Timotheus Pope won’t soon forget his first meeting with Lancaster Bible College President Dr. Tommy Kiedis.

But many days prior to that initial connection, through some brainstorming and prayer, an idea begin to formulate between Pope and former LBC Director of Calling & Career Development Derek Melleby. Wouldn’t it be great, they thought, if Citikidz could also be a conduit for students to develop as leaders and as people, then carry that influence into strategic practice at LBC to complete post-secondary education?

2025 LBC Commencement speaker and Citikidz CEO Timotheus Pope

“It was one of those times when the Lord spoke so loudly,” Pope remembers.

Eventually, further introductions led to the meeting with Pope, Kiedis and other leaders. While explaining the Citikidz mission and his vision for a gap year partnership with LBC, Pope referenced John 17, where Jesus — just hours before his arrest and ultimate crucifixion – prayed earnestly that He would be glorified, as well as for His disciples and all believers.

What happened next left an indelible mark on everyone in the room.

“With tears in his eyes,” Pope recalls, “Dr. Kiedis reached out his hand and said, ‘When can we start?’”

Familiar with LBC over several years, Pope remarks that the college “is not afraid to change.” Coupled with his own passion for diversity in business – not only multiethnic but also multicultural, multigeneration and multiclass – Pope appreciates LBC’s biblical vision for diversity found in Revelation 7:9-10: “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (ESV)

“That comes with friction, it comes with tension and pressure,” Pope says of the Revelation passage, “but so does beautiful music. There’s not an instrument that can be played without tension, friction and pressure.”

The Value of Partnerships

After his 2004 college graduation from Mary Washington College in Virginia, Pope worked at the well-known camp ministry, Summer’s Best Two Weeks, which today is the parent ministry for Citikidz. Soon after, Pope learned more about urban ministry from Kids Across America in Missouri with the intent to return to the East Coast, marry the two models and create a camp for urban youth in America. This September, Pope will mark 21 years with Summer’s Best.

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a huge fan of partnerships,” Pope says. “I don’t believe in reinventing the wheel if you have an opportunity to partner with people.”

To illustrate this, when he started in ministry, Pope was trained by both Kids Across America and Summer’s Best Two Weeks. He was the “prototype,” per se, to test if the marriage between these two models – the Summer’s Best competitive model and Kids Across America’s urban model – could work.

“And the answer was yes!” Pope shares.

Training Tomorrow’s Leaders

Today, centered in southwestern Pennsylvania, Pope has built a leadership program within Citikidz, an urban camp experience where students not only train hard in athletics but also learn leadership skills. Citikidz’ Kaleo program reaches leaders who are already making a difference in their spheres of influence, such as parents, coaches, heads of ministry, volunteers and staff from after-school programs and churches, and more. The Kaleo ministry equips these leaders with further training while the students in their programs, as well as their own children, experience what Citikidz offers.

“We see a picture of the kingdom, a picture of the body – multiethnic, multicultural, multigenerational, multiclass – I love it,” Pope shares.

Pope and his wife, Kendra, are the parents of eight children, ages 2 to 17, including their 13-year-old son who passed away in January 2025. Besides his passion for fatherhood, Pope yearns to build up young leaders, and this hunger was on full display for LBC students during chapel talks in both 2023 and 2025. On May 3, he returned to LBC to help celebrate the largest graduating class in college history through his Commencement address, “Down to Business,” reminding graduates of three ideas:

1. I’m not qualified

2. I’m not unqualified

3. I don’t want to be disqualified.

“This was the most honest, transparent, vulnerable way for me to communicate – I’m not qualified to speak at Commencement,” he says of the talk that was grounded in I Corinthians 9. “I don’t have a PhD, I don’t have a master’s degree, I’m not qualified. But because of the blood of Jesus and because of His Holy Spirit working in me, God has given me opportunity. And there are tons of people who think you have to have a certain something in order to be used by God. … Even though I’m not qualified in the world’s eyes, or even sometimes in my own eyes because of what the world says, I’m not unqualified because of who God says I am.”

These same principles apply to his passion for Citikidz. With a goal of 48 students this fall, the new gap year program is housed in western Pennsylvania, where students will take 27 college credits – nine specific LBC courses facilitated by Citikidz instructors – toward their post-secondary education, hopefully, in Pope’s eyes, at Lancaster Bible College. The desire is to help shape the students’ perspectives of life and calling, “so as they pursue post-secondary education, if they choose to, they are not wasting time or money,” Pope says. “They know exactly what they want to do, they know where they want to go, and they’ve met business owners who will help them do what they want to do.

“We’re trying to help people understand that God is the inventor of all these things,” Pope continues. “God is the creator of business, science, psychology, sociology, anthropology – He knows it all. So we want to make sure that our students understand that if He knows it all, we should be better at business as believers than anybody. I want Citikidz to be the epicenter for where people go when they need to find a leader.”