Last weekend I returned from Phoenix where I attended the MinistryCOM Conference. It was only its second year and was very well attended. Although we were one of the sponsors, along with ServiceU, Main Street Enterprises, Willow Creek Association, Outreach and Aspire!One, I really did not know what to expect since I had not attended the year before. I can honestly say I was impressed with the quality of content of the presentations and the quality of the people attending.
From the opening keynote speech from Mark Batterson, the pastor of National Community Church, I could tell this conference, although maybe not “mainstream church”, fit in very well with our tagline of “Accelerating the Dynamic Church.” Mark’s message was compelling and passionate concerning the work that God was doing in what many would consider a non-traditional venue, the local theater. The conference continued with presenters like Dawn Nicole Baldwin, co-founder of AspireOne, who talked about church branding (see my earlier blog about how church management systems can be a positive effect on branding), to Kem Meyer, Communications Director of Granger Community Church, who covered the issues in reaching your internal audience, to Scott Evans, CEO of Outreach, who covered the Four Laws of Outreach. There were many others who presented some very good ideas which included topics such as how a church can better communicate its messaging to developing a better mission and strategy to how to develop more concise branding.
The audience included folks from some of the well-known mega-churches we all know by name to many smaller and medium sized churches who seem to get the correlation between congregation communications and dynamic growth. My advice - if you are a dynamic church looking for new ways to reach out to the community and to your congregation, I recommend that you attend next year’s conference! You will be rewarded with great ideas and new relationships from all over the country.
Grace to you,
jhook