Willow Leadership Summit
Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I had a chance to attend the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. What an amazing experience.
Typically, I find it hard to go to conferences. Usually, there's a lot of fluff and precious little substance. Most speakers just re-cycle what other people have already said. Often I find myself wandering around whatever facility is hosting the event or trying to redeem the time by doing some planning.
Not so with this year's Leadership Summit. Except for Saturday morning (which was by comparison a bit weak), it was an outstanding conference. Every speaker was compelling and I geninuely learned something from each of them.
My only criticism of the conference is that wasn't ANY Canadian content. One of the things that amazes me about U.S. churches is that they never look to the expansive mission field just to the north of them. We are NOW what they will be in ten years in terms of indifference, even hostility to the gospel. Whatever is working in Canada is likely the future of church ministry in the U.S.
Hats off to Willow for a great job. I'm looking forward to next year.
Typically, I find it hard to go to conferences. Usually, there's a lot of fluff and precious little substance. Most speakers just re-cycle what other people have already said. Often I find myself wandering around whatever facility is hosting the event or trying to redeem the time by doing some planning.
Not so with this year's Leadership Summit. Except for Saturday morning (which was by comparison a bit weak), it was an outstanding conference. Every speaker was compelling and I geninuely learned something from each of them.
My only criticism of the conference is that wasn't ANY Canadian content. One of the things that amazes me about U.S. churches is that they never look to the expansive mission field just to the north of them. We are NOW what they will be in ten years in terms of indifference, even hostility to the gospel. Whatever is working in Canada is likely the future of church ministry in the U.S.
Hats off to Willow for a great job. I'm looking forward to next year.
posted by Pastor Bruce @ 3:33 PM
3 Comments:
At 5:23 PM,
Steph Stanger said…
what does that mean? There wasn't any Canadian content? Please explain to me what Canadian content would be. And thanks for the kind words! I had a lot of friends involved in the conference and I felt that it was a great success!! I really appreciated the focus on Thursday encouraging us leaders to speak for those who don't have a voice!
At 11:51 PM,
Mike VanderKwaak said…
Nice post Bruce!
I agree, most of the big church conferences come from learnings that have been gathered from within their local context, like Chicago or Orange County. These two places are significantly different in world view, history and spiritual receptivity. Doing church leadership in the US is different than in Canada. Canadians are different than Americans.
Leadership is leadership, north or south of the border, however insights that have been born in the backyard of Canadian churches are priceless to those who do ministry there.
At 10:31 AM,
Kim Traynor said…
That's really interesting Bruce. At the conference Bill mentioned that when Willow started people wanted logical reasons to believe in God, now they want an experience. Are the trends in Canada similar to that? What are seekers like in Canada?
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