“A few years ago, we realized that God was calling us to transition from being a ‘good’ church to being a sustainable Great church,” explains Carol Anderson. “In addition to becoming much better at fulfilling our mission and vision, a major component of that plan is to help other churches become great as well.”

This realization, along with feedback from delegates to prior ASA conferences, led us to create an annual conference, The Great Church Conference. The previous three ASA conferences had each focused on a single topic (one on Small Groups, one on Evangelism and the third on Worship). On the evaluation forms we asked what other topics would delegates like covered. “The list was so long, at two conferences a year, we weren’t going to get to some topics in any of our lifetimes!” says Carmichael. “At the same time, we were working on the Great Church plan and covering virtually every topic requested. It was pretty clear what our next conference was to be!