Peter Lillback | Saint Peter‘s Principles: The Art of Godly Leadership

• Leading others in the kingdom of Christ requires certain truths that must be understood well for one to become to be an effective leader. However, knowing these truths also calls on us to develop skills to use them wisely. This pre-conference message will seek to take some of the key lessons learned from leaders through the years and show how to effectively apply timeless principles for leading God’s people onto His glory.

Leadership Development | Peter Lillback | Humility: 1 Peter 5:5-6

• Through this message, we will discover again through the example of Christ and the teaching of the Apostle Peter why arrogance is destructive to effective leadership and why humility is a foundational grace of godly leadership in the kingdom of God. In an era of self centered aggrandizing leaders in both church and the broader culture, these truths must be well learned, regularly reviewed and deeply assimilated  by faith through the Word and Spirit.

Men’s Ministry | Vince Miller | Building Ministry to Men with 5 Men-Focused Disciplines

• Many impassioned and well-meaning leaders tend to overcomplicate ministry to men. Too many focus all their time and efforts on events and supporting infrastructures. In the end, time is invested and resources are depleted, with no real ongoing ministry established to men. Instead, what if we focused on something more fundamental? Discover 5 fundamentals of building a growing and sustaining ministry to men that works and requires less time and energy than you think.

Worship Leaders | Matt Boswell | Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder

• How gospel-centered worship will recalibrate our love Godward, toward one another, the local church, and the world.

Family Ministry | Collin Hansen | The Duty and Delight of Catechizing Your Children

• Catechesis was a top priority in the Reformation. And it will be vital for church renewal in our own day as well. Learn how modern-day catechesis can help your family resist the world’s false hopes and rejoice in the Lord’s sure promises.

Elders | Mark Vroegop | How Long, O Lord? Spiritual Leadership Through Lament

• Elders are called to care for church members through every season of life. This is especially important during times of grief and sadness. Lament is the biblical language of sorrow, and faithful pastors and leaders need to know how to lament. They also should be equipped  to lead others through lament. The recovery of this neglected spiritual resource is essential for walking with people through their suffering so that they can trust in God.

Women’s Ministry | Trillia Newbell | The Joy of One Another

• God gives an impossible command: love your neighbor as yourself. It’s impossible to love like this without the power and work of the Spirit. He’s also given us the gift of one another, but as we know, relationships are hard. We can, however, learn to love and be a band of sisters to the glory of God.

Church Planting | Tim Cain | The Agenda is Love

• Everyone has an agenda. Pastors and church planters are no different, we have an agenda. And often in ministry we find ourselves struggling when our agenda encounters resistance. Frustration comes when we don’t get the results we are looking for. Impatience comes when those results don’t come at the speed we want. Anger comes when we blame someone else for our situation and despair is there for the times that we know it’s our own fault. But what if there was another way? What if our agenda wasn’t dependent on our circumstances or on how other people responded? What if our agenda was love? How would our life and our ministry change if we simplified everything and just remembered “The agenda is love.”

Prayer Ministry | Daniel Henderson | Prayer Leadership: Beyond Frustration to Gospel-Focused Transformation

• While most leaders know the power and priority of prayer, many still struggle to lead a transformational culture of prayer in the church that produces supernatural life change and gospel impact. Discover the core reasons behind this struggle and the keys to a biblical, vibrant and sustained culture of prayer in the church.

Youth Ministry | Brian Dye | Jesus: The Ultimate Youth Pastor

• They weren’t the most mature. They didn’t grasp Jesus’ teachings right away. They said and did stupid and immature stuff. They argued over who was the greatest. They were easily distracted. But they were also bold, free, flexible, moldable and had a simple faith. These characteristics make teens a prime population in which to find leaders for the Church in Jesus’ day as well as today!

Worship Leaders | Keith Getty | Created, Commanded and Compelled to Sing!

Family Ministry | Sam Crabtree | Not a Clanging Cymbal: Parenting with Loving Correction

• How can we promote good behavior and a peaceful home without becoming harsh drill sergeants or passive pushovers? Crabtree points to seemingly overlooked principles that, when applied in the strength God supplies, can reap a harvest of blessing.

