Nobody Knows What Leadership Network Does... So I Asked

They're like a secret society in a Dan Brown novel. You hear rumors of backroom conversations, high-level meetings at undisclosed locations, hazing rituals. =) So I decided to go to the source - Dave Travis who is such a great guy and directs Leadership Network...

Leadership Network hosts backroom meetings for influential church leaders. I've heard rumors of Osteen, Hybels, Stanley, Warren - all sitting down together to talk about the church at the invitation of LeadNet...

For 25 years we have had LOTS of meetings with a broad section of influential church leaders. Many times those are with senior pastors of larger churches (and for example we had 432 Senior Pastors involved over about 45 meetings this year) but they are also with what we call the "strategic leadership team" [at these churches]... To my knowledge Joel Osteen has never attended one of those meetings with us (although his brother - the strategic leader of the church - has).

What do you talk about?

Our convening power is based on selecting a mix of true innovators and early adopters so that the ideas coalesce. Plus our real strength and bias is NOT to have folks dream things up and implement, but rather to take their ideas and help them learn from each other and implement. Then we share what is being learned with others in order to facilitate movements...

Has anything good come out of it?

Let me give you a few examples. In 2001 we convened the first gathering of multi site churches in the US. We had found 125 at that time and invited all of them. We actually held several summits and then started our Leadership Communities on Multi Site. We started capturing that in books, papers, podcasts, eventually did a few partner conferences with multiple models. Now over 3500 churches doing it.

We believe that our Burning Bush program (for churches planting at least 10 churches a year) that started in 1998 actually seeded the overwhelming movement now of new church plants. We gathered the leading church planting churches, helped them connect and learn from each other twice a year. Then we started adding other communities, knowledge, worked behind the scenes with the various conferences to platform those churches and now for many evangelicals, you aren't a player unless you are a church planting church. That's a big change since 1998. It used that "the bigger the better." Now the ethos is to multiply and spread.