conference

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Today, I am in New York speaking at the first-ever New City Gathering and spending time with my friend, Drew Hyun and his new network. Learn about the five values that they see as being critical for new churches here.

What’s interesting to me is that their church planting conference is brand new.

I’m not against new conferences, nor am I against church planting; after all, I serve as the Director of Church Multiplication for NewChurches.com! But, what’s fascinating to me is how the trend with church conferences seems to be heading in the direction of small, regional, and specialized.

Take the Catalyst conference for example. They grew their single location conference in Atlanta to 10,000+ attendees, and then started a West Coast version of it. Soon afterwards, they introduced smaller one day regionals across the country.
Exponential went the same route. They had their Exponential East conference of over 5000+ attendees, started a West Coast version of it, and are now introducing regionals in the U.S. and in other parts of the world.
The Verge Network did the same. After growing their Austin based conference to 3000+, they shut it down for a year, and have now opened up with a regional only strategy.
The SEND Network had a 10,000+ sized conference in Nashville last year, and are moving to a regional strategy this next year. They’ve decided to alternate between one big conference and smaller regionals every other year.

–> The tension that big conferences face is the push to generalize their content, in order to broaden their registration base.

–> The benefit of small conferences is knowing your target audience, so you’re able to specialize and specifically equip your niche audience with what they need.

Today, during our 2009 Onnuri Spirituality and Leadership Conference, Richard Foster said something along these lines – “After coming to know the Lord, Paul spent three years in the desert being trained (Gal 1:17-18) – this wasn’t seminary…this was after seminary” (my paraphrase).

He went on to talk about how the Lord taught and trained Paul during those years and how as pastors, we must be ready to go through a time of “tucking away” or being trained so that God can teach us the prayer of relinquishment. Just as Paul went through that type of training, so did Jonah, David, Job, and Abraham. And who can forget Jesus (Matt 26:39), who had to learn the prayer of relinquishment in one of the most difficult ways – through facing death.

Often times, we think that going to bible college or seminary automatically grants us the God-given-privilege to pastor and lead others. What many of us don’t actually grasp is that pastoring isn’t a job, it’s pure honor and a serious, yet joyful calling. One can’t just learn in a classroom – ministry is best learned in the field, while doing it. [Read more…] about Training for Ministry

What’s interesting to me is that their church planting conference is brand new.

–> The tension that big conferences face is the push to generalize their content, in order to broaden their registration base.

–> The benefit of small conferences is knowing your target audience, so you’re able to specialize and specifically equip your niche audience with what they need.

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