A friend of mine Tom Lombardi, an Executive Coach now living in Atlanta, and I discussed ways to reach, enliven and strengthen the partnership between business professionals and fulltime ministers. In March of this year the following Christians convened near Miami to discuss this crucial topic—Randy Jordan, Vivian Hanes, Sam Laing, C Mack, Everett Darby, Tom Lombardi, Alex Hunter, and most of their spouses. That meeting included a conference call with Frank Kim, Tom Brown, John Louis and business leaders in Singapore and Indonesia. The result? There are two simultaneous summits in Singapore and near Chicago on October 18-19. We view the summits as “an experiment of ministers and business professionals in thinking and problem solving alongside each other.”
This year’s emphasis is on developing local team spirit between business professionals and ministers where our common faith and spiritual aspirations binds us. During the summits we are discussing reaching our cities, decision-making, true success and kingdom endeavors. This is the first step of a journey. We envision additional conferences in the future that will be opened up to a wide variety of callings.
Chicago’s Entrusted With Much summit was “invitation only,” but is now being opened up to another fifty business professionals and ministers that meet the basic criteria—fit those roles and have the blessing of leadership from their local congregation. These openings will be filled on a first come, first served basis. Please register by October 7 if possible. There are two options in how it works.
Two Days, October 18-19 ($160)—participate in the discussions of fictional and real case studies, lunches are covered. There are 50 open spots.
One Day, Saturday, October 19 ($70)—TED style presentations and responses that are conclusions of the discussions. There are another 50 open spots for Saturday.
View the Chicago program and background of facilitators and presenters at www.chicagochurch.org/EntrustedWithMuch
The real and fictional case studies that these two days will be using as a catalyst for our conversations will be available on this same website on October 10.
For instructions on how to register for either program, contact Steve Staten by email at sstaten@chicagochurch.org and simply provide a one-sentence description of your profession and the name of your congregation and minister. You will receive a response within 24 hours.