Lads to Leaders Cancels Annual Conventions for First Time in Its History

Lads to Leaders will not host its annual conventions for the first time in its history, the ministry announced, as concern over the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of the Easter weekend gathering at all nine of its U.S. locations. The 52-year-old program, associated with Churches of Christ, brings together more than 20,000 youths and their families each Easter weekend.

Roy Johnson, executive director of the Montgomery, Ala.-based ministry, said the decision to cancel the 2020 conventions was painful. “After shedding many tears (the ministry’s board) came to the unanimous decision that there’s simply no way we can hold the 2020 convention due to the current crisis,” Johnson said in a video message posted Wednesday.

Johnson said the ministry’s concern extends to people of all ages. He said the pandemic “has affected our homes, our schools, our churches and even brought this great nation to its knees.”

Leadership Training for Christ, a similar program that also holds events at sites across the U.S. on Easter weekend, has also announced changes. Organizers of the Great Plains LTC in northwest Arkansas will “forgo the in-person convention” and instead “conduct convention events in a non-traditional manner,” according to a statement from its board members. Directors of the North Texas Leadership Training for Christ convention in Dallas are expected to decide soon whether to cancel.

The Lads to Leaders cancellation is the first since the ministry began holding large-scale conventions in 1973. That convention took place at Alabama Christian College, now Faulkner University, in Montgomery. Johnson, the brother-in-law of the ministry’s founder, Jack Zorn, was a member of that convention’s staff. In the decades since, the convention has become a highlight of the year for thousands of children in Churches of Christ.

Paul Kelsey, a member of the Sylvan Springs Church of Christ in Alabama who has taken part in Lads to Leaders for more than 20 years, said the news was hard to hear. “We knew it was coming, but it was still heartbreaking,” he said. One of his children said she had already expected the cancellation but was still disappointed. Kelsey said his main worry is the ministry’s finances after the cancellation, and that his family has been praying for the board, which has never had to navigate something like this.

Kelsey noted that Lads to Leaders also offers pre-convention events, including video production and visual art, and that three of his children recently learned they had placed in the mass media audio and PowerPoint categories. Johnson told The Christian Chronicle that after the crisis, the ministry will deliver awards and convention items to churches. He said it will make adjustments so that current seniors can participate again this year and will look for other ways to support local congregations. Continuing to serve congregations in this way reflects a practice of generous sharing (Hebrews 13:16).

Kelsey’s oldest child, who is 17, said there were no words to describe the cancellation, but that the event is about spiritual growth rather than competition.

Source: Read the original report