Most churches understand the value of members both engaging with one another and reaching out to the local community. What are the most effective ways to reach those desired outcomes? Learning the best practices and proven methods can help grow your congregation as well as enhance your effectiveness in the community. In this track, you will:  

• Find guidelines for catalyzing an unlimited number of small-group leaders
• Get 100% of your congregation connected with one another
• Cultivate in your church a network of disciples who make disciples
• Learn how to produce your own campaigns and curriculum
• Consider ways your church community can reach your local community for Christ
• Recruit, train, and develop leaders—and those who lead them
• Discover the secrets of sustaining small groups and growing that program
• Harness the power of technology and media as you launch and lead groups

The sad realities of declining weekend attendance and a more limited budget make recruiting and developing volunteers even more critical to the life of a church. And we have every reason to believe that this need for volunteers in ministry will only continue to grow. With the proven models and tested practices LifeTogether has to share, any church can increase exponentially both the size of its volunteer army and the ministry impact these servants have. In this Volunteer Ministry and Leadership Development track, you’ll learn how to:

• Recruit high-powered full-time and part-time volunteer staff
• Manage well your volunteer pipeline
• Mobilize people in the ministry in just weeks
• Find the best fit for everyone who volunteers 
• Get the results you need from your volunteers—and retain the good ones
• Develop ministry teams and train their leaders
• Mobilize members for short-term projects and critical church-wide initiatives
• Build a volunteer-driven staff
• Encourage long-term volunteers, grow them spiritually, and sharpen their skills
• Discover effective methods for developing classes, curriculum, and online courses that enable individuals to identify and exercise their spiritual gifts

The 1000 largest churches in America didn’t just get lucky! Learn from them the best practices, their latest innovations, and the breakthrough ideas most effective for them. In addition to inspiring you, these ideas—aggregated and curated by LifeTogether—will guide our conversations about every area of ministry. In this custom track, you will: 

• Hear fresh ideas from churches leading the way with new ideas about worship and ministry
• Learn about the breakthrough strategies these churches have successfully implemented
• Customize what you learn and like to your context, church culture, and community
• Benefit from the breadth of input from all tribes, regions, and theological persuasions 
• See how the latest and greatest tools, training, and technology can help you minister
• Discover effective growth engines, proven performance drivers, and helpful lead indicators
• Focus on your and/or you congregation’s felt needs as well as the untapped real needs
• Bring hundreds of church laboratories right to your front door

While on staff at Saddleback Church, Pastor Rick Warren used to call me “Pastor Next-Step” because of the partnership we developed between his teaching ministry and the next-step opportunities for the congregation. On this track, you’ll learn to design and develop the best ways to invite people in and then guide them through a systematic process for spiritual growth and vitality. Also in this track, you will: 

• Define and develop your discipleship pathway 
• Learn proven strategies to move people from the street to the seat 
• Evaluate multiple assimilation and retention models

You will learn the best practices, latest innovations, and breakthrough ideas from over 1000 of the largest churches in America. These aggregated and curated ideas will serve as the backbone to our conversations in every area of ministry.

• Latest learnings from thought leading churches
• Breakthrough strategies and proven performance drivers
• Customize to your context, church culture, and community
• Learnings from across tribes, regions, and theological persuasions
• Latest and greatest tools, training, and technology
• Serve as a part-time Chief Innovation Officer (CIO)
• Discover growth engines, performance drivers, and lead indicators
• Focus on your felt needs and your untapped real needs
• Bringing hundreds of church laboratories to your front door

What can LifeTogether do for you? Let us know what you need, what you want, and even what you dream of. Then, after we meet and do an initial assessment, we will create a one-year planning calendar fully customized to you and your church. On the calendar will be plans based on aspects of the track you select and the electives you choose. You’ll be set for an exciting and transformative year as you: 

• Identify the church’s strengths and weaknesses
• Note recent successes and current challenges
• Ask key church leaders and volunteers their perspective on the church’s strengths, weaknesses, successes, and challenges
• Survey the church’s resources—the people as well as the finances
• Set goals for this year, five years from now, and ten years from now
• Get specific about how to reach the one-year goals
• Plan for what can be done now to facilitate fulfillment of the five- and ten-year goals

You spend long hours each week prepping for a 30-minute sermon, and then when it’s over, no one may ever hear about it again. But what if you could take the best sermons you’ve written and used them to create additional materials like books, curriculum, devotionals, study guides, courses, journals, social media posts, and more? With LifeTogether’s Content Champion, you can do exactly that. Repurposing what you’ve done, we’ll help you create evergreen products in dozens of new formats, applications, and platforms for use both on and beyond your campus. You can already offer ideas and inspiration to pastors across the country who work hard every week to find great content. With Content Champion, you’ll be able to: 

• Create resources that take your people deeper and wider in their study of God’s Word
• Use existing sermon series as content for new resources (no additional research or writing involved!)
• Build a library of resources—based on material you’ve produced—that your church can both use and make available for purchase
• Grow your church by sharing materials for use in your church’s midweek small groups or discipleship circles—but share beyond the church campus too
• Transform any sermon series into a video-driven small-group curriculum
• Leverage for the future what you’ve learned journeying through life with Jesus, what your church leadership experience taught you, and what legacy you hope to leave for those who come after you