Workshops & Implementation Sessions
The Great City Network Workshop Approach
Why?
Great City Network workshops push network members past their present limits by inspiring and equipping them to perform at a higher level in every aspect of their ministry. This is where the truly best practices are featured.
How?
The Great City Network invites industry leaders to share real expertise in a context where network members can process and ask questions for true learning. We then follow those presentations with idea parties where members can truly workshop ways to implement ideas.
What?
On the first Tuesday of each month, there is a webinar - time spent with the expert in the room. Network members then have a follow-up opportunity one week after the webinar to discuss the ideas and their implementation in city churches, including breakout groups for members who want to get into the nitty-gritty of a specific application.
Looking for the replays of our past workshops?
Branding & Marketing
Excellence.
In a large city, such as Seattle, LA, or Chicago, your organization can’t break through without excellent communication strategies. You’re going head to head with some of the biggest companies in the world - all grabbing for attention. You have to compete.
Big Conversations.
Large cities are hubs of big conversations such as racial equality, gender rights, and other major topics. You must be prepared to swim in those waters.
Diversity.
Urban settings are beautifully diverse in language, heritage, and ethnic backgrounds. Are we ready to communicate across cultural lines?
Counseling & Mentoring
Counseling.
While still in the brainstorming phase, one of our pastors was trying to faithfully walk along with one of his members who was struggling deeply. Her issues were significant and thankfully she knew she could turn to her shepherd for comfort, help, and guidance.
But still, he felt a little out of his league trying to counsel her through the situation.
Mentoring.
How many of our church councils are merry-go-rounds of the same handful of men? In many cases, that group of men is faithful, but aging and growing tired. What about the other 80% of our men? That same is true of the women in our congregations. There are an active few, but several disengaged.
How can we get fresh legs into the game?
Welcome Back to the Great City Network
It’s been a little while since the last Great City Network event, but we’ve been cooking up some very exciting new ways for this Network to add value to your ministry. This live-streamed webinar will introduce the newest features and components of the Great City Network and explain how you can take advantage of them. It will serve as a kickstart to a new fiscal year and a chance to reinvigorate network involvement.
Building sustainable service projects
Leader: Bill Meier
The executive director of Kingdom Workers and has helped design dozens of long term projects meeting real needs of communities around the world. Before he stepped into his role at KW, he served in Malawi and other places for KW.
About the topic: If your church shut down tomorrow, who would notice? We're going to work on building long term, locally driven, locally owned gospel loaded service. Let's look at a proven framework for building sustainable service projects.
Mentoring Men
Leader: Dr. Dan Johnson
Let’s take a moment to discuss leadership. When we look through the news media, bookshelves, and workplaces, the topic of leaders seems to be everywhere.
Wisconsin Lutheran College has a unique focus on building up Servant Leaders, and aiming for excellence, not just academically, but in all areas of life. Dr. Johnson is the tip of the spear guiding that movement as the college’s president.
In this session we’ll address the ideas of a building up the men in our congregations. How do we guide them to desiring to serve with their talents? How do we build them into smart, ethical, caring Christians who will be leaders in all areas of their lives.
The relationship between the pastor and his Church Council should be healthy, productive, and Christ centered, but how many of our councils are annual rotations of the same 10 men? Let’s talk about building up the other men who may be assets to the church.
Building Better Teams
Leader: Katie Bowman
CEO of Trīb Consulting in Austin, Tx. Katie works with companies to develop teams based on the Enneagram, StrengthFinders, and being human.
About the topic: We have a handful of people in our church, and some community members who wish to help us. Let's unlock their talents and really discover what they will excel at. This session will also help us unveil gaps in our talent pool and where we might need some additional help on our service projects.
Identifying deep impact service projects
Leader: Dr. Jason Paltzer
A professor of Epidemiology at Baylor University. He serve as the guiding hand for Kingdom Workers' projects in the areas of public health and eduction. Prior to his academic career Jason served in the public arena in Zambia and Malawi for 9 years.
About the topic: How are we going to decide on a service project our church could be involved with? What if we listened closely to our community's needs and discovered what they are lacking? This is session is designed to shift our perspective on service project, and pushing us past a soup kitchen or food drive. Let's work to identify meaningful projects.
Mentoring Women
Leader: Linda Buxa
Pastors are called to guide their congregation, the entire flock. Men, women, and children. The affluent, struggling, and broke. The veteran Christians and new to faith.
Let’s focus on women.
