The Central District Conference held its inaugural “Renewal and Missional Church Workshop” at Community Bible Church in Mountain Lake, Minnesota, June 23.
Speakers for the three-part event featured CDC pastors involved in church renewal or church planting. Daniel Rodriguez, district minister, spoke about church culture; Jon Annin, pastor of Stony Brook Church in Omaha, Nebraska, spoke about renewal; and Christian Kohs, senior pastor of Redemption Church in Owatonna, Minnesota, spoke about evangelism and outreach. The workshop ended with a time for questions.
“The goal of the retreat is to give pastors and leaders encouragement but also to challenge them to think about the health of their churches and leadership and ways that their churches can be more effective inside (and) outside as they go and make disciples that make disciples,” Rodriguez says.
The four-hour event was open to anyone in the district and targeted toward the churches within driving distance of Mountain Lake. About 15 people from five churches attended.
Rodriguez intends to host the workshop in churches across the district, providing opportunities for more people to attend. The June 23 event served as a trial run. At least two additional workshops in strategic locations near multiple churches around the district are being planned.
“We believe that as sister churches, we can have open conversations about the struggles that sometimes we deal with in our churches,” Rodriguez says. “We can learn from (God’s word and) each other and go back to the local ministries and implement some of the ideas that God put in (our) hearts.”
Janae Rempel Shafer is the Christian Leader associate editor. She joined the CL staff in September 2017 with six years of experience as a professional journalist. Shafer is an award-winning writer, having received three 2016 Kansas Press Association Awards of Excellence and an Evangelical Press Association Higher Goals award in 2022. Shafer graduated from Tabor College in 2010 with a bachelor of arts in Communications/Journalism and Biblical/Religious Studies. She and her husband, Austin, attend Ridgepoint Church in Wichita, Kansas.
