Today, I am in New York speaking at the first-ever New City Gathering and spending time with my friend, Drew Hyun and his new network. Learn about the five values that they see as being critical for new churches here.
What’s interesting to me is that their church planting conference is brand new.
I’m not against new conferences, nor am I against church planting; after all, I serve as the Director of Church Multiplication for NewChurches.com! But, what’s fascinating to me is how the trend with church conferences seems to be heading in the direction of small, regional, and specialized.
- Take the Catalyst conference for example. They grew their single location conference in Atlanta to 10,000+ attendees, and then started a West Coast version of it. Soon afterwards, they introduced smaller one day regionals across the country.
- Exponential went the same route. They had their Exponential East conference of over 5000+ attendees, started a West Coast version of it, and are now introducing regionals in the U.S. and in other parts of the world.
- The Verge Network did the same. After growing their Austin based conference to 3000+, they shut it down for a year, and have now opened up with a regional only strategy.
- The SEND Network had a 10,000+ sized conference in Nashville last year, and are moving to a regional strategy this next year. They’ve decided to alternate between one big conference and smaller regionals every other year.
–> The tension that big conferences face is the push to generalize their content, in order to broaden their registration base.
–> The benefit of small conferences is knowing your target audience, so you’re able to specialize and specifically equip your niche audience with what they need.
- So when I spoke at the V3 Praxis Gathering last year, there were less than 200 people, but their targeted focus was missional/incarnational practitioners passionate about disciple-making. You could never grow a conference to thousands and thousands based on this highly niche focus.
- As I’m speaking at the New City Gathering this year, there will also be less than 200 people, but they are able to focus on church planters who are passionate about urban, multiethnic, spirit-filled, emotional health, and missional practice oriented ministry.
- When I speak at the HCPN Gathering, they too will be under 200, but I will be able to speak specifically into what it looks like to multiply churches in the Houston area.
- And when I speak at the LifeWay Leadership Pipeline Conference, though the first day will be a big conference, their second day experience will be under 100 so that we can consult and help churches develop and implement a leadership pipeline in their church.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not against big conferences. In fact, I’ve had significant God-moments in the course of my life during them. After all, worshipping together with 5000+ people oftentimes feels like heaven-on-earth. I’m merely reporting on the trend that I’m seeing with church conferences. And that trend is towards small, regional, and specialized.
What are your thoughts? Which would you rather attend? A small or large conference?