Our Conference on Wheels

It was not when my staff first posted a Facebook picture of me napping in a megachurch stadium chair that I realized my Christian-conference-going days were numbered.

It was when I realized they had a whole album of these pictures.

I love conferences. In my early days of ministry, The National Youth Workers' Convention changed the direction of my ministry and my preaching. I marveled the first time I stepped onto Willow Creek's campus for a Leadership Summit, and I grew because of my first Purpose-Driven Church conference. I still love Catalyst and Orange. Reading this, I think I almost needed a conference intervention.

While I'd still recommend big conferences for ministry development, my staff and I have gone in a new direction. This year we loaded up a caravan of cars and drove four hours into Las Vegas to tour five churches over the course of three days. We interviewed staffs, toured facilities, picked up their literature, studied best practices, and asked for needed references. We did an intentional, targeted, conference on the go.

We learned a lot. We gained insights into budgeting procedures, new staff structures, and a greater sense for God's work in the world. And also the knowledge that if you take your staff to Las Vegas, it might be wise to tell the congregation you spent most of your time in Henderson. This year's trip wasn't our first. Last year we toured Phoenix. Before that we went through a number of Los Angeles churches. I've suggested we next visit the post-Christian culture of San Francisco, but my staff keeps talking wishfully about Honolulu.

In short, we've invented a Conference on Wheels.

Engaging the "other" learners

The Conference on Wheels allows ministry staff to bring their individual learning styles, personal concerns, and pressing questions to a common context and probe for new insight. It provides a history of reference points that allows a staff to build a united vision and vocabulary. It brings tangible, concrete examples of ministry in the field to bear on the ministries back home. A public speaker can pour insight and information into an audience of listeners. But how often do you see the listeners raise their hands to ask the questions they really need answered?

There's actually some science to what we're doing. Howard Gardner's groundbreaking work on "multiple intelligences" exposed the fact that our educational system primarily rewards one form of learner—the auditory student who has the patience for lectures and the short-term memory necessary for test-taking. Gardner observes that one might have a kinetic intelligence for sports, a linguistic intelligence for verbal ability, a musical intelligence, or an intrapersonal intelligence, among others. Not all brains work the same way. In the more recent Brain Rules, John Medina observes that every brain is wired differently and in fact adapts through particular use, so people's brains come to function according to how their owners employ them.

The Conference on Wheels consists of three key elements: a tour, interviews, and debrief. Each addresses a particular form of learning in ways that can't happen at conferences.

The tour is a fascinating visual experience that gets our bodies moving. You can tell who the tactile and kinetic learners are. Visiting both churches and parachurch ministries, we wandered through lounges, tested the feel of pulpits (we bought a new one immediately after returning from one of these tours), and studied the effects of different lighting displays. We have a pretty good feel for what color palettes architecture firms and designers are playing with today. We always asked to see the main worship space and the children's and youth rooms, but it was illuminating to see how other ministries laid out cafes, designed overflow venues, and tooled their tech booths. After a tour of the facilities of a Christian architecture firm, we started tearing down walls in our office to create a more communal workspace.

Interviews are the most critical piece. We usually ask to sit down with a head of staff or an executive pastor, the tech director, and someone from the children's ministry. The Champion Center of Las Vegas went far beyond the call of duty and met us at the front door with a hospitality team, an open coffee bar, and most of their senior staff. We got a really strong lesson in gracious welcome from them simply from the way they welcomed us. Interviews bring out the interpersonal learners, the ones who are charismatic magnets and networkers who make friends quickly. Being the geeky introvert on staff, I usually just listen while my team delves into conversation. This is the real distinctive of the Conference on Wheels—you learn what you want to learn. Bonni Carr, our Business Director, said, "When you have one-on-one time with other staffs, you get the chance to really pick their brains and find out not only what has worked well for them, but explore their failures and what they learned from them."

We ask about staff structure, ministry ideas, failures, and dreams. When we met with Mitch Harrison, Executive Pastor at Canyon Ridge Christian Church, what had seemed like a very large megachurch became personable, warm, and humble. As he gave us a tour, Pastor Mitch wasn't afraid to tell us about the ministries that hadn't gone as expected, and even pointed out places where the layout of the church wasn't exactly right yet. I think we left that visit with my whole team wishing they worked for Mitch.

