Global Leadership Summit

This weekend was Adelaide's turn to attend the Global Leadership Summit, and this year was probably one of the best yet! I attended with a number of our board members and church leaders, and it was also good to see Ps. Doug and a crew from Gawler there too.

This years Summit had a real mix of topics and speakers. There were the usual mega church pastors, but there were also people who work in social justice and politics as well as a business innovator who doesn't work within Christian circles at all.

Stand outs for me this year included business man Gary Hamel, Presbyterian pastor Tim Keller, Dave Gibbons who runs a multi-campus church and authors Chip and Dan Heath.

This year the GLS saved the best for last however with Harvey Carey, who runs a truly innovative church in Detroit, Michigan.

A few of the speakers focused more on the social justice side of the Church, with speakers from Compassion, kiva.org and Good African Coffee. While the topics were interesting and worthwhile I certainly got the most from pastors and church leaders who spoke about creating and maintaining a dynamic church culture, and even used the 'C' word a little - change!

Every year the GLS is an encouragement, a challenge and a shot in the arm, and this year was even more so!

I'd like to think our D.S. and D.A.B for making this a priority and for providing funding to help us get there.



As I mentioned, Harvey Carey was the speaker who influenced me the most throughout the Summit - which is really saying something since he was the final speaker, and let me tell you, I was DONE!

Harvey spoke about the challenge for pastors to be equippers, and to help our church members to take ownership of the work of the Kingdom. He used a great analogy, talking about football players who get in a huddle at the beginning of the game, but then never leave that huddle to actually go and play the game. This really spoke to me. Carey went on to talk about the area he worked in in Detroit, and as he talked I found myself more and more inspired for the area that God has placed our church in at Croydon Park.

if anyone is interested, I know some people with the DVD copies of this year's Summit and I'd be happy to see about loaning them to anyone who missed out. I would also encourage you to make time for next year's GLS, for yourself and your church leaders.