The Next Step Conference will be held this year on Oct. 22-23 at Ankeny First United Methodist Church. The conference will feature a wide variety of workshops covering everything from adult ministries and worship to lay staff management and puppet ministry.
We are excited to announce that this year our keynote speaker will be Rev. Paul Nixon, author of the book I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church. Rev. Nixon has more than twenty years of experience on the front lines of local church ministry, including nine years at Gulf Breeze United Methodist Church in Florida during a remarkable season when the church doubled from 2000 to 4000 in membership, expanded to three locations and received 1300 adults by profession of faith in Christ. God invites every congregation to thrive. Paul Nixon believes the future of mainline Protestantism is in the hands of pastors and lay leaders who must immediately make some critical choices, radically reframing the way they approach their ministry tasks: Choosing Life over Death, Community over Isolation, Fun over Drudgery, Bold over Mild, Frontier over Fortress, and Now rather than Later. In addition to a ministry of coaching church leaders, Paul serves part-time as pastor of an experimental faith community in Washington DC and as part of the Path One Team of The United Methodist Church as a researcher and consultant around best practices in new church development.
We’ll bring you more information as it becomes available. God Bless!
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