When God works in another church it inspires us to pray and dream differently for our own.
The trajectory of my work changed in 2019. After decades of building leadership conferences, I returned to my core calling of revitalizing the local church to focus on its evangelistic mission. After all, what is church leadership for if not to help more people discover Jesus? At the time I joined the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, few events were focused solely on evangelism. It had been a couple of years since Outreach, Inc. had hosted its national convention, and interest in evangelism itself seemed to be decreasing.
Through mutual friends, I met James Long, then-editor of Outreach magazine. For those who didn’t know James, he was a joyful, humble and curious curator of ideas. For him, the Outreach 100 issue was never a competition. James loved small churches and big churches, urban and rural ones. He loved growing and multiplying churches and was rooting for churches in decline to find new life. For James, it was all about the learning. He was always asking, “What’s working in one context that could be applied in another? What innovations are we discovering?”
Our friendship led to a beautiful partnership between Outreach and the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center as we joined forces to build a conference to inspire and equip pastors and church teams toward evangelism. We call the conference Amplify, because in a noisy season for pastors, we need to intentionally and drastically increase the volume of Christ’s commissioning for us to share the gospel. The conference will showcase innovations and strategies from leading pastors we’ve respected for decades. We’ll explore fresh research and the opportunities ahead. We will also deal head-on with the unique challenges pastors face in our divisive and disconnected world. Our aim is to help leaders dream together about the future of their church. Along the way, we’ll encourage one another to engage the central mission of the church in the year ahead.
The Amplify event sold out for the first time last year. Even though James passed away a couple of years ago, it was hard not to think about how his legacy lives on in the curiosity and joy of the pastors who joined us. There was no competition, and every leader was celebrated, encouraged and shared in the community of pastoral leadership. In short, everyone was a winner.
Join us for this year’s Amplify Conference on October 22–23 at Wheaton College. An Online only registration option is also available.