I have a pretty cool job. My title is “Director of Ministry Development for Adult Ministries” for the Willow Creek Association. Most of my co-workers still revert to the former title and call me the “Content Guy.” My job is to transform blank sheets of paper into cutting-edge training experiences for innovative church leaders. Working with Greg Bowman and Bill Donahue, I help create the sessions, choose speakers, and craft the content for conferences like the Ancient-Future Community. I help put together highly targeted events like the “Small Groups Advanced Training” (SGAT) that is on campus here in South Barrington this week. We’re working on some new stuff like blogs and podcasts for training small group leaders, and on-line video conferencing to enable cohorts of networked Point Leaders and Pastors.

The SGAT is one of my favorites. This week’s event has 109 small group Point Leaders from San Diego to Seattle to South Carolina. We’ve got Hoosiers in the same room with cheeseheads.  Baptists and United Methodists and Presbyterians sitting at the same table. It’s a preview of heaven without the fear of height. Every church that came with five or more got their own table with a world-class facilitator. Everyone else gets to join two or three other churches and learn from each other as well as their facilitator.

I enjoy facilitating mixed tables. The guy on my left is Staff Point Leader from a church in Southern California with 4,000 attenders and over 100 small groups. Across from him are two ladies (both volunteers) from a mainline church in Indiana with about 30 groups. They have the same passion and some of the same problems.

Here is what I love about these events. Over the two days I get to present some of my best teaching on Leadership training and development. I get to listen to point leaders explain their situation and help them troubleshoot and brainstorm solutions. Often the best ideas don’t come from me… they come from some guy from Cornfield, Iowa who worked through a similar issue and came up with a creative solution. I get to listen to my heroes… Russ Robinson, Bill Donahue, Greg Bowman, and others, as they teach some of their best stuff. I get to hang with some good friends whose passion for small groups and “community” has led them to vocational ministry. Bill Search (Southeast Christian), Kaleen Marshall and Steve Yarrow (Christ Community), Beth Leonard, Jana Swenson, Ben Lockyer (a Canadian, to give us international representation) and more.

And I get to do it again today.

Do you love your job?