Linda Buxa is an author, editor, and contributing writer for Time of Grace. She works for the WELS Seminary in Mequon, WI, and is the mom to three pretty rad kids.
We invited Linda to join our Virtual PepTalk in January 2021 because she brings a beautifully articulate perspective on faith and ministry.
In this session we’ll dig into the relationship between pastors and the women in their congregations. How do we mentor them, nurture their faith and empower them to use their talents?
Marketing Systems for the Small Team
Leader: Bert Adam
The entrepreneur services liaison for the Wyoming Business Council. He brings a hefty background in eComm, web marketing, and brand design and has been leading small agile marketing teams for many years.
About the topic: Good Marketing requires a lot of moving pieces. We're going to lay out a model for managing all of them, and making it work for your small team. We'll discuss prioritizing what matters and what may be non-essential.
Counseling Trauma
Leader: Amanda Gerdts, LMFT
Trauma is hard.
Trauma is unique to each individual case.
Trauma is messy.
Let’s talk about trauma. Because if we don’t work hard to understand the complex web of pain we experience, it will continue to be glossed over.
Amanda Gerdts is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist with a specialty in Trauma. She doesn’t hesitate to dive deep with her clients to discover the roots, webs, and mess of traumas.
In this session, Amanda will guide us into the dark realms of psychology related to traumatic events. More importantly, she’ll attempt to equip us with a handful of skills, smart questioning strategies, and things to not say.
We’ll also discuss how to handle situations which the pastor feels under qualified to handle. How do we refer to a specialist?
Trauma is messy, but Jesus dug in with the poor, hurting, and sick everyday of his ministry. We should be prepared to follow his footsteps.
Content Marketing
Leader Nick Eppley
Nick is the lead content marketing strategist for Colorado State University’s on campus communications. Previously he was on the social media team for Sierra Trading Post where he lead the Facebook marketing initiatives.
About the topic: It starts with content strategy. If you understand content creation, then the distribution becomes very clear. We will focus on content strategy, but also touch on several of the social media and other distribution channels.
Mentoring young adults into thinking Christians
Leader: Pastor Luke Thompson
One of the chief goals of education is to help students learn to Think. God designed us with sharp brains which are capable of learning, analyzing, and creating.
Unfortunately many parts of the education community drift very far away from God’s will or openly speak against it. How are we supposed to counter that?
Luke Thompson has been mentoring Thinking Christians for nearly a decade with his campus ministry in Ottawa. He has a beautiful model for building community (which involves food).
In this session, Pastor Thompson will zero in on:
• creating mentoring relationships with college students
• Helping young adults develop a Christian worldview
• nurturing a person toward analyzing, critiquing, and creating culture.
Wait - creating culture?
Yes.
The end goal is to create future leaders in our church who are intelligent, culturally savvy, not scared, but ready for a culture growing cynical, postmodern, and lazy in its thinking.
Email Marketing
Leader: Minden Fox
Minden is currently a professor of marketing and entrepreneurship. She is deeply involved in the kickstarter programs of Wyoming. Previously, she was the head of international marketing for Sierra Trading Post, and is a veteran of the US Air Force.
About the topic: How do we build an audience to communicate with? Let's look at the digital and in-person tactics. Some of these might be no-brainers, others will be new and unique. Wait wait ... what do you mean by "systematic word of mouth marketing?"
Mentoring Teens toward taking ownership of their faith
Leader: Brandon Lee White
Author, speaker, and youth mover, Brandon Lee White comes to us from the motivational speaking world. Over the last 10+ years he has spoken in public schools in nearly all 50 states and major student organization events such as DECA, SkillsUSA, the National Association of Student Councils, and the 4-H Western National Round-Up.
This is session, we will focus specifically on youth group development and helping teens take ownership of their faith nurturing.
As little kids, we went to church with our parents, because they brought us. When we hit teen years, we encounter new freedoms, desires, and responsibilities. So many times, that new car, group of friends, and weekend job takes priority over getting spiritually fed. Let’s talk about that. Brandon has great experience working with teens of all levels, both in school and church settings.
Website Design
Leader: Claire Grupe
User Interface designer and instructor for Epic software based in Madison, WI
About the topic: Let's talk about your websites and a few simple things to make them better for your users. Basic digital marketing theory states that 'all roads lead to your website.' So let's make sure that's buttoned up before we add layers to it.
Learn more about these sessions.
We want to help your and your church learn modern marketing strategy, tactics, and measurement. This series is designed to help with Brand Development, Digital Marketing, and Community Engagement. All of the speakers are professionals with several years of top notch experience in their fields.
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