Leadership from both conferences welcomed clergy. Photo by Karyn Saemann.

More than 250 clergy from the Wisconsin and Northern Illinois Conferences are gathered this week for three days of leadership development, connection and innovation, in a rural autumn setting.

At the Green Lake Conference Center in Green Lake, Wis., overlooking Green Lake, attendees of the 2026 School of Leadership are participating in collaborative training sessions led by Rev. Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean and Scott Pontier of Ministry Architects, a consulting team that helps build sustainable ministries.

Those additionally addressing the group on Tuesday and Wednesday have been Bishop Daniel W. Schwerin, who serves both the Wisconsin and Northern Illinois Conferences, and Eric Swanson, the Wisconsin Conference’s Director of Connectional Ministry.

Scheduled to address the gathering at Thursday’s closing worship service are Rev. Scott Carlson, the Wisconsin Conference’s Director of Congregational Development; Rev. Fabiola Grandon-Mayer, the Northern Illinois Conference’s Director of Connectional Ministry; and Rev. Christian Coon, Director of Congregational Development for the Northern Illinois Conference.

Attendees are also taking time to connect informally, including making campfire s’mores.

The gathering aims to employ Christian innovation to boldly lead The United Methodist Church into the future -- not just to inform, but to reshape how we think about leadership.

In his welcome address, Bishop Schwerin urged attendees to lean on each other amid church and societal transition and challenges.

“We need to lay our eyes on each other and be reminded we are in this together,” Bishop Schwerin shared.

“We’re heading into a moment when our communities and our churches need the best hopeful imagination all of us can summon. And the truth is, I need you. We need each other.”

Clergy took time for fellowship outdoors. Photo by Karyn Saemann.

In the natural setting of Green Lake, Bishop Schwerin encouraged attendees to consider how sparrows innovate through each changing season.

“I invite you this week to walk the grounds and keep your eyes on the sparrows,” the Bishop said.

In her address, Dean said the church today is “both in the thick of it and also at the tip of the spear in terms of what comes next.”

“The church is not dying; it’s changing,” Dean said. “Our churches, and all of our established cultural institutions, are in a major shift right now.”

“New generations have different generational expectations. The form of the church is reshaping. You have to take apart the LEGOS before you can build into something new with them.

The church “has been here before,” Dean continued, notably in the early 19th Century in the fledgling United States, when state funding ended. Churches then had to find a way to finance their ministries, and they did, through many decades of experimentation, Dean said.

Now, Dean said, the model they developed has run its course.

Old financial models, in particular, “don’t work anymore. And, so, we are beginning another period of experimentation. How are we going to fund this? What are we going to do about our church property? What are going to do about our congregation’s presence in the community?”

The very idea of attending church is changing, Dean further said.

“People don’t congregate the way they used to. Sometimes we don’t congregate at all,” Dean said. “The ways we are absorbing faith is different from what it used to be.”

Meals provided more time for fellowship and connection around tables. Photo by Karyn Saemann.

Today “people have all sorts of sources of religious influence in their lives. And so, they are pulling faith strands together from lots of different places.”

“That’s changing what it means to be a pastor. It changes what is means to be faithful.”

Drawing from the Biblical account of the Apostle Paul’s shipwreck experience in Malta in the Book of Acts, Dean concluded that “the good news is we’re not going to die. The bad news is we’re going to need a new boat.”

In his address, Swanson reflected on the Biblical story of wine skins at the end of their practical use, and connected that to the church today.

“Jesus doesn’t say that the old wine skin has failed at its job. The old wine skin did exactly what it was built to do. It held the wine it was given, for as long as it could stretch and bear it.”

“That wine skin had a purpose and a season and a life and a longevity to it,” Swanson said.

However it “has already stretched to hold one kind of wine and cannot flex again for something new that’s still fermenting, that’s still expanding and growing.”

Modern church structures “are not failing because the people in them lack faith of effort,” Swanson continued. They were just designed for a former era.

“We need to celebrate that,” and then come together to move forward, Swanson said.

Pontier, a senior consultant with Ministry Architects, drew in his message on an ancient song about the crossing of the Red Sea, believed to existed long before the story was written down.

Pontier said the church today similarly needs to envision – to sing -- a future course without knowing the ending.

“For the past few decades, the church worked the way we planned for it to work. We built church buildings so people could show up to worship. We fought the worship wars so we could bring new contemporary music and capture the next generation.”

Churches built youth ministries and practiced hospitality, he continued.

“I’m not saying any of those things are bad.” But “today those chapters are becoming increasingly less relevant.”

“I have conversations with churches every single day who say those steps aren’t working anymore. (They say) ‘We know something has to change. We have no idea what it is or how to do it.’”

“It just may be at this moment that we need to start singing the song before we know the story. We need to prepare for God to actually show up, and believe he’s going to.”

“We believe that the church 50 years from today is going to be shaped by the church congregations we have right now. The church of 50 years from now needs us to be singing that resurrection song right now, today.”