Leadership Summit Begins; Over 53,000 Registered
The world's largest Christian leadership conference started today and is being broadcasted from the Willow Creek Church in Chicago.
The world's largest Christian leadership conference started today and is being broadcasted from the Willow Creek Church in Chicago into some 110 churches, seminaries, universities, and ministries across North America.
What began with “a whisper from God” in 1995 eventually became The Leadership Summit – a gathering of 2,000 church leaders who were interested in leadership. This year, as the Summit celebrates its 10th Anniversary, more than 53,000 Christian leaders from ministry and the marketplace have registered to recalibrate, recommit, and renew their passion to "lead with all diligence."
After seven years of hosting the event, Pastor John Westfall of Walnut Creek Church in the San Francisco Bay Area, still believes, the Summit is “the best leadership conference that I've ever been participating in.”
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“The whole atmosphere is really honoring,” he said. “It's really empowering for everybody."
Willow Creek Association president, Jim Mellado, gave an insider's look at this year’s Summit saying, "This year [Bill] Hybels' going to talk about something I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk about. Bill is going to talk about the something that’s got to be true in every single leader for a vision to be able to explode out of their heart significant enough to mobilize others around it."
Following Hybels, Rick Warren will speak on the entrepreneurial side of leadership.
Also speaking will be Mosa Sono, the founding senior pastor of Grace Bible Church, from Soweto, South Africa, who has had to develop leaders while the majority of the population is facing unemployment, poverty, and the AIDS pandemic.
Eleanor Josaitis and Curtis Sliwa will follow Sono later in the afternoon as leaders in the not-for-profit urban settings. They will speak about cross-cultural challenges, physical dangers, and sacrificing for the people.
A total of eleven speakers are to challenge the people over three days to become leaders and not just leaders for any purpose, but for the purpose of building His Kingdom.
As Hybels said at last year's Summit, "When you put great leadership in with great teaching following Scripture together, man, that’s when kingdom action really happens."
