Years ago I was part of an organization – Leadership Network – that convened senior pastors and staff of large churches.  While they were used to hearing from their peers they told us they wanted to hear from non-pastors about issues of management and leadership because the seminaries and conferences they attended did not address those issues for large churches.  We began to seed our conferences with management speakers business professionals secular authors and other “non-church” resources.  While the emphasis was still on church professionals learning from other church professionals about the “business” of the church the introduction of outside resources was welcomed with enthusiasm. 

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog titled “Half-Time for Church Staff” reflecting on the growing trend of church staff to start their own non-profit organizations.  That started me thinking about why.  That question led me to start asking church staff who the influencers were in their lives and the conferences they were attending.  This is an oversimplification but the majority of them reported going to conferences like “Q” “Catalyst” “Fusion” “Orange” and the Willow Creek Leadership Conferences.  When I looked at the speaker rosters (and attended the conferences) I realized the speakers are with exceptions men and women who are known as artists writers film makers social justice leaders think tank scholars management consultants pundits journalists and entrepreneurs.  They are not typically church staff or church leaders talking about church.  The roster does include pastors who have left the church to launch something new. They are “culture makers” (to use Andy Crouch’s phrase) who are creative and working outside institutions or starting their own. 

In other words while we seeded those long ago conferences with a few outside resources the outside resources have become the main voices informing and shaping church staff.  The professionals are no longer attending conferences for professionals to learn how to increase attendance and build an organization.  They are attending conferences that while they include the institutional church as one of the channels of culture it is only one of several.  In some ways the real action for ministry is “outside the walls” of the church.  Yes this has been talked about for years by people in the various lay movements that have come and gone. I don’t think any of us could have predicted what might happen when the young leaders of the church are more interested and motivated by starting new organizations (not churches) with missions that are almost foreign to the senior staff and lay leadership of their churches.  The heroes of the young staff are not builders of large churches but explorers and entrepreneurs in arts culture film commentary and social justice.  I’m curious how this plays out.