The first posts in this series are here:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and part 5
The first answer posts basically said “People” and the last one said “God.”
Before I get to the next one, many of you have asked –“ Who cares?”
Our organization is all about accelerating leaders. And as I said earlier, we used to do conferences but now only do them very infrequently. I like to say we only do them when
- We think there is something new to say.
- We think there are people not being exposed to some new friends that should be.
I will confess we did a conference last year called Innovation3. All of the speakers were friends of ours whose churches had been through our Leadership Community programs.
These are small programs of usually no more than 12 churches each. So each group is intimate and focused.
Some that spoke are “big names” that you can see speak anywhere. But most were people we felt had something good to say and needed to be exposed to the tribe across the world.
I am happy now when I see lots of these leaders speaking at other conferences. Their exposure with us gave them a lift to other conference organizers.
Every month I get a call from a different conference organizer with the same question: Who is new that I need to get on our stage?
We talk about their needs and I try to hook them up. And that’s fun for me.
So, we really don’t do conferences, but we think they are useful for others to do. We also think they are useful for leaders to attend. So we try to plug as many as we can along the way.
And we send staff to go and connect with people. We have stopped sending banners and tables and stuff for the “bag of crap” that you get at conferences. Mainly, it doesn’t work for our type of relational organization. We are more about smaller groups of leaders connecting on a regular basis.
Now we have pioneered the online conference that is a different type of experience. It combines “main stage”, “break out”, “new voices” and “wisdom voices” along with participant participation via online streams and twitters.
At Aha! We added the program book that is designed to help groups have an experience without having to travel.
We are learning lots and want to keep doing these types of online events to expose you to new thoughts and remind and inspire you and your church. We are reaching lots of people already with the first two we did (if you believe the estimates and streaming data, perhaps 50,000). And we will continue to grow that arena with SAGE coming May 19, 2010.
These allow us a Global reach too.
OK finally my reason number 5 – Encouragement.
I think everyone needs to be encouraged.
Sometimes that encouragement is in seeing that there are leaders who are experiencing the same frustrations that you are.
Sometimes you see people who appear to be beyond your current frustration and on to other frustrations.
Trust me on this one. That speaker you hear on the stage talking about how great their deal is…..backstage they are sharing their current frustrations with me.
No matter who you are, what size your church is, how big your staff is, how smart you are and the like, the kingdom work is like any work. It is never done. Things are never perfect.
Even the speakers come to be encouraged. They hear from participants about their struggles and say to themselves: At least I don’t have it that bad.
Participants look around and think, hey everyone is struggling, maybe I will pick up some bit of help to encourage me to do better. Which leads to my last point, tomorrow.
I think all of us go to be encouraged in our work and ministry.
(Photo is from http://www.flickr.com/photos/zenera/ - a fantastic animal photog)
Dave Travis
Managing Director
Leadership Network
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