Last night I had dinner with my old friend and colleague Warren Schuh. Warren was on the Leadership Network Team back in the day and now runs Barnabas Mentoring.
I think we all can remember where we were on September 11, 2001. I was having breakfast with Warren, Linda Stanley (still a Leadership Network team member), and Cindi Haworth in Naperville, Illinois. We were all glued to the TV in disbelief of the images playing on the TV.
In a few short hours we were scheduled to conduct the first
forum for multi-site church leaders hosted by Community Christian Church at
their “Big Yellow Box.”
Warren and Linda had worked on finding every church in the country we could find that was doing multi site. I think we found a little over 100 churches at that time. (In fact, Polly Lott from The Chapel had found over 40 herself.) We were expected around 100 people later that day.
Even with the scrambled plane schedules and horror of that day, almost everyone showed up. People doing multi site were hungry to talk to other practitioners.
Most stuck around the whole 24 hours and figured out how
to go together to rent vans, train tickets and find other ways to make their
way back home since no planes were flying.
From the basis of that meeting grew our Multi-Site Leadership Communities led by Greg Ligon, Julia Burke and Geoff Surratt. Through those communities, the plethora of research released, a best-selling book, and the dozens of conferences conducted there are now at least 2500 churches involved in multi-site models of ministry.
So although I remember the sadness of that day six years ago, I also reflect with gratefulness to have been with those leaders that day and see now what has been accomplished. As our founder Bob Buford always says: Yea God.
I won't forget either event. One had historical significance and the other I believe had eternal significance.
Posted by: Dave Ferguson | September 11, 2007 at 06:10 AM