Over 1,100 church leaders from across the Midwest traveled to Springfield Illinois for the Midwest Leadership Summit on January 20-22. Sixty nine pastors, church leaders and key lay people from Iowa attended the event.

The Midwest Leadership Summit is a triennial training event that seeks to provide learning opportunities to key leaders on a variety of topic including church planting, evangelism, discipleship, missions, and women’s ministry among others. Attendees had the opportunity to attend six different breakout sessions over the three day event, choosing from over 40 different classes. Many of the training opportunities were filmed during the event and will be made available for viewing at mwadvance.org. The theme of this year’s event was “Advance” from Philippians 1:12.

“Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has actually resulted in the advance of the gospel.” Philippians 1:12 (HCSB)

Andy Addis, lead pastor of Crosspoint Church in Kansas, Gary Frost, VP of the Midwest Region for NAMB, and Eric Geiger, VP of Lifeway Christian Resources delivered keynote speeches.

During a time of fellowship and networking, Iowans gathered together to hear Jon Jamison, co-director of the Baptist Friendship Center in Des Moines crack a few jokes. A few people laughed and all marveled at Jon’s fascination with fast food restaurants.

Iowa Pastors and leaders returned from the summit recharged, engaged and armed with knowledge and strategies to impact their communities and expand the Kingdom of God. Participants will be sharing what they learned and leading their churches to greater growth, deeper discipleship and increased evangelistic outreach.

The Midwest Leadership Summit was provided through a financial and planning partnership between ten Baptist State Conventions and three national SBC entities including the North American Mission Board, Lifeway and WMU. Sending states included, the Dakotas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The Illinois Baptist State Association filmed these” man on the street” interviews with attendees during the first full day of breakout sessions.