What I’d Love to See at a Conference…
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Sun, June 01, 2008
- Viewed 160
OK... here's the deal. I'm in the planning stages for a huge conference for 2009; and we really want to make this thing pop. The topic is church leadership and church innovation. Of course, there are a multitude of conferences out there right now dealing with leadership and innovation. This one has to be different, and I'd love your help. What would you like to see at a conference that has never been done? Content-wise. Innovation-wise. Networking-wise. I'd love to hear your ideas. Please leave them in the comments section! And thanks!
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Derek on Mon, June 02, 2008
Todd,
I would love to see a conference with resources for smaller churches. Peter is right. There is little in terms of methodology for smaller churches in smaller communities.
It would be great to hear a presenter from a healthy (growing?) church in a smaller area, a church in the 150-250 attendance range. The presentations don’t need to be “how to grow your church to 500” either, just some methdological/missiological strategies in a smaller church context.
I am pastoring a church of about 100 in a town of 18,000 with a declining population. If I am going to spend $300 to attend a conference, what is it that I can put in my tool box that will help my church?
And then follower up the presentation with small groups. As Frank mentioned above, I would love to connect with smaller church pastors in rural areas. Small group interaction is a plus, because I don’t attend conferences with my staff. Large church pastors who take their staff to these conferences have an automatic small group. Small church pastors, like myself don’t.
Presentation are great, but we need a forum to hash out the ideas with other pastors in similar contexts.
Derek
Krister on Mon, June 02, 2008
Hmmm…. always wanted to see Prophetic Belly Dancing!
Peter on Mon, June 02, 2008
I tend to agree with Peter Hamm - something for the smaller church bodies. Those make up the majority of congregations in the US, but are pretty much ignored when it comes to conferences. Showing how mega-church XYZ does something is all well and good, but it needs to apply to the smaller congregations or you’re pretty much just chasing after the wind.
And yes, discipleship is a great idea. So is how to get your congregation excited about evangelism and local outreach. We’re pretty much huddle groups waiting for people to come to us at this point. That needs to change or the local church is going to die even more than we have been in the last 20-30 years. We’re not relevant, there’s not much evidence of real life change, and we really, really look just like the world (or worse). Why would people care about the local church if we look and act just like the unchurched?
Jan on Mon, June 02, 2008
I recently led worship at a pastor’s conference in the Northwest. My husband was asked to teach a session and he chose “Growing a Dynamic Youth Ministry in the Small Church”
His was the most attended session.
We have been in large and small church ministry. We have often commented that most conferences now are just about worthless to us because they tend to be taught by those in “successful” large churches. Most churches are well under a thousand. But most conferences are led by pastors of large churches. And honestly, unless it’s a topic about the heart, there isn’t a lot there for the small church leader. Small churches are just a different animal, and I say that as someone who has “successfully” served in both as a staff member, not just a pastor’s wife.
When we came to this church, our worship leader immediately quit, handed me a stack of spit track cd’s and said “It’s yours”
I was the ONLY person who could possibly lead worship. I had an overhead projector, some handwritten lyrics that looked like you know what, a stack of split tracks and me. Sure I had 15 years of voice lessons behind me, but a solo worship leader I was not.
It took me 3 years to get it together, and do it well and train a team.
That’s the kind of story I want to hear from others. How did you do it, when you had nothing, not even a budget?
How did you get through the tough stuff? How did you get a church going when all you had were 18 people who misled you from the beginning and told you how they wanted to grow the church, but really meant they wanted YOU to grow the church?
I had a really funny story told to me from another pastor. He was saying how he went to a conference and the main speaker, from a large church in the south, was going to speak on evangelism. He was excited and got out his notebook, ready to hear and learn.
The speaker then proceeded to tell how he had this great plan for connecting with visitors that centered around having a golf cart in the church parking lot.
The greeter in the golf cart would approach the visitor, find out their names, welcome them, then take off and quickly radio someone at the door who would greet the visitors again at the door by name. Wow, weren’t they impressed.?! The speaker’s conclusion, no lie was “Every church can afford a golf cart!”
Our church doesn’t even have a parking lot!
Other topics, how not to burn out while you have to do most everything!
What are the priorities in ministry to grow a church when you have a few core serving members. (where we are now)
How do you hang on financially?
How to meet the needs of family while serving on your own? How do you keep your kids connected to ministry without bitterness?
And I too love the break-out session idea.
We’ve talked about that too, how our biggest need is to connect with others in ministry who are like us and are facing the same issues. Sometimes we just need to inter-act with peers. We don’t get that a lot!
