5 Things to Do After a Conference

So, you just got back from the big conference and you’re brimming with ideas and excitement.  You can’t wait to get home and inform your team about all the changes you’re going to make. 

First of all, I love your excitement.  Second, chill. 

Don’t make the same mistake other leaders do (including me) and come in guns blazing with all the new changes you want to implement today.  Some of them are great.  Some need more time to mull over. Some won’t work in your context. Your team doesn’t know how to tell which is which.  They may waste time and energy on things that will never happen in your ministry. 

So do yourself and your team a favor and take a beat.  Then follow these 5 steps to really get the most out of your conference now that you’re home.

1. Rest

You just spent a few days drinking from a fire hose.  Most likely you had a day or two traveling, met a ton of new people, and didn’t sleep in your own bed.  So, take some time to rest, think, and pray.  Your brain needs time to process everything, and sleep is one of the best ways it does that. 

Don’t go into the office the moment you get back.  And unless you’re leading service in an hour, don’t go to church either.  Instead, go home, unpack, do your laundry, and take a nap. 

You’ll wake up refreshed and ready to share your ideas with the world.  But not yet.

2. Go through your swag bag and notes

Now that you’ve got some rest, look at the papers you collected as you passed by the booths.  Some of those vendor ads you can really use in the next year.  Others can head to the garbage.  You know what is useful and what’s not.  Don’t junk up your desk with resources you have no intention of using. 

With the ones you decide to keep, create a way to access them quickly.  I use two methods.  I make a pile and leave them on my desk. That way they’re top of mind whenever I’m looking for something.  Inevitably, my desk gets overrun, so I’ll purge the pile again and implement my second method. I take a picture and save it in the same digital file where I keep all my notes.  This way I can find it anytime and don’t have to rely on business cards buried under last month’s receipts.

Also, go over all those incredible notes you took and pick out the gems. Now that you’ve got a few days between you and the conference, you can see what you’re going to use, what you need more clarity on, and what was fun in the moment but you’ll never actually use. 

I keep my notes in Microsoft OneNote.  There are a ton of note-taking programs out there, but I’ve been using OneNote since 2005.  My whole brain is in there, including all the notes I’ve taken at every conference I’ve attended.  It’s also indexed, so I can easily pull notes back up when I need them. 

Find a program that works like that for you.  And if you prefer old-fashioned pen and paper, then develop a filing or other system that helps you refer back to it.  John Maxwell lays out a really elaborate system in his book The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. 

Whatever your system, this is also a great place to put the contact information from the people you met.  Don’t let those connections go to waste in the coming weeks.  Shoot them an email or connect on social so you can keep it going long after the conference.

3. Make a list of all the changes you want to implement

Now that you’ve picked out the gems in your notes, it’s time to figure out what you actually want to do versus what you liked.  There are some things you can implement now and others that you won’t be able to touch for years.  And that’s ok.  It’s better to decide now, before you info-dump on your whole team.  Write out that list and keep it in a place you can refer back to.

I have several of these lists and go back to them frequently, especially when I’m preparing for leader meetings, calendar meetings, or have time to work on the ministry instead of in it.  These lists help me keep on track, and months later remind me of things I meant to do but haven’t.

4. Talk to your team about what you want to do

Now that you’ve done all this work, it’s finally time to talk to your team.  But not all of them.  This is where your lead team comes in handy.  They are your top-level leaders who are sold out to the mission and vision of your ministry.  They know you went to the conference and are anxious to hear what you learned. 

Pull out your list of ideas and talk about them.  I’m a natural salesman, so I have to fight the urge to oversell my favorites.  As the leader in the room, your voice holds a lot of weight.  Whatever you show passion and energy for, your team is likely to agree with and they won’t share their own opinions.

You want their opinions.  You need their input.  They see things you don’t. Some ideas will land with them that didn’t with you.  So, talk about the takeaways, giving as much information as necessary without trying to persuade your team.  Then you’re ready for the last step.

5. Pick one thing you really want to do

Now that you have your list and your team has vetted it, it’s time to pick out what you want to do.  Start by prioritizing the things you want to do.  Put the changes you want to start this Sunday, this week, and/or this month up top and the ones that you want to do next year at the bottom.  This isn’t a hard-and-fast list.  You can always change it later.  But it gives you a roadmap moving forward.

As you go through your list don’t pick three things to do at once.  As I said in my book Next Level Kidmin, you need to pick one idea, get that going, and then move to the next. 

I alluded to this story in my post on how to get the most out of your conference.  But here’s the rest of it.  A few years back, I went to the Orange Conference.  I learned a lot there and came back with tons of ideas.  One of the biggest problems I had was preschool worship.  The preschoolers would interrupt their service to come worship with me in elementary. I realized that while I was trying to accommodate the five-year-olds, I was losing the fifth graders.  I asked a leader there what to do, and she helped me lay out a roadmap.  After getting home, it took me a few months. But I made the change and worship immediately improved for all ages.  A few years later, I was able to share that story with the leader who helped me, and with tears in her eyes, she thanked me. 

If I’d come back and tried to do 15 things, the preschoolers might still be with the elementary kids.  By picking one thing and getting it done, I was able to implement a meaningful change I learned at conference that made all the money spent worth it.

You don’t need to do everything now.  You have time, so take it.  Then when you look back one to five years from now, you’ll see just how much your ministry has changed because of things you learned at the conference.

Going to conferences is more than just a fun week.  It’s an investment in your ministry.  But once you get home, it’s not done.  You have to strategically implement the ideas you gathered. Otherwise, you just wasted your time and the church’s money.  That’s never good.

What’s something you learned at conference that you’re implementing at your church? Let me know in the comments!

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