FAQ: What is the Leadership Summit?

Over the course of the year, we do three one-day training events called Leadership Summits to keep our leaders equipped, encouraged, and excited about their groups. The Leadership Summits are smaller versions of the Annual Leadership Retreat, and we use them as opportunities to re-visit and reinforce the topics and themes introduced at the Retreat.

Our summit formula is pretty simple:

• Connection- we provide breakfast for our leaders. It's a small way of saying "thanks" for investing their Saturday morning into ministry, and it creates an environment where leaders can connect with one another.

• Worship- we recognize that worship is critical for establishing a good leadership environment. Good leaders begin by leading themselves well. That means they find margin to connect with God.

• Vision- Pastor Mark shares with our leaders at each summit. Our leaders are on the frontlines of pastoral care for the church. They need to know what God is teaching him, where God is leading him, and what's on the radar screen for us as a church.

• Leadership Development- at every leadership summit, there is a teaching time. We strategically tie this in to the topics discussed at the Retreat. The 2005 retreat focused on being a team. So we talked about qualities of a team player at the summits. At the 2006 Retreat, we talked about how your prepare for your journey (i.e., you take a map to chart a course, you take a compass to navigate, you take a tent to rest, you take others for community, you take a flashlight to illuminate the way ahead, etc.). During the 2006 summits, we continued to use journey metaphors to talk about important disciplines or skills in the life of a leader. For example, Binoculars: Clarifying and Enlarging Your Vision, Walkie-Talkies: Communicating Clearly, and First Aid Kit: Serving Others. In 2007, our retreat theme will be "Some Assembly Required" and the summits will be used to talk about different stages of construction: Laying a Foundation (leading yourself well, basing your leadership and group on Scripture, etc), Building a Community, and Repair and Remodeling (dealing with crisis situations, pastoral care, peer counseling, etc)
  

• Leader Appreciation- we always try to find a way to appreciate our leaders. We have not done a stellar job on that in the past. But we have recently realized the importance of recognizing the good work that our leaders are doing. When I talk about different leadership principles, I try to share real-life stories from real-like NCC leaders sitting in the room. If they are lucky, they'll find a moonpie flying in their direction.