GENERAL

Room 34 – Discerning What is True in a Brave New Post-Modern World
Joel Shaffer, Urban Transformation Ministries
The social media revolution has led today’s culture to drink from a firehose of information, ideologies, and news from millions of different sources including much that does not conform to biblical truth. With several opposing groups accusing each other of fake news, fascism, historical revisionism, grooming, racism, and more, how can we know who’s lying and who’s truth-telling? This workshop will teach and apply several useful tools including hermeneutical methods, and how to avoid logical fallacies.

Room 50 – When Jesus Knocks: A  Lesson from Laodicea
Doug Crawford, West Cannon Baptist Church & Bridge Fellowship (MARBC)
What did a pandemic and political season reveal about the source of fellowship in the church? How does the gospel inform and transform our worldview as the body of Christ?

Room 52 – Understanding Transgender Ideology
Nate Archer, First Baptist Church of Middleville
This workshop will help you understand and explain to others that the transgender ideology being promoted today is very new, constantly changing, unscientific, contradictory, and harmful to vulnerable people.

Room 118 – Planning your DREAM Sabbatical
Sean Nemecek, PIR Ministries
Explore the elements of a life-giving sabbatical and how a sabbatical can be an investment in sustainable, long-term ministry.

DISCIPLESHIP

Room 32 – Equipped to Serve: Mobilizing Your Church and Small Groups
Carol Gates, Magnify Church
Believers are called to care for the poor, marginalized, widows, orphans and refugees; however, as a church and as individuals, it’s a challenge to identify where to begin and to balance all the roles/needs in our own lives. In this session I will present a model to mobilize and equip individuals and groups to serve well in their community.

LEADERSHIP

Room 38 – Leading Healthy Teams
Nate Wagner, Sparta Baptist Church
The skills required to be a great team member and lead highly effective teams don’t come naturally, but they can be developed and employed. We will consider together five Gs, six priorities, and seven building blocks for leading healthy, high functioning teams.

Room 54 – Leading Through Change Because Your Mission Matters
John Nixon, North Park Baptist Church
Every effective ministry pursues change at some point in order to remain faithful to its mission. Even when the new vision is exciting, developing a strategy to get you from where you are to where you want to be can be overwhelming. In this workshop, we will discuss how to navigate any change in a way that people want to follow. We will share a tool to help you craft your message so that your people are as excited about your new vision as you are.

MISSIONS & EVANGELISM

Room 58 – Adoption and Orphan Care As Part of Your Church’s Mission Plan
John Shirley, Love Goes Home: Live Global
The crisis is real with more than 153 million orphans in the world without a home and without Christ. God has commissioned His church to love these broken little ones. Love Goes Home builds partnerships between American and national churches. Together, these churches rescue abandoned children in Haiti and the Dominican Republic by placing them in loving, Christian homes within their communities. This workshop will equip churches both biblically and practically to care for orphans in their own city and around the world.

CHILDREN

Room 122 – Easy Ways to Include Gospel Picture Books in Your Ministry
Kristin Wynalda, Big Books, Little Ears
An excellent picture book captures not only the attention of a child, but also their heart. There are many times with students that you could easily add a gospel-centered picture book. We’ll explore the why and how of including picture books in your ministry, without adding more work for you. I’ll also answer the what, and discuss recent Christian picture book titles (and a few chapter books) that should be on your radar.

Room 119 – Managing Your Classroom
Anna Sytsma, Child Evangelism Fellowship
Have you ever felt frustrated with the lack of kids paying attention in your class? Have you ever thought “If only the kids would just sit still and be quiet?” Have you wondered what you can do to keep the kids engaged in your classroom? If any of those are true for you then this session is perfect for you. We will discuss the causes of discipline problems and discuss ways to prevent further disciple problems from happening. 

Room 126 – Sharing Christ with Kids
Mary Lou Heyboer, BCM International
Using the parable of the soils, we will examine how to share Christ simply and biblically with children. We will look at the FARMER (you the teacher), the SOILS (the students), the SEED (the Gospel presentation), and the HARVEST (helping a child to trust Christ as Savior).

Room 124 – Tools for Family Discipleship
Becki Watson, Wyoming Park Bible Fellowship
This workshop will discuss various ways a church can equip, encourage, and train parents for the raising of young disciples.

STUDENT MINISTRY

Room 128 – Youth Ministry is Church Ministry
Jory Trim, Trinity Baptist Church
Youth group has rightly been critisiced for functioning as a pseudo-parachurch ministry within the local church walls. The teens may share the same budget and building as everyone else, but in every other way, they function independently from the rest of the church body. Research continues to show that teens who develop meaningful intergenerational relationships and regularly serve in the church are more likely to remain engaged in the church beyond their teen years. In this seminar, we will explore ways to leverage youth ministry to get teens doing church ministry that gets them serving and connecting with the body.

Room 129 – Faith For Exiles: Helping Students Following Jesus in Digital Babylon
Matt Bell, NorthPointe Christian High School
Based on groundbreaking research of David Kinnaman & Mark Matlock in their book, Faith for Exiles, this workshop will help pastors, parents, teachers, or virtually anyone who works with this next generation to help prepare young Christians to thrive and cultivate faithfulness in our world today. Although this workshop is designed for those who work/live with students, all generations are learning to navigate our new cultural setting and digital reality. Therefore, it is the hope that all followers of Jesus would leave empowered and motivated, no matter what age.

COUNSELING

Room 31/33 – Church Health: Go and Be Reconciled
Andy Molyneux, First Baptist Church, Mt. Pleasant
Forgiveness and reconciliation are essential to our worship! We have all experienced conflict in our families and friendships in the community. If you go to any church long enough, there will be some conflict there too. When conflict comes, what are we do do with it? What is forgiveness? How should we pursue reconciliation? Is it worth it?  God’s Word has answers.

WORSHIP

Room 64 – Songs in the Key of Worship
Chad Vitarelli, Bella Vista Church
Songs are important building blocks in our corporate worship gatherings, but there are a lot to choose from! In this seminar we’ll establish some musical, biblical, and community criteria for choosing the very best songs for worship in our individual local churches, and then we’ll practice analyzing some songs according to those criteria.

TECHNOLOGY

Room 66 – Enhance Don’t Distract
Justin Edmonds, EM Technologies
Technology is great!!! We use it everywhere for almost everything but we need to make sure we use it in the correct way. We should be enhancing our services and our mission and not distracting. This means we need to have vision cast and educated staff and volunteers to ensure we are enhancing our service and mission rather than distracting from it.

WOMEN’S MINISTRY

Room 30 – F.A.C.E. Time: Learn How to Confront in Truth with Kindness
Darlene Larson, Hearts with a Purpose
Do you dread those tough conversations? Do you cower and try to sweep them away? Do you withdraw, but it leaves you hurting more so? Jesus said, “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.” (Eph 4:15). Learn how to speak the truth in love and grow up in all aspects. Learn F.A.C.E. time and respond instead of react.

Room 56 – The L.I.F.E. of a Leader
Gail Ramesh & Linda Ploeg, Magnify Church
Strategies to help leaders grow their women through encouragement, connection, prayer, and eager service.