We created this blog to add a new interactive dimension to your Leadership Summit experience and to provide a place for high-level, insightful, and catalytic conversations about leadership in the church throughout the year.

The purpose of the discussions you can take part in on this blog is to help you process the content of the Summit, sharpen your leadership skills, and connect with others who care deeply about the value of leadership in the church.

As you read the posts by our regular WCA Bloggers and our Guest Bloggers, we encourage you to share your thoughts and reactions. Dive in and let us know what you are thinking!

(Please note: In order to ensure that the WCA Leadership Blog achieves its highly focused purpose, comments which are deemed inappropriate, inflammatory, or dishonoring will be removed.  We encourage healthy disagreement, but we seek more light than heat as we engage each other in conversations that will improve our thinking and refine our leadership for Christ's sake.)

Blogger Bios

Bill Hybels | Greg Hawkins | Corinne Ferguson | Jim Mellado
Nancy Beach | Kristen Aikman | Ray Pelletier

Known worldwide for his work equipping and training Christian leaders, Bill Hybels is the visionary behind The Leadership Summit. He is passionate about empowering leaders to transform communities through the local church. Bill is the senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., and Chairman of the Board for the Willow Creek Association. He convened The Leadership Summit in 1995 following a God-given prompting to help develop the spiritual gift of leadership in the local church. A highly sought-after conference speaker on issues related to Christian leadership, Bill is the best-selling author of more than 20 books including Courageous Leadership, The Volunteer Revolution, and, most recently, Holy Discontent. Bill and his wife Lynne have two adult children and one grandchild.

Greg L. Hawkins is executive pastor of Willow Creek Community Church. Since 1996, he has assisted Senior Pastor Bill Hybels in providing strategic leadership to Willow Creek’s five campuses and to the Willow Creek Association (WCA). He also serves as point leader for REVEAL, a new initiative within the WCA that utilizes research tools and discoveries to help churches better understand spiritual growth in their congregations. Prior to joining the staff of Willow Creek in 1991, Greg previously spent five years as a consultant for McKinsey & Company. He has an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Texas A&M University and an MBA from Stanford University. Greg and his wife, Lynn, live in the Chicago suburbs with their three children.

As a recording engineer and music producer in her early twenties, Corinne began volunteering at Willow Creek Community Church in 1984. After joining the staff, Corinne served for many years as executive producer of weekend services, special events, WCA conferences, and recording projects, and as dance team and vocal team director. She transitioned from the church staff to the Willow Creek Association in January of 2007 to focus fulltime on The Leadership Summit and the Global Leadership Summit, serving as the executive director. Corinne and her husband, Greg, (and their dog Bo) live in Barrington, Ill.

Jim Mellado is currently the president of the Willow Creek Association. Jim has been with the WCA for 15 years and has served as its president for the last 14 years. The WCA is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary and is now serving over 12,000 Member Churches from over 90 denominations around the world. Its mission is to envision, equip, and encourage Christian leaders to build prevailing local churches. Jim has an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is also a 1991 graduate of the Harvard Business School. While a student at Harvard, he wrote a case study on the Willow Creek Community Church, which has become a part of the curriculum at Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School, Northwestern's Kellogg School of Business, and others. He has been married to Leanne since 1986. They have three children, Ester, Elizabeth, and David, and currently live in South Barrington, Ill.

Nancy Beach is a speaker, author, visionary leader, and champion for the power of the arts and artists in the local church. She served for over 20 years as the programming director for Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago, a congregation known around the world for creating culturally relevant, biblically based services that make full use of the arts. Today Nancy continues her role as a teaching pastor at Willow Creek, while serving on the Leadership Team of the Willow Creek Association as the executive vice president for the Arts. A sought-after conference speaker, Nancy uses her teaching gifts to inspire, motivate, and cast vision, while skillfully relating themes of soul transformation with everyday people and experiences. Her book, An Hour on Sunday, expresses Nancy’s core vision and values for effective arts ministries. Nancy and her husband, Warren, currently live with their two teenage daughters in Barrington, Ill.

Kristen Aikman has been on staff with Willow Creek Association since 1996 and currently serves as the director of content development for The Leadership Summit. In this role, she helps identify and invite Summit speakers and works closely with them to ensure that each session provides the highest take-away value for the attenders. Kristen also spearheads planning for other leadership training experiences, including the Preaching and Teaching Conference, the Multi-Site Forum, and the upcoming Global Poverty and AIDS Forum. Kristen graduated with a business marketing degree from Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn. On a personal level, Kristen has a deep and growing passion in the areas of biblical justice and racial reconciliation and has served as a board member for the National Compassion Network. She was honored to be a part of the very first Justice Journey, an ongoing co-initiative of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill. and Salem Baptist Church in Chicago. She lives with her husband, Thomas, in St. Charles, Ill.

Ray Pelletier is a pastor, leader, and networker who can’t stop thinking about what the church can become. After serving for 13 years in church-based ministry at University Baptist Church in Miami, Fl. and in Willow Creek’s Axis ministry, Ray has recently joined the staff of the Willow Creek Association as the emerging media and ministry specialist. He is focused on finding new ways for the WCA to use technology to reach out in conversation and partnership with church leaders in America and around the world. He is focused on all things Web 2.0 (blogging, social networking) and on emerging church leaders who find themselves leading in an increasingly postmodern world. Ray has a masters of arts in religion from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He loves hanging out with his wife, Julie, and their nine-month-old son, Jackson.