Since 1992, the Willow Creek Association has been linking like-minded, action-oriented churches with each other and with strategic vision, training, and resources. Our desire is to serve local church leaders in building biblically functioning churches that reach increasing numbers of lost people, not just with innovations from Willow Creek, but with God-given breakthroughs with widespread potential from any church in the world. The WCA is a not-for profit ministry with more than 11,000 Member Churches from 90 denominations and 45 countries. They represent a wide variety of sizes, denominations and backgrounds, and are ministering in literally every corner of the world. As they pursue their own unique, God-given vision for ministry in their community, Member Churches confirm a shared commitment to Christ and a passion for reaching lost people.

The Willow Creek Association's vision for the Global Leadership Summit is that every Christ-follower with leadership gifts, skills, or aspirations would gather once each year, dedicating themselves to raising their level of leadership on behalf of the local church and other organizations.

We hold a deep belief that if you change a church leader, you can change a church, and if enough churches start changing, you can change an entire region, country, and eventually the world.

In 1995, this belief gave birth to The Leadership Summit. Now, 12 years later, in North America the Summit has grown from 1 site to over 100 sites linked to over 60,000 participants in 2006. And in 2006, The Global Leadership Summit brought together via videocast to 25,000 people in 51 cities and 16 countries.

To date, the link covers 100,000 leaders in 193 cities and 31 countries worldwide!