more than 1,500 young adults.

Because of the residential nature of the work, and the significant disparity in relative wealth from one part of the world to another, we often need to provide scholarships for participants. In addition we need to raise all the staff costs and operating expenses for our team.

This work is independently financed within IFES and we need your help.

No gift is ever too small!
We appreciate your help.
Click here to donate through the IFES World website