The 2017 Generate Conference is a wrap. This years host and showcase church was North Monroe Baptist. Grateful to Pastor Bill Dye and staff for the generosity and hospitality. The Generate Conference is designed to help church planters in years 3 to 10 to get beyond growth barriers and leadership hurdles. Pastors and leaders in churches from >50 to <500 have also attended and took away actionable steps. With the Generate Conference we highlight the work of several Louisiana churches that have found ways to grow and break growth barriers in our unique context. Shawn Lovejoy, with Courage to Lead and Kirk Jones, Fellowship Church in Prairieville, also served as equippers this year, along with North Monroe’s staff. Here’s a few of my big takeaways this year:

From Bill Dye:

• You can’t be a great pastoral leader without having the heart of Jesus.
• Find a way to use new people. They are the best volunteers because they’ve bought in to the vision. Don’t wait to put them on ministry teams.
• Only person who likes change is a wet baby. Don’t attempt any substantial change until you’ve done at least one year of vision casting.
• Be willing to ignore and work around difficult people. Are you trying to win a fight or win the world for Christ.
• Let the quality of your work speak for itself. When you do tough things in a spirit of humility, your stock goes up with the right people.
• We’re not done when we make converts. Our mission is maturity.
• Church staff are not ministers, but administrators of ministry. We don’t pay people to minister. Everybody ministers.

From Shawn Lovejoy:

• The Three Gears of Growth: Culture – Team – Systems
• Growth depends not on your preaching ability but the ability to let go of control and build a great team.
• Decisions must be made based on who we might reach instead of who might leave.
• If you have the right culture and the right team, almost any system will work.
• You have to be the culture you want to build. We reproduce who we are.
• Behaviors of a High Performing Team: They Trust Each Other, They Engage in Healthy Conflict, They Commit to Decisions and Plans of Actions, They Focus on Collective, not Individual Results.
• Four things we owe our leaders: Clarity, Grace, Honesty, and Proper Placement.
• God will not bring you more followers than you have leaders.
• A learning church is a growing church. A learning leader is a growing leader.
• Church staff is to be the equippers, not to do ministry, but to develop ministers.

Other presenters were: Jacob Crawford, Life Point Mansura; Chad Merrell, First West Fairbanks; Jason McGuffie, FBC Tallulah.

Look forward to highlighting other growing churches and leaders in 2018. Lots to learn from those right around us.

Shawn Lovejoy with Courage to Lead.

Grateful for Blake Davis, Alex Spiers, and Valerie Barley for leading us in worship.

Kirk Jones leading a breakout on breaking the 300 Barrier.

Jacob Crawford talking about breaking the 125 Attendance Barrier