5 Reasons to Attend Conferences as a Team

I love my team! I know many people cannot say that, unfortunately, but the truth is that I love working with RCC leadership team. A couple weeks ago, I attended a conference with the ministry staff, and it reminded me of how great an experience it is to attend workshops, discuss application, and pray together for our church.

A few years back, when we were tossing around the idea of becoming an “orange” church, our family ministry team attended The Orange Conference together. This was the first time I attended a conference with a team of people from the same church, and I was convinced of the necessity to keep it up.

With that being said, I decided to create a list of reasons you should take your staff and/or ministry team along with you to the Orange Conference or any other ministry conference.

1. Shared Responsibility: You no longer are the only one responsible for taking all you’ve learned at a conference and bring it back to re-teach everyone else. Many will learn right alongside you, and you can share the responsibility of sharing it with others back at home.
2. Team Building: There is not much that can replace taking a trip with your team. We realized this in youth ministry long ago, but we are just not taking that idea and applying it to adult teams. The amount of bonding that can happen will greatly benefit your team.
3. Get Outside: Most ministry leaders can easily get overwhelmed with the day-to-day thinking and planning in church. There is a huge benefit to getting outside your church walls and see how others do things. It’s also great to relax in a worship setting, instead of worrying about every little piece going well or not.
4. No Delay: You know the drill. You go to a conference, hear something that radically changes your thought-process, and you furiously write down all the notes you can. Then you go on to the next workshop and that thought becomes a distant memory, which is even further back in our minds by the time we get back home. If your team comes along, you can discuss it right away.
5. Other Voices: Quite often, I hear ministry leaders say something like, “This is great, but I don’t know how I can convince my _______ to get on board with this.” One of the best ways to convince them is to bring them along with you, allowing them to hear the same things that convinced you.

Yes, there are some down-sides to bringing your entire team, and at the top of that list is probably cost. It is more expensive to bring more people. However, I think the cost is well worth it for all the benefits mentioned above. And some conferences, like The Orange Conference, even give you discounted group rates!

Have you been able to attend a ministry conference alongside your staff and/or leadership team? Please share about your experience in the comment below.

NOTE: It’s “Orange Blogger Week,” so all the Orange bloggers are out this week in full force. Be sure to check out all their posts! Click here for the list of bloggers and links to their sites. And speaking of Orange, have you made plans to attend The Orange Conference (April 27-29, 2015)?? Registration opens on October 8, 2015!