Leadership Conferences Have Jumped the Shark

I think that Leadership and Pastoral Leadership conferences have jumped the shark. They are sooooo 2006 and they quit being innovative a long long long time ago. I knew things were getting desperate in the world of leadership conferences when Rick Warren slapped a new label on his same old tired Purpose-Driven leadership materials and renamed it Radicalis. Did he think that no one would notice that its the exact same curriculum he's been pushing for 25 years?

Yawn. Boring. Stale. Been there done that. I even have a t-shirt to prove it.

I can think of hundreds of other things I rather be doing than attend an outdated rehash of leadership leftovers in yet another multi-day so called 'transformational' leadership experience.

And has anyone noticed that it is the exact same people who keep getting invited to speak at these events? Seriously, how many times do I need to hear Perry Noble complain about the mean bloggers who aren't 'man enough' to come out from behind their laptops? Even the young avant garde emergent types are getting old and fat and their kewl trendy jeans, shirts and glasses are looking as relevant as a re-run of Love American Style.

Yawn. Boring. Stale. Been there done that.I even have a t-shirt to prove it.

Seriously, the pantheon of so-called innovative church leadership demi-gods sure seems to be seriously lacking innovation lately. Apparently the well spring in their "valley of vision" has run dry and there's nothing really new under the leadership sun. So they have nothing better to do than invite the same speakers to say the same things in the same auditoriums singing the same songs delivering the same leadership pep talks. Even Perry Noble wore the exact same clothes two years in a row at the conference that his church hosts (No kidding! Here's Perry at the 2009 Unleash Conference. Here's Perry at the 2010 Unleash Conference.)

Yawn. Boring. Stale. Been there done that. I even have a t-shirt to prove it.

Some have tried to keep the leadership industry alive by creating a new Christian Leadership Code Language that we're supposed to read their books in order to decipher and apply to ministry. They throw around words like missional, intentional, incarnational, experiential and relational as if these words actually mean anything real. But these words are now as cutting edge and edgy as venti, grande, macchiato and frappuccino. I think those terms are yawn-al, boring-al, stale-al. I even have a t-shirt to prove it.

R.I.P. Leadership Conferences. You taught us that if you live by relevance you also die by relevance. You were kewl for a season. But I'm bored with you now.

Been there done that. I even have a t-shirt to prove it.

Comments

[Ingrid]

I love it Chris! Excellent. Well said. You can apparently make an entire career of traveling to conferences. Is anything transformed? Is the church better off? Baloney, it is. These buffoons need to be shown for what they are.

[Raetay1]

Ha--Reminds me of a really hip song I know--May even do a Sermon series on it(after I'm done working thru the Bible of course!!??)

We had joy We had fun
We had seasons in the sun
But the hills that we climbed
were just seasons out of time

[Paul Golder]

It's not unlike how the Promise(Law) Keepers movement eventually became no longer the "in" thing.

I just wish that church leaders would realize that a Faithful Pastor, teaching the Bible from the pulpit, can do more for Kingdom than any conference.

[Ryanness]

Let's admit that 98% of conferences are "shark-jumping" idolatry. I'll just listen to the MP3 message when I'm riding my bike to work and save the admission.