Bill Hybels' Leadership Summit Attracts World-Class Speakers

By Audrey Barrick, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, July 24, 2007

This year's highly prominent Willow Creek Leadership Summit will feature a world-class line-up of guests and speakers, including exclusive interviews with former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state Colin Powell.

Now in its 12th year, the annual global gathering expects it biggest crowd ever of some 100,000 church and business leaders in more than 138 cities worldwide where the Aug. 9-11 summit will beam via satellite from Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill. An additional 76 cities will view the videocast in the fall.

The global expansion is a result of higher demand for one of the world's most premier leadership training events.

Following last year's exclusive interview with U2 frontman Bono, who drew church attention to the extreme poverty and AIDS pandemic in Africa and made it no less than a command for Christians to help those suffering, Willow Creek founder Bill Hybels landed interviews with Carter, Powell and filmmaker Richard Curtis to feature at this year's event. Curtis is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of the Make Poverty History campaign and was also the driving force behind the recent success of the special "Idol Gives Back" program, which raised $70 million during the latest "American Idol" television season.

Other summit speakers appearing live at the South Barrington campus include Michael E. Porter of the Harvard Business School, one of the world's foremost authorities on competitive strategy; Carly Fiorina, past president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard; John Ortberg, author, speaker, pastor, and leading voice on the subject of spiritual formation; Floyd H. Flake, senior pastor of the Greater Allen A.M.E Cathedral of New York in Queens and president of Wilberforce University in Ohio; Warren Bennis, prolific author and world-renowned leadership expert; and Hybels, one of the most influential evangelical pastors in the nation.

Participants from North America at last year's Leadership Summit were asked to fund satellite sites at locations worldwide for the 2007 event. They also received the first opportunity to compete in the first annual "Courageous Leadership Award" in which three churches are awarded $100,000 for demonstrating outstanding involvement and effectiveness in the fight against AIDS. The awards will be given out at Leadership Summit 2007.

The Willow Creek Association (WCA), host of the annual Leadership Summit, is a growing multi-denominational worldwide network of more than 12,000 churches from 90 denominations and 35 countries. The WCA equips churches and church leaders with strategic vision, training, and resources.