National leadership training ministry relocates to Ottawa
The Leadership Centre Willow Creek Canada looks to increase influence, strengthen partnerships
OTTAWA, ON—The Leadership Centre Willow Creek Canada has relocated from Kelowna, B.C., to Ottawa, Ontario. Those heading the national ministry hope the move will better position them to increase their impact and more effectively serve Christian leaders in Canada.
“Ottawa is the hub of leadership in Canada,” explains executive director Robb Warren, who leads the ministry with his wife Lois. “The government is here, but also a lot of national organizations. We felt being here would make us more influential in being able to leverage the gifts we have as an organization for Kingdom purposes in Canada.”
For more than 20 years, the Leadership Centre has worked to strengthen and develop pastors and other leaders through workshops, conferences and mentoring programs. Partnering with Willow Creek Association in Chicago, Illinois, it has hosted the Global Leadership Summit in Canada for the past 16 years, reaching 7,000 participants annually in 25 sites across the country.
“Another aspect of our ministry is smaller workshops,” Warren says. “Our current workshop develops the skill of having ‘crucial conversations.’ It is an introduction to how to recognize when a conversation becomes crucial, when people start to become defensive and how to help people develop the skills [to move past that].”
While these initiatives remain an integral part of the ministry, Warren is hopeful that the Ottawa move will help the organization build and strengthen partnerships with a range of charities and ministries across Canada.
“One of the values the ministry holds very highly is building collaborative relationships with other organizations that are trying to accomplish similar Kingdom goals,” he says. “Our goal is to spend more time building relationships with organizations that want to see their leadership raised up, and figuring out how we can help them in that.”
Warren says by playing off the ministry’s strength of developing leaders and using their leadership connections they hope to raise the bar of Christian leadership.
“When [the standard of] leadership is raised, everyone benefits. We serve right from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, but by being more centrally located we have a better opportunity to influence the entirety of the nation.”
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