You and a team from your church/charge are invited to join us November 10 and 11, 2023 at Christ Church UMC in Bethel Park, PA (just outside of Pittsburgh) for Level Up!

Sponsored by Western PA, West Virginia and Susquehanna Conferences, this will be two days of learning and equipping for you and your team. This event is designed to be a catalyst for your ministry as you discern and take your next steps . . . in 2024 and beyond.

Each of the keynote speakers and workshop facilitators have been specifically chosen not just for their subject matter knowledge, but because they are real-world practitioners of the ministry concepts they teach. You will have the opportunity to hear from Rachel Gilmore, Luke Edwards, and Michael Beck during our total group sessions. You will also be able to attend three different workshops with any of those keynote speakers, or up to a dozen other leaders.

Each day you will also be given time to gather with your team to debrief and discuss ways to apply what you are learning back in your local community. This follows the model of information + application = transformation. Additional resources will be available to you and your team before, during, and after the event. For example, online courses on the Portico online learning portal.

Cost for this event (includes dinner on Friday and lunch on Saturday)-$130/person. Bring a team of two-$110/person. Bring a team of three or more-$90/person. Not able to attend in person? Live Streaming is available at $19.99/person (includes worship and three keynote speaker sessions).

Luke Edwards
Keynote: Deep Listening: The First Step to Leveling Up

Local churches are often organized for a world that no longer exists. Whether you are looking to start a new ministry or take your existing ministry to the next level, deep listening is the first step. In deep listening we ask God to open our eyes and our ears, seeking to understand our community more so we might add something of value. In this keynote you will learn spiritual listening practices that will increase your church’s understanding of its neighbors and help discern where God is inviting the church to expand the kingdom.
Bio: Luke Edwards, author of Becoming Church: A Trail Guide for Starting Fresh Expressions, is a United Methodist Minister and the Associate Director of Church Development for the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. Over the past six years he has helped launch countless micro faith communities across western North Carolina and North America. Before that he was the founding pastor of King Street Church, a network of fresh expressions in Boone, North Carolina. Since his training as a social worker, he has spent the last 15 years exploring wholistic models of church-based community engagement. Luke has learned a few things along the way, but the most important lesson he's learned is that healthy ministry begins with deep listening. He grew up in an area of western Massachusetts that was recently named the most post-Christian metropolitan area in the United States, where he joined his first micro-faith community at the age of fourteen. Luke lives in Denver, North Carolina, where he enjoys hiking, coaching his daughter's soccer team, and cheering for Charlotte FC, his local professional soccer club. You can find his newsletter and Spiritual Listening Plan at www.thelisteningchurch.com.

Rachel Gilmore
Keynote: Leveling Up: Creating Space to do New Things

Are you excited to try something new in your church or community? Are you dreaming and visioning of what could be, but aren't quite sure of how to get there? Are you feeling exhausted or unsure about how others will react to these new ideas? In this keynote, Rachel will talk about the top 3 things we need to stop and start if we want to level up and try new things when we get back to our home context.
Bio:Rev. Rachel Gilmore is an elder in the Virginia Conference and planted The Gathering at Scott Memorial UMC in Virginia Beach, serving there from 2009-2019. In 2019 she was appointed as the Director of Recruiting, Training and Assessing for lay and clergy church planters in the United Methodist Church. Rachel currently serves in the Desert Southwest Conference as the Director of New and Vital Faith. She most recently assisted in the planning of the National UM Church Planter Gathering which was hosted by the Western Jurisdiction in April of 2023. She is a founding member of Intersect: a Co-Planting Network, and launched two podcasts related to church revitalization, church planting and multiethnic church growth in the last 3 years. She is the author of Expanding the Expedition Reach with Missional Communities (Marketsquare, 2021) and Voices of Christmas (Marketsquare, 2021). Rachel is also a contributor to Launching a New Worship Community: a Practical Guide for the 2020s (Upper Room, 2021) and her story is featured in Ready, Set, Plant (Upper Room, 2021) and From Franchise to Local Dive: Multiplying your Church by Developing your Contextual Flavor (Marketsquare, 2020).

Michael Beck
Keynote: Five Congregational Personality Types: An Ancient Pathway for Congregational Renewal in the 21st Century

Can churches in the 21st century stop, reverse, or prevent decline – and even become healthy, thriving congregations? Leading scholar and practitioner of congregational renewal, Michael Adam Beck, says they can.
But the old cookie cutter ways of doing church won’t cut it in today’s world. If churches are going to stop the shocking rates of pastoral burnout and exodus from the pews, they must learn to be the church with new people, in new places, and in new ways.
For congregations to experience what Beck calls, “re-missioning” they must “grow the center, experiment on the edge.” The Five Types deals with the internal work that must happen in a congregation to reorganize for a blended ecology, in which inherited and fresh expressions live together in a symbiotic relationship.
Every church has a distinct personality type, which can keep it stuck or propel it into maturity, depending on how it’s used. Find out how you can understand and leverage your congregation’s culture and personality using the groundbreaking 5 Congregational Personality Types™ pathway to level up your church for growth and new forms of vitality!
Bio: Michael Beck is a pastor, professor, and author. Beck, a rare breed of practitioner and scholar, came to faith as a street-kid, redeemed by Jesus from a life of incarceration and addiction. Michael and wife Jill have led a series of church revitalizations for the past 15 years. They are co-pastors of Wildwood and St Marks UMCs, as well as a network of thirteen fresh expressions gathering in tattoo parlors, dog parks, burrito joints, and digital spaces. Michael serves as the Director of Fresh Expressions Florida, Director of the Fresh Expressions House of Studies at United Seminary, and Director of Fresh Expressions UM. He is the author of nine books. Michael helps church leaders across the globe follow Jesus in new and exciting ways