Laying hold of the vision and beginning to lead a church forward is challenging, but as Georgia pastor and church leadership guru Mike Linch has said, “Finishing it is the hard part.”
This understanding set the theme of the 2026 Illinois Leadership Summit – The Long Climb: Doing the Hard Work to Reach the Next Generation. Attenders will hear from main session and breakout speakers who have overcome challenges to lead churches in reaching students and young adults.
Ronnie Tabor, who led a revitalization that saw his Centralia church grow from 40 to more than 240 in seven years, says, “The next generation isn’t leaving the church. They haven’t shown up yet.” One of the challenges he has overcome is using technology to reach digital natives. “They live on their phones. They live in app land. They live in a gaming console. For an older generation, we’ve got to be willing to dip out toes into that… But with recent changes in technology, it’s not that hard.” Tabor will lead one of 21 breakout sessions.
Main session speakers are Andy Addis, who leads a multisite church with 13 locations across rural Kansas; Seth Conerly, senior pastor of Metro Community Church, one of the top baptizing IBSA churches year after year; Rayden Hollis, planting pastor of Red Hill Church that began on the campus of SIU-Edwardsville; and Nate Adams, IBSA Executive Director.
The Summit, Jan. 20-21, is the annual 2-day conference that brings more than 200 Illinois Baptist pastors and ministry leaders to Springfield each January, on a rotational basis with the larger Midwest Leadership Summit, held every third year. For more information visit IBSA.org/Illinois-leadership-summit.