Elders | Greg Gilbert | Smelling Like the Sheep: How Elders Should Approach the Flock

• To love those that God has entrusted to our care, elders need to be in the lives of those that they oversee. This means walking with our people through the highs and lows, the joys and the sadness, the good and the bad. But, how do we do this, and why do we do this?

Women’s Ministry | Jen Oshman | Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus: Women’s Ministry in a Self-Saturated World 

• Women today feel a constant pressure to improve themselves and just never feel like they’re “enough.” All too often, they live their daily lives disheartened, disillusioned, and disappointed. That’s because joy doesn’t come from a new self-improvement strategy; it comes from rooting their identity in who God says they are and what he has done on their behalf. Counter to our culture and counter to our flesh, real joy comes from loving God and neighbor and laying our lives down.

Church Planting | Matthew Spandler-Davidson | Church in Hard Places

• In our poorest communities, life is just hard. Life expectancy is low, crime is high, drug and alcohol addiction is extensive, mental health issues, abuse, and neglect are widespread. Our poorest communities need the church more than they need your charity. Simply put, church planting is mercy ministry! This seminar will consider the unique challenges and opportunities for church planting in an urban poor context.

Preaching | Bryan Chapell | The True Power of Gospel Application

• In this lecture, Dr. Chapell crystallizes the essential truth of his textbook, Christ-Centered Preaching, and helps multiple generations see why they may have trouble understanding one another and communicating the gospel beyond their peers.

Understanding Scripture | Stephen Witmer | Gospel Love to the Small Places

• The past generation of evangelicalism has often prioritized gospel ministry in big places (cities and suburbs) over small places (rural areas and small towns). This prioritization has often been based on the argument that the Apostle Paul focused exclusively on ministry in big cities, trusting that gospel influence would radiate out into the surrounding countryside. But it’s worth questioning this view of Paul’s ministry, as well as other arguments often used to support the prioritization of city ministry. This seminar will probe the New Testament, suggesting that its vision of gospel ministry more faithfully ensures that the church will love people in small places with gospel love.

Discipleship | Steven Lee | How to Build Small Groups That Make Disciples and Transform Lives

• Small groups can be both a blessing and a curse. They are a place for community, love, mutual care, and the study and application of God’s word. Yet some small groups morph into social clubs or rogue gatherings. They become breeding grounds for shallow teaching, pseudo-fellowship, and a gathering of the disgruntled. Come discover how a vision of gospel love—manifest in equipping the saints to build up the body—can make small groups a flourishing nucleus of disciple-making and transformation.

Counseling | Brad Hambrick | Making Peace with Romans 8:28

• Often for those going through times of intense suffering the promise of Romans 8:28 can feel hurtful, as if it minimizes their current pain. In this seminar we will get to know the experience of suffering, walk to verse 28 beginning in verse 25, and consider how to offer the hope of this passage in a timely, sensitive manner.

Healthy Churches | Mark Vroegop | Weep With Me: How Lament Opens a Door for Racial Reconciliation

• While most Christians desire the church to be diverse and reconciled along racial lines, tangible steps and practical applications are challenging. The gravitational pull of controversy and historical misunderstanding often causes a deepening of the divide between ethnicities in the church. Lament, however, can open a door for harmony and reconciliation. This historical language of empathy and exile can practically help believers move toward one another.

Women’s Ministry | Melissa Kruger | Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk

• Often, both older and younger women desire to grow spiritually through mentoring relationships. However, many have no idea where to begin. This session will consider the importance of mentoring and the goal of mentoring, as well as practical ways women can grow together by encouraging one another to go deeper in their relationship with Jesus.