The debrief is fun. Again, it's relational, but this time it's intrapersonal learning; we're learning about ourselves. The staff usually stays together at a rental house with multiple bedrooms and a shared living area. This is both cheaper than a hotel and it allows us to eat and spend time together. At the end of each day (we usually go for 3-4), we gather and discuss. What did you see? What did you like? What should we imitate? What seemed like something only God could do? What goes on in these moments is the most valuable. We figure out who we are. We know our teammates better, we hear how they think, and we get a sense for what they dream about doing in ministry. Kathy Morgan, our Equipping Ministries Director said, "It gave me a real sense of how universal the day-to-day challenges are for all who are serving Christ in both the large churches and the church plants."

With these three essential elements, we assure that everyone gets to explore our host churches with their own particular questions and learning style.

What if?

Conference ministries will always be a great front door to resources and conversations, and a great place of renewal for weary souls. But somewhere between the first introduction and the surprising renewals, many people experience conference fatigue. Rather than falling into routines, perhaps churches might be the source of innovation for one another. Rather than a single church bearing the brunt of national coaching, what if churches hit the road—and became coaches for one another?

What if church networks established themselves as partners in a coaching network that hosted intentional tours for visiting colleagues, in a kind of "progressive dinner" of ideas? You could study a children's ministry that is going well over here, an international mission program that is working over there, and the means by which one of the local churches has sent more people into professional ministries than any other.

What if churches based their conference-going time and dollars not on what was being offered at the same annual conference as last year, but rather on the specific needs and visions that the church has for the year to come? That annual team retreat together might actually scratch where the Holy Spirit is itching … so to speak.

What if church staffs became networked with other staffs in surrounding areas so that they suddenly had a resource of contacts to whom they might address the questions that arise in unprecedented crises? Any pastor who goes through struggles naturally wonders who nearby might have already been through the same scenario. What if when the moment arose, you already had their names in your back pocket?

What if the church were simply better prepared to respond to the movements of the Holy Spirit throughout the land? We can hardly assume that the voice of our Lord is going to be different to everyone at all times. Revival is usually a contagion, and the Conference on Wheels may well open roadways for its spread.

This simple, pragmatic approach to staff renewal and development may well revolutionize the way our church grows. It will, at the very least, offer several opportunities for God to expand our vision. Our tours have been a stimulating means to explore and a great time of camaraderie for our team. We come back with a slate of new ideas and experiments.

And best of all, we have yet to come back with a picture of me asleep in a chair.

James W. Miller is the Pastor of Glenkirk Church in Los Angeles. He is the author of Hardwired: Finding the God You Already Know (Abingdon, 2013). And he'd like to visit your church.

A good move here is to choose a number of churches and non-profit ministries that vary in size, theology or denomination, socio-economic contexts, and ministry emphases. For instance, in Henderson, we visited a church of over 10,000 members and a church plant of less than 50 members. One church ran a school, the others did not. One was wealthy and was in the midst of a building campaign, another was reeling from recession. One had just lost a pastor. We've visited non-denominational, mainline, and charismatic. Obviously you can tailor this to your needs.

Most importantly, we sought out churches that addressed the specific needs and questions that our staff members would benefit from most. Because our ministries have grown, we always toured youth and children's wings to see how they were laid out. We're on the verge of a building campaign to address the need, so we asked for architecture firm and fundraising corporation recommendations. A church looking to transition through worship styles could obviously seek out another which has already been through the experience.

In an age of declining church attendance, we were intentional about asking missional questions. We wanted to know what ministries were most effective in reaching new people. We compared notes on databases to see whether our software was among the most effective. One of these visits resulted in the entire reworking of our weekend bulletin and promotional materials. We always asked to see the lobby, café, or hospitality desk.

After a few rounds, we started to hone in on a similar group of questions that we found most helpful. While any staff would want to craft its own, here are a few to which we always return:

Choosing Churches

Questions To Ask

What's your vision for this church (or organization)?
How are decisions made?
Can you explain your organizational chart?
What have been your most effective ministries?
What ministries or programs have you cancelled and why?
What challenges did you not anticipate, and how do you wish you better anticipated them?
How do you walk your congregation through change?
What have been the most helpful tech and computer upgrades that you've made? Which software, hardware, database, etc. do you use?
Who have been some inspiring voices you've encountered lately?
If the present staff was responsible for building their campus, we ask why they chose the layout they did.