We’re Cracked Open: Now What?

Stephanie Spellers

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Our churches and communities have been cracked wide open by pandemic, racial reckoning, economic suffering, climate change and generations-long decline. Drawing on wisdom from her new book The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline and New Hope for Beloved Community Spellers will focus on how  we can help communities to embrace disruption and reorient our lives around love for God and our neighbors?

Hybrid Church:
Sunday to Monday

Joe and Jess Liles

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The Liles will break down The Neighborhood Church model of moving hour long content from Sunday morning to snippets of content dropped throughout the week. Thinking about a social media presence can be overwhelming and time consuming, if there is no strategy. If you break down content into bite-size pieces placed strategically in different places, the people who are hungry for a relationship with God will take a nibble. Maybe not a full bite, but our mission as a church is to move them to the feast that is to come.

​Digital Ministry,
Virtually Free:
Virtual Ministry on a Shoestring Budget

Ruth Popkin

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Digital ministry is a necessity for any ministry the cost and diversity of digital tools can be overwhelming, especially for smaller contexts with limited paid staff. In this workshop, you'll learn about a variety of free quality tools for doing virtual ministry on a minimal budget. You’ll also begin to assess your context's digital ministry needs, and outline a plan for your next steps in growing your context's virtual presence.  

Thriving Beyond Covid: Getting Your Congregation in the Right Frame of Mind to Thrive

Jeff Linman

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The past 20 months have taken a toll on the spirit of our members and congregations. This workshop will introduce a free scripture-based small and large group resource to encourage, inspire, and challenge your members so they are in the the right frame of mind to thrive in your post-Covid journey, The days ahead will be challenging but they can be managed with faith and a plan. 

Pastor as
Prophetic Leader,
Congregation as
Healing Community

Rick Rouse

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In this age of polarization, this workshop will explore how to lead as prophet, public witness, and agent of change…from a place of “holy rage to holy hope”.  Rouse will share practical examples and resource tools to help congregations become centers of healing teaching others how to carry out civil conversations around difficult issues that can bridge the divisions that currently exist in this country.

Congregational Hospitality:
The COVID Impact

Beth Lewis

Congregational Hospitality seemed easy pre-pandemic and yet congregations often found it difficult to be genuinely welcoming! The impact of COVID-19 on the Church and the world has made hospitality even harder. In this workshop, you’ll learn specific, practical ideas for living out our Biblical mandate of generous hospitality while being attentive to the realities of this pandemic-impacted time.

Ignite Your Church: Without Burning Yourself Out

Eric Johnson

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Our current context requires pastors to lead change and build capacity in their congregations, but too often, it feels like it is all on the pastor to make it happen. During this workshop, you will learn to apply a framework for identifying ministry initiatives you are best equipped to lead, creating space in your already busy schedule to provide that leadership, and building a base of support for the initiatives that will ignite your church!

When We All Row Together: Intersectionality and Church Planting

Francisco Herrera

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As we become more aware of the dangers of excessive homogeneity and churches try to diversify membership and leadership, it is becoming necessary to find ways to keep folks together when differences arise. Herrera will introduce intersectionality, a concept from his dissertation research, that can help congregations become more pastorally attentive to each other as they work to more resemble the full variety of God's creation.

Hybrid Kids:
Sunday School or Sunday Cool?

Joe and Jess Liles

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Our 1st -4th graders have a smart phone in their hand and can navigate apps, games, texting and the occasional selfie. Mix that up with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ and you have a generation of kids that have already passed the church. We need to catch up! Hear what The Neighborhood Church has done to form a Hybrid model of kids content that includes character development from live action, to puppets, to cartoons, gamification, and a Flipgrid style of faith. It hasn’t all worked, we have learned a lot, and were faithful in reaching the kids' heart for Jesus...and then bringing the parents along. 

A Start-up Church: Developing a Spirit of Experimentation and Risk

Matthew Fleming

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Countless articles on Fast Company, small screen sitcoms, and Silicon Valley myths have chronicled the culture of tech start-ups: quick-moving, doing a lot with a little, raising money, building a team. What if we led our church more like a start-up than an established institution? Explore stories of serial church entrepreneurship and wonder how the Spirit might be moving in your context. This session will seek to cultivate in you and your congregation a risk-taking, experimenting practice that gives breath (ruach/pneuma) to the dangerous idea: I think we could do that.