Missions | Tim Keesee | A Great Cloud of Witnesses

• The unlikely gallery of saints recorded in Hebrews 11—and all those who have since joined their growing company—give voice to the promise that Jesus will ransom a people for Himself from across the centuries and from all nations. Let’s consider how these faithful witnesses—past and present—help us grow our confidence, fuel our endurance, and drive our risk-taking as we take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Preaching | Joel Beeke | Preaching to Your People’s Hearts

• This address will first expound several vital characteristics of the preacher himself—characteristics that are important for him to possess in order to penetrate the hearts of his people. Second, it will then look at how to reach the heart in four critical subjects in preaching the gospel: (1) preaching Christ in the power of the Spirit, (2) calling sinners to faith in Christ, (3) preaching the universal call to repent, and (4) preaching for holiness.

Understanding Scripture | Patrick Schreiner | Love for the Outcast and the Other

• In this session, we will examine Acts 8 and the Spirit’s compelling of Philip to accept a eunuch who is an outsider/other both in terms of his ethnicity and gender. Like Jesus, the eunuch goes from humiliation to exaltation and joins the temple people of God. Implications for modern day ministry will be considered.

Discipleship | Jeff Lacine | It Takes a Whole Local Church to Raise a Christian: Why One on One Discipling Is Important and Not Sufficient

• We normally think about discipling another believer in terms of one-on-one meetings. This kind of discipling is important in the life of a local church, and it is a good thing for pastors and church leaders to nurture a culture of one-on-one meetings in the church. However, God’s plan is to use every aspect of a local church in its life together to form a believer into Christ-likeness. How should one-on-one discipleship meetings feed into the rest of church life? How can pastors and church leaders help church members see the importance of participation in members’ meetings, shut-in visitation, children’s ministry service, and other matters of church life that they feel too busy for? Let’s consider together God’s plan for discipling in the local church.

Counseling | Ed Welch | Five Ways to Grow Meaningful and Helpful Relationships in Your Church

• Relationships can be challenging for us, and for those in our churches. We long to help ordinary Christians create a community where people are free to be open, admit weakness, ask for help, and bear one another’s burdens – to become a community that cares for each other in times of trouble. But how do we cultivate such a community? This workshop will target essential relationship skills for everyone in your church.

Healthy Churches | Greg Gilbert | Entering the Embassy

• Our churches are outposts of the kingdom of God, embassies of a far off land that stand ready to welcome those from all backgrounds and situations. As such, our churches should clearly represent this fact and those who enter should know and understand that they have crossed the threshold and stepped over a border.

Women’s Ministry | Mary Kassian | Building Strong Truth-Loving Women

• Many women have bought into the cultural idea that love means accepting each other’s personal truths. But the great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, states that love rejoices in THE truth – not my truth or your truth – but God’s truth. How do we disciple women to have soft hearts and strong backbones? How do we teach them that true compassion involves a bold, unswerving commitment to the Bible’s precepts? How can we equip them to discern truth from error – particularly when it comes to popular ideas about womanhood? This seminar will provide you with the tools you need to propel the women in your church to become strong, compassionate, truth-loving women.

Missions | Paul Akin | Living, Loving, and Laboring Together for the Sake of the Mission

• Why is being in a team so hard? Why do we experience conflict with those who serve alongside us? How can we reduce the noise of the clanging cymbal and reflect gospel love to those we are ministering to?  As those who are the rope holders of teams, this seminar will give you added confidence as you help those you have sent for the sake of the gospel.

Hilton
1001 Marquette Ave South, Minneapolis, MN 55403
Direct: 612.376.1000 // Toll-Free: 888.933.5363
Rate: $136 per night + tax + parking (1-4 adults per room)

Note: The Hilton is where we have secured the greatest number of discounted rooms for our attendees.

Car
The airport is 20 minutes by car from the Minneapolis Convention Center. Click here for a google map directions.
PDF Download of Nearby Parking Ramps
Interactive Parking Ramp Map With Pricing (Plaza Ramp is connected to the Convention Center)

Other Options
For a full listing of ground transportation options, including public transportation, taxis, rental cars, etc., please refer to the Convention Center Transportation Page.

Wednesday Shuttle Service
On Wednesday, February 3, there will be a free conference shuttle provided. These shuttles depart every 20 minutes from the Convention Center to the airport from 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM.