The Summit was born out of a vision to see local churches being led by growing, empowered, and empassioned leadership. Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, and chairman of the board for Willow Creek Association, had sensed a growing, God-given burden to help raise the gift of leadership in local churches, and to see WCA play a role in developing leaders to use their gifts and abilities to further the cause of Christ’s Kingdom through the church.

For as long as the Willow Creek Association has hosted The Leadership Summit, international attendees have been traveling to South Barrington, Illinois and asking the WCA to hold a Summit in their countries. Knowing how few resources there are for churches abroad, the WCA has been seeking a way to provide this kind of training to more leaders in other countries. The Global Leadership Summit was launched in 2005 as an accessible and affordable option to provide high-quality training in a wide range of settings.

Presenting the event live via satellite was not a viable option because of problems related to simultaneous translation and time zone issues. Top Summit sessions are now edited, translated, and placed on high-quality DVD for use in October and November. Speakers from the U.S. Summit who would connect best with their international audience are chosen for each city. Another big plus to The Global Leadership Summit timing was the ability it provided to the international team to create an application tool for guests, in order to help attendees implement change.

Our original goal and prayer was to reach 3,500 people. Last year, about 42,000 leaders attended The Global Leadership Summit in Africa, Australia, Europe, New Zealand, and Latin America. The response was overwhelmingly positive, impacting church leaders far more powerfully than we had hoped.

Now, we are moving ahead with greater faith and confidence and in 2008, we have agreed to expand The Global Leadership Summit into 100+ cities and 53 countries—including Cuba, China, and Uganda. Click here for a full listing of dates and locations.

WCA International has made a commitment to make the event stunning in its excellence of experience. The worship, the networking, the volunteers, the processing times, and state-of-the-art technology will help attendees experience quality they have literally never seen before. The goal is to provide world-class training to raise the gift of leadership on behalf of the local church.