Pastors, Pastor Wives & Staff -Friday, January 30th from 1:00-5:00pm
Training Ground -Saturday, January 31st from 9:00-4:00pm
Location: Kenmore Alliance Church 175 Bonnett Ave, Tonawanda, NY 14150
Training Ground is a one-day event designed with both ministry volunteers and key leaders in mind. Training Ground is a space where national caliber speakers encourage and equip us to meet the current disciplemaking challenges. Whether you are a pastor, key leader, ministry volunteer, parent, or someone wanting to go deeper in the discipleship journey, you will find a space to connect, be encouraged, and be challenged when you fully engage in this equipping opportunity. With breakouts for all age levels, you will benefit when you come as a team.
The Gospel really is good news about God’s power to save. Sadly, far too many of us have a truncated view of the gospel that we believe is only applicable for the beginning part of our new life with Jesus. This reduction has led us to start our new life with the Gospel and then move on to self-effort and endless striving, leaving many followers of Jesus overwhelmed and burned out on empty religion. The good news about Jesus is not just the ABCs of Christianity but the A to Z. The Gospel is good news for your past, present and future. During this session you will be inspired and encouraged to see how the Gospel is the power of God for every part of your life.
As we become more and more convinced of the good news of the Gospel for ourselves, we also grow in our confidence that it is good news for everyone else. As we do, we need to learn to listen well to other’s heart so we can speak the truths of Jesus to people’s real needs, desires and longings in a way that sounds like good news to them. In this session we will consider how you can become more effective at sharing the good news of Jesus to the people around you.
Have you ever wondered how you can experience ongoing, true, whole-hearted transformation? Do you now how the gospel can be applied to every part of your life in a way that truly changes you from the inside out? Everything you do is connected to what you desire and believe. The fruit of your life displays the roots of your faith. During this breakout we will consider how to walk out the process transformational repentance. We will discover how to trace the fruit of our lives to the roots of our desires and beliefs, leading to genuine repentance that produces the fruit of the Spirit.
The mission of Jesus was clear: Make disciples who make disciples. However, this remains the biggest challenge most church leaders face. In fact, less than 4% of Christians in North American are disciple-makers. We need help. During this breakout we will consider how our present church culture needs to shift toward becoming a disciple-making culture.
Jeff Vanderstelt
“As the Executive Director of Saturate and founding leader of the Soma Family of Churches, Jeff Vanderstelt gets to spend his days doing what he loves – mentoring leaders and equipping the Church in the gospel and missional living. Additionally, Jeff is on the leadership team of Saturate the Sound, a local church collective focused on gospel saturation in the Puget Sound. Jeff has authored Saturate, Gospel Fluency, and Making Space. He and Jayne, his wife, have three children; Haylee, Caleb, and Maggie. Connect with Jeff on twitter and instagram @JeffVanderstelt.
This is specifically for Pastors, Pastor wives and Staff only:
Church leadership can be a very lonely and isolating space. We are tasked with helping others experience deep relationships with God and others. However, so many of us are lacking that ourselves. And often, we fall into the trap that we have to appear to have it altogether when none of us really do. If we’re honest, many of us feel detached, lonely, unseen and unknown. And sadly, many leaders burn out or flame out as a result. We were made for so much more! Jesus prayed in John 17 that we would experience the same kind of life-giving intimacy and connection in our relationship with God and others that he experienced with God the Father. One of the reasons we don’t experience this kind of depth and health in our relational world is because we are often bringing only parts of ourselves into these spaces. During this 4 hour learning journey, Jeff will share about his own journey and how he is learning to bring his whole self into these relational spheres, experiencing greater levels of relational attachment with God and others. He will walk through how we as leaders can tend to our own souls with the goal of leading others from a place of emotional, spiritual and relational health.
9:00 AM Keynote Session #1
10:30 AM Break
11:00 AM Breakout 1
12:15 PM Lunch
1:15 PM Breakout 2
2:45 PM Keynote Session #2
4:00 PM Dismiss