What is the National Young Catholic Leaders?

The National Young Catholic Leaders is a high school & early college organization that encourages members to go out into the world and share their faith. More than 130 members are invited to a monthly webinar series featuring powerful speakers like Sarah Swafford and Curtis Martin, along with testimonies from fellow NYCL members their age.

After the main session, members, who are scattered all across the US, build personal connections through virtual small groups, called "squads," who challenge each other through prayer and discipleship to go out and invite others into the mission and the Church.

Who participates in NYCL?

NYCL pulls from a number of groups and summer programs, such as Wyoming Catholic College's PEAK programs, Franciscan LEAD, and the Archdiocese of Denver's BASIC team. Individuals are also encouraged to join and invite their friends to come and learn to share their faith as well.

To learn more about any actively participating group, or to apply yourself, click the buttons below.

History

It started with a prank...

NYCL began with our founder, Sam Bartek, who was a member of quite a few Catholic ministry groups. After a particularly eventful Steubenville of the Rockies in 2023, which he spent sprinting around the massive Gaylord of the Rockies Resort to meet up with a lot of Catholic friends, Sam thought it would be funny to prank all of the friends he had made from these ministry groups by putting them into one giant Zoom meeting. It was through this that the National Young Catholic Leaders collective was born.

He started researching Zoom's limits in order to bring this prank to life, and over the next week he realized the idea's potential for a webinar series. Being incredibly active in the young Church, he saw immense potential for evangelization in his friends and sought to deploy them to go share the Gospel. In a matter of weeks, his train of thought developed into much more than a prank, and it became a virtual, nationwide group primed towards high school evangelization. 

The first season of sessions will open with 19 small groups, around 136 members, and eight speakers.