The word “surrender” has a problem. In every context outside the church, it means defeat. You surrender when you have lost. You raise the white flag when there is nothing left. So when someone tells a driven, ambitious young person at the University of Pretoria to surrender their life to God, it sounds like they are being asked to give up.
They are not. They are being asked to trade up.
There is nothing wrong with ambition. The desire to build something, to achieve, to make a mark — these are not worldly corruptions. They are God-given impulses that, when rightly directed, build families, communities, and generations. The problem is not ambition. It is ambition that is unmoored from purpose — ambition that has no idea what it is ultimately for.
Young people in Pretoria are among the most driven on the continent. UP graduates go on to lead companies, governments, and institutions. But the pressure to perform, to succeed, to have it figured out before you graduate — it is immense. And it produces a particular kind of exhaustion that no LinkedIn achievement can fix.
To be yielded is not to be passive. It is to know whose you are before you decide who you are. It is to build your identity on something more stable than your GPA, your career, or your relationship status. It is to hold your plans loosely enough that when God redirects them, you do not shatter.
The most effective young leaders we have seen at CSCC are not the ones who had everything planned. They are the ones who gave God permission to write the plan — and then worked harder than anyone because they were working for something bigger than themselves.
Our Young & Yielded ministry exists for this generation — the ones asking the big questions, carrying the real pressure, and hungry for something more than what the world is offering. We meet, we pray, we push each other toward purpose, and we refuse to let anyone navigate this season alone.
Our annual conference is 24–26 July 2026. If you are between 18 and 35 and you are done doing this alone — come. This is for you.