Take a minute to give an honest reaction to these leadership questions:
- What part of your church is “stuck”, and what would it take to get it moving again?
- How could your church be better positioned to make a significant Kingdom impact?
- What would it take to see more people in your faith community move from “consumers” to disciples?
In 2011 these were the questions that dominated leadership conversations in Canada. So in 2012 we’re rolling up our sleeves to see church leaders from coast to coast tackle these challenges.
Introducing Innovate 2012. Innovate is not so much a workshop, as it is series of leadership conversations with some of Canada’s pace-setting church leaders.
And we want you and your leadership team to be a part of the conversation.
Tim Schroeder, The Leadership Centre Willow Creek Canada’s “National Pastor”, will host the conversation, featuring leaders who have been making progress on each front.
But this is not an afternoon of “talking heads”. This will be an energized, interactive four-hour session, where leadership teams will be working on highly practical applications. It will be a chance for church teams to fire questions at the panel of leaders, and then work to apply learnings to individual church settings.
We believe that these conversations are so important to the advancement of the Kingdom in our country that we are not charging an admission fee to participate. We will gratefully receive donations to offset costs, but we do not want finances to be a reason for your team not to take part.
Each of the 12 sites is limited to 10 teams of six, so I’d urge you to reserve your place now. For more information, and to reserve your table, click here.
So make plans now to bring your leaders to the Innovate 2012 site near you.
And let’s get to work.
I think the church is stuck, in many ways, because we’ve tried to hurry people out the door, so they can go love on the world. Before they have actually figured out “if” they are a Christian yet, they are doing the works of Christians.
The church, meaning the people, especially in a seeker friendly church, need to go deeper before the church can really grow wider. Other wise, it seems to me, that we are only a bunch of good people, no different than humanitarians, trying to do the good work of Jesus, without the help of the Holy Spirit.
I believe that moving people from consumers to disciples takes a strong word. Christ was often found rebuking people for their indifference to spiritual growth, at the expense of “doing” the right thing. He continued to hold people accountable, with, “Unless YOU repent”, kind of statements.
We live in a culture where no one wants to take responsibility for their own actions, however, Christ made sure we knew we were the only ones who could control what “we” did.
Donna, profound insights! Two comments especially stand out. First of all, the idea of churches needing to ‘go deeper’. I’m thinking a lot lately about what that means. There’s something a bit co-dependent about me placing the responsibility for my own growth in the hands of my church. It seems to me that it’s MY JOB to grow deeper. I need to think more about this! 🙂
Your second comment about personal responsibility is huge. I agree that this may be the single biggest missing ingredient from Christ followers today. It’s taking responsibility not only for our sins, but also for answering the call that God has placed on our lives.
Phew, you’ve opened a couple of big themes here Donna…Thanks for weighing in!