Preach It, Lead It!
Preaching & Leadership Summit – February 2017
There are many critical roles for pastors and other servants within the church, whether they are lay or clergy. The principal roles involve clear and compelling proclamation of the Word of God through preaching and effective and transformative leadership. For these roles to be played well, they must be informed by the Scripture, incarnated in the context, motivated by the holy love of God, and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
In March of 2016, we announced the discontinuation of the Ministry Conference with a vision of offering alternative learning and formation experiences for alumni, students, and beyond. The emerging vision for these experiences is to offer more than merely a conference or a continuing education credit, but instead to meet people at every season of life with a transformative next step that is experienced together. The purpose of these experiences is to engage, equip, and mobilize leaders to live fully into their ministry callings both personally and corporately.
We are excited to invite you to the first of our new learning and formation experiences, which is the first annual Preach it! Lead it! Summit.
The vision of the Summit is to highlight these two critical roles of preaching and leading. There will be plenary sessions during chapel and worship services in the evenings. Also included will be practical workshops on preaching and leading throughout the Summit. The hope is to do more than inspire but to encourage and equip.
The first focus on Biblical preaching follows the challenge that Dr. Tennent, President of Asbury Theological Seminary, gave in his opening convocation address to students this fall. He said, “The recovery of preaching—preaching as public catechesis—exposition of Scripture for the laity – was at the heart of the Reformation recovery of biblically formed faith.” If we are to experience reformation again in the church, one that is certainly needed in the post-Christian context we live within today, it will include a vibrant, Spirit-led renewal of faithful and fruitful Biblical proclamation. Dr. Tennent said this:
I am publicly calling our movement back to doctrinally-oriented preaching. Like Wesley’s day, our post-Christendom context has spawned vast numbers of church goers who have no real understanding of the Christian faith. Their knowledge of the Bible is weak and their ability to think theologically is almost non-existent. Therefore, this stands as a fresh mandate for us to put aside the light hearted, casual preaching which has become so characteristic of our movement.
This call is a primary focus of our Summit this year. In addition to the focus on preaching, we will also give needed attention to the why and how of effective spiritual leadership. Many leaders in 21st C. churches have discovered that our tried and true methodologies of leadership are not as effective as they once were. While the gospel is as powerful and transformative today as it ever has been, contemporary leadership often lacks the ability to truly equip and mobilize people to fruitful ministry.
In our leadership focus at the Summit, we will interact around the critical practices and character needed for effective spiritual leadership. In addition, we will also discuss together the changing context of our culture and the adaptive challenges we face leading in this environment. Amidst such challenges, we will look at how the early Church and then the early Methodists embodied their principles with effective practices that bore tremendous fruit. This will then inform how we can discern Biblically informed principles and practices for the church and the world today.
The Preach it! Lead it! Summit will be hosted on the Asbury Seminary campus in Wilmore, KY on February 21-23, 2017. Our keynote speaker is Rev. Greg Waybright, senior pastor of Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, CA. A link to his bio is below.
https://www.lakeave.org/contact/senior-pastor-directory/greg-waybright
This Preaching and Leadership Summit is hosted by the Beeson International Center, which exists to assist Asbury Theological Seminary in becoming a benchmark, global resource for transformational Biblical Preaching and Church Leadership by facilitating complementary learning experiences that equip followers of Jesus Christ to embrace His Great Commandment and fulfill His Great Commission.
While hosted by the Beeson Center, the Summit is a collaboration with many other seminary constituencies, including the preaching and leadership faculty, the office of community formation, the chapel, the Florida campus Excellence in Preaching initiative, and Seedbed.
Once again, we hope you will join us for our first annual Preach it! Lead it! Summit. The registration link is below. Please feel free to contact the office of Lifelong Learning at the seminary with any questions.
http://asburyseminary.edu/resources/beesoncenter/lifelonglearning/beeson-summit/
Bryan D. Sims, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership & Lay Equipping
Director, Lifelong Learning & Lay Mobilization
Sure hope we have the opportunity to welcome hundreds of our alum here in Wilmore. We’re very excited about this event! –Ginny Proctor, Mgr. Lifelong Learning