- God With Us: Proclaiming the Gospel with God’s Presence at the Center (Winchester) – Geoff & Cyd Holsclaw
We often approach sharing the gospel as a “solution” to the sin problem. God is holy, humanity is not. Jesus takes our sin so that God doesn’t have to punish us. In order to convince people of their need for the gospel, they have to see themselves as sinners. What if, instead, we can share the gospel as the truth that God wants to be with us – no matter who we are or what we’ve done? What if the gospel is not about a sin problem, but a broken relationship problem? In this session, Geoff & Cyd will walk through the outline of the book they wrote about discovering God’s presence and purpose in our lives and how this can change the way we communicate good news.
- Cultivating Creativity in Worship & Preaching (St. Augustine’s) – Norton Herbst
We all want to be more creative on Sundays. In our songs, prayers, liturgy, and preaching. But embracing creativity is hard because we don’t have the time, we don’t know how, or we’re just too comfortable with our standard way of doing things. This workshop will explore how you can take more risks and cultivate creativity in your worship service planning. Whether you’re a pastor at a liturgical church, a worship leader at a charismatic church, or anything in between, you’ll learn some practical ways to breathe new life into your worship service and preaching.
- Creating a Culture and Strategy for Multiplication (St. Alban’s) – Stephen Redden
We all know that multiplication is at the heart of the life of the church. The mission of all churches is to multiply disciples, multiply leaders and in the process hopefully multiply new churches as well. Yet too often multiplication can become an “aspirational value” – something we really believe in but never quite get around to living out. In this session, Stephen Redden from New Denver Church in Denver, CO will share what they’ve learned in pursuit of creating a culture of multiplication, as well as some strategies they’ve used along the way.
- Creating a Disciple-Making Culture (St. Paul’s) – J.R. Briggs
All of us know that making disciples is what we are called to do in our churches. But how do we create a culture where disciple-making is the natural overflow of who we are as a local church? Together we will look at this topic from two angles: top-down (how do we create culture in our local church?) and bottom-up (what are some small, specific, practical steps we can take next week when we get home?). This session is about helping leaders move their churches from discipleship by addition to discipleship by multiplication.