How does your church measure success? Most churches measure success around program activities: worship attendance, Sunday School attendance, volunteer team numbers, etc. In this session, we’ll show you how you can create a dream disciple that busts the Engagement Myth (that activity equals transformation) and creates a new scorecard that is based not on program activity but on individual transformation.

Over the last three years, we have yet to find a church that prefers to use the same strategy they had before 2020. The staff knows that their congregation needs more equipping, but their people are committing less time than ever before. In this session, we will help you bust the Equipping Myth (that teaching equals training) by showing you how you can create a realistic Discipleship Pathway that empowers your people to make disciples where they live, work and play.

What if your people had their own personal disciple-making plan that they used to reach their neighbors, co-workers and friends? Discipleship Groups help you bust the Execution Myth (that church impact equals ministry ownership) and shift the disciple-making ownership from your staff to your people. In this session, we show you the eight ways that Discipleship Groups are different from Small Groups and how you must lead them differently.

While many churches struggle with a scarcity of leaders in a changing culture, some churches send leaders out from a position of abundance. What if your church could multiply so many leaders that you have no choice but to send them? This breakout session will focus on the tactical ways Mercy Hill Church has built a strong sending culture and will conclude with a workshop that will give you practical next steps in building your own sending culture.

Like every organism, every organization requires change to thrive. Leadership has never been more complex or more vital to the health and growth of the local church. For the church to thrive in a changing world, leaders must embrace the high calling of leading others to change. This breakout will be packed with insights, principles and practical instruction to help leaders move others toward the mission of God and to do so in a manner that facilitates flourishing.

Values shape culture, but even good values can create a negative culture. Truth is a great value, but no one wants a culture of truth without love. This breakout will help you understand the importance of defining competing values and using those tensions to develop and disciple your leaders.

How to create a culture in your college ministry where going is normal.

In this session, you will learn how to implement a practical plan to reach and disciple students. How do you train your volunteer leaders to do the same by multiplying yourself as a leader?

The landscape remains full today of churches that are struggling for direction and growth after COVID-19. Many pastors and leaders started working or volunteering to make a difference in peoples’ lives, but now they find themselves only managing programs and responding to complaints. In this breakout session, come learn some tools to help you develop a model for measurable disciples that God will use to rekindle your heart for the lost and for those currently in your ministry. Let’s be on mission together!

Matt & Allison Willis have co-authored MasterLife Together, a simplified revision of MasterLife written by Matt’s grandfather, Avery Willis. Hundreds of thousands of people were discipled through MasterLife, but fewer people today are able to commit to the seven-month, in-depth process of the original. This breakout session will introduce you to the updated discipleship resource for groups that takes half the time with half of the content.

The discipleship ministry of a church is the engine that powers almost everything, and often we get so caught up in building each ministry that we neglect to strategically build and maintain alignment. In this session, we’ll talk about the reasons our ministries are often isolated and how to most effectively move toward alignment, teamwork, collaboration and clarity in all areas of disciple-making.

Every member is made for the mission. Our goal as pastors is to disciple them to become leaders for the church and for the community. This session provides a simple process that will give leaders a basic framework to help your church develop and deploy leaders for the mission of reaching your communities for Christ.

Church revitalization is difficult work. Pastors attempting to lead a church in revitalization can face dilapidated facilities, outdated ministry methods and shrinking budgets, and often they make these needs their primary focus. But effective ministry is built on relationships. Pastors must build trust with those they lead if they want to see their church experience renewal. This process requires emotional intelligence — the ability to recognize and manage one’s emotions while also being aware of and interacting with the emotions of others. This breakout will examine the importance of emotional intelligence in church revitalization and offer practical ways for pastors to grow in this essential skill.

Jesus commissioned His followers to go and make disciples, teaching them all that He commanded. Women must take this call seriously and should be equipped to teach the Scriptures. Come learn a process for studying and interpreting the Bible so that you can teach the commands of Christ, discipling faithfully in your local church.

Do you serve a church that is losing members and trying to figure out “what’s next?” This breakout will offer “pathways of hope” for the struggling church with examples of each possibility for a preferred future.

God has called us to unity, not uniformity. Ephesians is a blueprint for the church to see cultural differences shared, valued and enjoyed while living on mission together. Disciple-making must be explored within this lens. This breakout session will explore the context of Scripture, contextualization (the application of Scripture), and the necessity for the body to conform to the image and character of Christ.

Just as God calls us to reach the nations, He also calls us to care for those we send. Join us as we dig deeper into what it means to send, care for and receive our missionaries well from the perspective of the missionary, the church and the sending agency.

As ministry leaders, one of our top priorities is to raise up leaders, but for Hispanic pastors and planters, it can sometimes be difficult to raise up leaders. In this session, you will learn the biblical principles of how to develop leaders through four simple steps: learn, model, disciple, lead.

God is bringing the nations to North Carolina, but church members are often ill-prepared to share the gospel with them. In this session, you will learn how to effectively equip your church members through simple and visual tools to share the gospel with the nations that are moving to your community. You can use these tools for ongoing community outreach and international mission trips.

In this breakout session, we’ll explore an intentional process to develop a biblically accurate, theologically shaped and Christ-centered exposition.

We talk a lot about churches being on mission, but what does that mean? In this session, we will explore practical ways to take your next step in being on mission together.

Sending churches are disciple-making churches. Learn how developing a disciple-making process can prepare your church to become a church-planting, disciple-making beacon for your community.

Would you like to both grow your worship ministry and create disciples through each rehearsal and service? During this session, participants will learn both biblical principles and practical ways to implement discipleship into every fiber of the worship ministry. The information in this breakout is designed to simplify the process of discipleship for both full-time and bi-vocational worship leaders.

A digital communications strategy is vital to the way a church engages with its members, guests and community. This session will focus on aspects of effective digital communication using social media and mass email as trackable delivery methods. Focusing on basic and practical principles of layout, we will delve into why good graphic design can elevate your message in these digital spaces.

In this session, we will focus on helping leaders create a culture of evangelism within their ministry. This breakout will not only be relevant for pastors, but small group leaders, Sunday school teachers and other ministry workers.

The transition from high school ministries to college and young adult ministries can be jarring for students. How can your ministry lay the foundation for students to grow into mature, healthy college and young adult disciples? Join Austin Gentry, author of 10 Things Every Christian Should Know For College, to learn strategies to prepare your students (and their parents) well.

How do you identify, prepare and equip students who are called to ministry leadership? In this session, we’ll survey the current landscape, explore our responsibility to raise up the next generation of ministry leaders, and consider practical ways to invest in them.

There are few who understand the unique pressures of pastoral ministry. When we choose to ignore the internal warning signs of pastoral burnout and poor emotional health, we are potentially hindering the work of our ministry, likely doing a disservice to our family, and certainly we are not caring for our own souls as we ought. Every pastor should learn to pay attention to these warning signs because we know in order to lead well we must care for our own souls well.

The local church should be the primary source for future leaders. For these leaders to step into new areas of responsibility, they must be developed and trained. Development requires simple and reproducible strategies that can be implemented in any congregational context.

There are approximately 16,000 children in North Carolina’s foster care system — children who need a home, children who need hope. But what can your church do to make an impact? Join Dr. Mark Smith, Foster & Adoption Church Liaison with the Baptist Children’s Homes of North Carolina, as he and the staff of Peninsula Baptist share how their foster care ministry, “The Way Home,” was developed and the many ways it has impacted their mission’s strategy.