Two outstanding conferences!

For the past two weeks I’ve had the opportunity to participate in two outstanding educational events. On September 30 to October 3, I participated in Leadership Institute shared by Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. I’ve gone often to the conference and have written about it before (chainlink-chainoflakesncd.blogspot.com/2024/09 & chainlink-chainoflakesncd.blogspot.com/2023/10/leadership-institute-at-church-of.html). 

This year my most significant takeaway was listening to Andy Stanley speak and then enjoying the back-and-forth conversation between him and Adam Hamilton, who both have a passion and incredible success for connecting unchurched people to God and the church.

Last week, I had the privilege of participating in the first ever conference organized by the Presbyterian Church Growth Network held at First Presbyterian Church in Englewood, New Jersey. I’m very excited to share what happened at this conference.

The Presbyterian Church Growth Network is a grass-roots development of leaders within the Presbyterian Church (USA). In the summer of 2024 these leaders, including me, felt a significant discontent that our denomination and its leaders weren’t focusing enough on church growth. I wrote a blog on July 8, 2024, sharing my frustrations that the most recent General Assembly had done nothing to address the significant decline in our denomination. (chainlink-chainoflakesncd.blogspot.com/2024/07/presbyterians-can-grow-right.html)  In that blog I wrote that if a company had declined this significantly and the CEO of that company was not even addressing the problem and not giving solutions for the decline, that person would be fired. In my blog I wasn’t asking that anyone be fired. Instead I was issuing a clarion call that something needed to be done.

Others felt the same way. We found each other and started talking about church growth within the Presbyterian Church (USA).

After many Zoom meetings about twenty-five of us met in person for the first time in Chicago this past May. (chainlink-chainoflakesncd.blogspot.com/2025/05/presbyterian-church-growth-network.html) We wrote a charter and elected a Board. I’m serving on the Board. The Presbyterian Church Growth Network (PCGN) was born!

And I've grown to agape love the people who serve on the Board of the PCGN.

More can be discovered about the PCGN at pcgrowthnetwork.org. Check out our charter at pcgrowthnetwork.org/whoweare.

The Board decided to share a conference. It was an ambitious task as we only had a few months to organize and publicize the conference. A big thanks to Richard Hong for hosting the conference at the church he serves and for Adam Bowling for joining Richard in organizing it.

 I was amazed that almost sixty people from across the United States attended. Most of them were pastors. As a PCGN Board we know that we need to increase the number of Ruling Elders who are participating.  But still—it seems that the PCGN has tapped into something within congregational leaders.

The conference was simple. We started out in worship and enjoyed the fabulous music led by the Praise Team of First Presbyterian Church Englewood and the inspiring preaching by Jerry Cannon. The hospitality of the people of the church was moving. When I drove into the parking lot on Tuesday I saw a person with a sign that basically shared where to enter the church.  Bravo!

The church that hosted the conference has an amazing story of resilience. They suffered a devastating fire in 2016 that destroyed their sanctuary. They then moved worship to their gym and rebuilt a modern sanctuary that is high-tech and relevant for the worship needs on the community. When I walked into their worship space I didn’t feel like I was in a museum that was preserving the past; instead I felt a deep desire to be led in a relevant way by the Spirit in worship into the future.

The rest of the conference was workshops. I went to an excellent workshop led by Steve Lindsay on the six types of working genius. I led two workshops on hospitality. The two main thoughts I shared were hospitality is a recognition by the people of the congregation to create a fabulous experience for guests; and that hospitality must be organized. The pastor has to take a role in illustrating hospitality and ensuring that hospitality takes place.

We certainly don’t get hospitality completely right at Chain of Lakes, but I know that when new people attend, they are going to be greeted warmly and celebrated for their presence. Last Sunday when Randy Dean was leading worship at Chain of Lakes he remarked on the hospitality of the people he encountered.

I think the one word for the PCGN conference was authenticity. As leaders we certainly weren’t claiming or communicating a five-step process to church growth. Basically we were sharing what we were doing, acknowledging what had worked and didn’t work, and encouraging people to try ideas in their own context. And then share what worked and didn’t work. 

All of the workshops can be seen at vimeo.com/showcase/11923345

Next year’s conference is already set for Cincinnati in October 2026. I’m going to do my best to bring a large group from Chain of Lakes, and I encourage other churches to do the same.

I don’t think any of us involved in the PCGN could have imagined that so much progress would be made in the past eighteen months. I think this shows that Presbyterian congregations want to grow in numbers and vitality. They want and need resources, role models, and encouragement. Taking the message of the gospel in a Presbyterian framework into this culture is hard. But as Jesus so beautifully illustrated in his life, death, and resurrection if people work together to create the Kingdom the challenges will eventually dissolve. The PCGN is a very significant new development in living into the Kingdom!