Midwest Leadership Summit Will Equip Pastors, Church Staff, and Volunteers in Springfield

The 2027 Midwest Leadership Summit will meet January 26–28 at the Crowne Plaza, 3000 South Dirksen Parkway, Springfield, Illinois. The event is a partnership involving four national Southern Baptist Convention entities and nine Baptist state conventions, and its official materials describe a gathering of more than 1,000 leaders from 12 Midwestern states. The Missouri Baptist Convention’s event page, published August 19, identifies pastors, church staff, and volunteers as the intended participants and says the summit brings experienced Southern Baptist leaders and ministry practitioners together to help people listen, learn, and connect with peers who understand ministry in the Midwest. The organizers advertise three days, 12 ministry tracks, and more than 70 breakout sessions. Announced tracks include associational mission strategy, church planting, discipleship, evangelism, leadership development, missions, revitalization, specialized ministries, and spiritual renewal. Plenary speakers listed for 2027 are Jeff Iorg, JJ Washington, Shane Pruitt, and Hershael York. Those details establish a substantial church-ministry conference with a broad but clearly Christian purpose. It is not a business leadership seminar with religious branding; its content is organized around strengthening churches, advancing gospel work, developing leaders, renewing congregations, and serving the Midwest mission field. The Springfield location offers a central meeting point for the participating region, while the scale and partnership make the event relevant to church teams traveling from across the United States, especially leaders who serve small cities, rural communities, suburbs, and changing metropolitan areas. The Missouri Baptist page lists a $50 cost per person and notes that the fee includes the event and lodging, but participants should confirm current eligibility, registration terms, room arrangements, schedule details, and any state-convention-specific instructions through the official Summit website before committing to travel.

The Summit’s strongest practical feature is its combination of specialization and shared mission. A pastor may need help with preaching culture, staff leadership, church health, or personal renewal, while a volunteer may be looking for a first workable step in discipleship, evangelism, or community ministry. Twelve tracks allow participants to choose content close to their responsibility, and more than 70 breakouts create room for concrete questions that a single plenary schedule could not address. Churches can make the trip more useful by sending a small team, assigning different tracks, and scheduling a post-conference meeting to compare notes and decide which ideas actually fit their congregation. An associational leader can use the gathering to build relationships across state lines; a church planter can learn from practitioners working in similar cultural conditions; and an established church can explore revitalization without assuming that methods from another region transfer unchanged. The practical reason to attend is therefore not simply access to well-known speakers. It is the chance to receive targeted training and form trusted peer connections with people who understand both the opportunities and constraints of Midwestern ministry. Juan Sanchez’s hardcover book “The Leadership Formula: Develop the Next Generation of Leaders in the Church” is a useful companion because it focuses on identifying, developing, and commissioning credible church leaders for continuing gospel work. That emphasis aligns with the Summit’s leadership-development track and with the broader need for churches to multiply responsibility rather than concentrate ministry in a few overextended people. Attendees can read the book beforehand, bring questions about their current leadership pipeline, and return with a specific plan for mentoring one or two emerging leaders. Used that way, the conference becomes more than an inspiring January gathering: it can serve as a structured checkpoint for a church team to deepen biblical leadership, strengthen mission practice, and pursue renewal with accountable next steps.