Frank Erb on Mon, June 02, 2008
I’d love to see a conference focused more on having a Christ-like heart as a church leader, regardless of the meaurable results. After all, man looks at the outside, but God looks at the heart, right? (1 Sam. 16:7) How about featuring pastors of smaller churches or ministries who have consistently modeled faithfulness and integrity and Christlikeness, against great challenges, without much of the glory that often accompanies a large setting. I believe that would be truly inspiring to many of us - and it might even please our Lord more than some other conferences do.
kc on Mon, June 02, 2008
Hey Frank: I love what you posted. “I’d love to see a conference focused more on having a Christ-like heart as a church leader, regardless of the meaurable results. After all, man looks at the outside, but God looks at the heart, right? (1 Sam. 16:7) How about featuring pastors of smaller churches or ministries who have consistently modeled faithfulness and integrity and Christlikeness, against great challenges, without much of the glory that often accompanies a large setting.”
I wholeheartedly agree! Only problem: I don’t think in our lifetime that we will ever see a conference like the one you describe. Everyone has been “hooked” on the biggest names is church business: anything less than the big names won’t get anyone “high”.
Scott on Mon, June 02, 2008
I’ll throw my hat in with those who are calling for more focus on the smaller church. The leaders of the megas are almost all great people, incredible speakers, with talent oozing from every pore. I always enjoy hearing their stories and vision. But…
According to the National Congregations Study, 94% of American churches have less than 500 in attendance.
I’d like to hear from the “turn around guys” who took an older, struggling, declining church of a couple dozen and grew it to 200 or 300.
I’d benefit alot from hearing from the guys who took an old traditional church from under a hundred to 250 and from 250 to 500.
So put me in the “resources and focus on revitalizing and growing the smaller church” column.
P.S. Chuch Warnock and Shawn McMullen are two guys who could rock a conference like that!
Ted Esler on Wed, June 04, 2008
Great question. It’s also one that I am wresting with in my role. I work for a global missions organization. These days, anything that stresses global missionary outreach is anathema from the platform of most churches. There are reasons for this, of course, some of them good, some of them rather stupid. In any case, our creative team sat down began looking at precisely why it is that churches no longer hold mission conferences and if there was a need to address this issue.
We also began to attend various conferences around the country and evaluate them. Most seem to follow a formula.
Almost 100% of conferences today use celebrity speakers and well known contemporary bands. This is the “draw” that gets people in the door. SO… for our event, we are booting the whole idea of well known speakers. Instead, we are going to use carefully selected field missionaries who are great at presenting but would never get platform time in a typical US conference.
Having observed this, I yearn to go to a conference that doesn’t feature the “usual list of suspects” (Andy Stanley, Rick Warren, John Piper, etc.). It’s not because these men have nothing to say - quite the contrary - I love these guys. The issue for me is that they say it all the time and SOOOOOO many conferences sacrifice their real intention in order to get them onstage (I think it’s the marketing angle more than anything).
We are presenting our conference as a “No celebrity speakers but real people doing real ministry.” Even the keynote US pastor is a relatively unknown but excellent speaker.
I think it’s a misnomer that you sacrifice quality by using non-celebrity speakers. In your case, I also think that the celebrity speakers are probably not the innovators - they perhaps innovated some time ago to get where they are, but have since settled into a whole different era of thier ministries.
Sorry for the long post…
Michael Schutz on Wed, June 04, 2008
As a full-time Minister of Worship, I’d like to echo the thoughts of Peter and Ted - a conference with no “superstars” would, IMO, have a greater draw than people would think. It’s evidenced by the comments here! Bring in one or more “regular” worship music teams, bring in “regular” in-the-trenches speakers, and let us all be “regular” together. Let’s let Jesus be the superstar.
(Having just preached on John 3, the phrase “He must increase, but I must decrease” has really been resonating with me lately.)
A couple other thoughts…
I believe there’s very little real innovation out there, and I don’t believe that being innovative should really be a priority (though perhaps that’s a soapbox for another time). Pursuing innovation for innovation’s sake smacks of “chasing the wind” to me. That being said, taking advantage of technology’s newer abilities is a great thing. Being able to “peek in” on the Whiteboard conference sessions a couple weeks ago was great, especially being able to chat live with others while watching - fantastic stuff.
The other thought is - strive to do the conference with as few sponsors as possible, and with as little “production” as possible. Concert-level production isn’t needed for humble worship and speaking. It also drives costs up. With sponsorship, what you can talk about/demonstrate is limited. For instance, the Worship Summit put on by Integrity last fall was a great idea, but severely limited by sponsors - MediaShout’s a great product, but then no one could hear about any other options and the demo wasn’t about the concept, it was about the product. Same with the Yamaha e-drums, Aviom system, etc. Then also the fact that only Integrity’s own artists were worship leaders, and the songs they used to lead worship were the title tracks for their new albums available for sale in the lobby.
So that’s a long way of saying, “keep it real”. Let the texts for the day dictate the worship songs. Let the speakers be free to speak as God leads them. Let resources be freely available - go digital if that’s the only way to distribute them freely. Do everything possible to be “local”-focused while still being a high-quality event. Don’t make it about selling books, albums, or anything else. Make it about Jesus, and the rest will take care of itself.
I hope that doesn’t come across too strongly, but I really believe so many conferences are missing the point these days - so many seem to be about production, big-names, and selling. I am thirsting for more conferences that keep the focus where it needs to be - on the person and work of Jesus.
Scott Couchenour on Wed, June 04, 2008
This is my passion, but I think it would be great if life balance & self-care strategies for pastors and other people in ministry was included.
Ted Esler on Wed, June 04, 2008
Amen, Michael. Good thoughts. Another idea: don’t make it an event that must be commercially successful. Don’t get me wrong: I understand covering the costs associated with any event. But… can’t we do these things for much less that the standard fees?
Also - families! Why not something for everybody instead of just the 34 year old white male?
Ben Kennedy on Wed, June 11, 2008
I have always loved the idea of modeling a conference from what I read in the psalms. David has the ingenious idea to write songs about what was happening in his life right then, from his culture to his sin. Then, he takes the song to the “leader” of the choirs in the court of the women. The choir learns it right then, and they lead the rest of the people in worship that night.
I think a conference designed primarily for worship and confession, expurgating sin and expressing praise, would behoove us as a contrary to our Christian consumerism.
Ray Brock on Mon, June 16, 2008
I have been checking out a lot of planter’s blogs. Mostly the guys who have never spent a day in it. They have attended conferences and trainings and are ready to charge hell. I get that! I understand that! You have got to have that drive to be planter, without it, you won’t make it.
But seriously, how many times do we have to read about a prospective planter, visiting a church, that just happens to be running in excess of 800 or a 1000 or more. The one phrase that keeps popping up over and over is this:
“They are really getting it done at ____.”
Does this mean that they guys that have planted and the church is 150, 200, 250 aren’t? I understand what draws these guys to the “big” churches. But what they are missing is the grind, the blood, the tears that it took to get there. I believe that one of the reasons that so many church plants fail and eventually church planters bail out is that they do not listen to the guys at the first, second & third steps in planting. They assume that they send out a few mailers, do a community promotion, have a few small groups and when they have their first service they will have 500 people there. The future planters need to be equipped to expect to not open the doors with 500 people. They need to know that many of the people that are there on day 1, are friends, family, members of a sponsoring church and most likely will not be there the next Sunday.
I was reading Todd Rhoades website, MMI, he posed the question of what would we like to see at a conference that is not being presented now in the church conference world, it really got me thinking. Why is it that these conferences love to parade all the success stories, and have those guys speaking? Why not have a guy who is a year into a plant and running 150 or 200. A guy that is bi-vocational. A church that has limited resources and can talk about getting creative with what they have? Are these guys NOT getting it done? Do they not qualify?
To one of my points: Let’s look at the statement, “They are really getting it done.” Are they? Who is they? Isn’t the “they” really God moving and blessing. Does this mean that the team that plants, and a year later, only has 100 people aren’t “getting it done” and should quit while they are ahead and save everyone the heartache and money? Does this mean that “for sure” that the other team prayed harder or prayed the right words?
What is “it”? Do you have to have the explosion of attendees of 500+ to get this consideration? Shouldn’t it be measured by each and every soul, the homes restored, the lives changed. Do the churches that only have 200 people have a lesser impact on the soul that was saved at the “mini - church”, being opposite of “mega”. I have no issues with mega churches - I wish every church was a mega church.
My second point: Why is it that virtually every church planter that “God is raising up” (Whole other topic - I’m afraid it has become fashionable to be a church planter, you get to join the cool club) is called into 1 of 2 areas. Wealthy and / or near a college. Why do I rarely hear of a church planter being called to an area that has an average income of $19k, half of the community is on welfare, that has a population of 2000 or less? Why? Because it’s hard to have a mega church, like the church planting guru’s, if there are only 2000 people in the whole town. Why isn’t God raising up church planters to plant in a town like Owensville, Ohio or Fayetteville, Ohio, why not more in Goshen, Ohio? Does He not consider them worthy? Or is it that maybe some “church planters” aren’t called to begin with or if they are called they stopped listening at the point of getting the call, and then decided on their own where to go? If God has called, wouldn’t He have told you where to go? Didn’t He say to Abram in Genesis 12, You are here and I want you to go there? Ah, and didn’t Abram go and experience a famine. ( And say to God, but I can’t build a church here, there is no money, no fancy buildings, big schools or theaters, there are only store fronts - you surely would want me to go over to Egypt, there are plenty of people and fancy places to meet. - OBVIOUSLY I TOOK LIBERTY IN THIS STATEMENT TO MAKE A POINT)
I have a huge concern for what I see coming on the “church planting” front. Nobody seems to be asking the hard questions. Nobody seems willing to challenge potential planters. Nobody seems to want put the “real world” of planting out there for them to see. I’m afraid that we are setting up a lot of church planters for failure and disappointment.
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