This week I started laying out how I have worked the 5 Elements of Orange into my ministry strategy.  Catchup on my earlier posts: #1 Integrated Strategy and #2 Refine the Message. Please bear in mind, that I am the Children’s Ministry Pastor, and bear no overall job responsibility for the other Next Generation ministries at my church.  Currently I am responsible for birth through the 5th grade, and am trying my best to implement Orange from the bottom up.

#3 Reactivate the Family

When you combine two influences you build an everyday faith.

Reactivating the family is making a choice to enlist parents to act as partners in the spiritual formation of their own children (and yes…that is in the book.) This is so much easier said than done.  It’s been a challenge to get parents plugged into areas that they’ve never been plugged into before.  The church I work at is 46 years old, and while it is growing and thriving in our city; it is also traditional in many ways.  I have children in our ministry that are 3rd generation at our church.  Their grandparents grew up and were baptized here, and their parents were, and the whole family expects that they will be as well.  That is so many different kinds of wonderful, but it brings challenges.  What kind of challenges?  The great challenge of changing set-in-stone expectations.

This element of the Orange strategy is the one that gets me the most excited.  I think it’s because while I wear a yellow hat of a church staffer, I also live daily with the red hat of a parent.  I can remember being asked in a job interview once, “Why do you want to work with kids?”  My response was that I’m a parent, and I couldn’t think of a better way to help my own kids fall in love with Jesus.  Most all that I do as a Children’s pastor is rooted out of a love for my family, and my hope that I can somehow help my children see God more clearly.

If you are a reader of my blog, you can see some of the small things I’ve done to reactivate the family at my church.  I’ve taken some small baby steps with my event planning, baptism, and have changed the Child Dedication experience.  What I did was start looking for all the existing elements that families were already somewhat engaging with me, and then meet parents there with a spiritual fierceness.  For example, I knew that we dedicated children every 3 months, and always had 20+ families participate.  So I revamped what the process was to dedicate your child, and have been able to now dedicate children (and parents) that have completed a short Essence of Family (again, it’s in the book) pre-requisite class.  The feedback has been great, and we’re already signing up people for our next one in February!  I also took those natural moments in a child’s life that their parents reach out to me, like baptism and salvation experiences, and worked hard to meet parents there as well.  I’ve created tools that parents can use to help them talk through these wonderful times with their children, and made myself available to assist in any way possible.

In my situation, I’m working to prove myself faithful to parents in these already existing roads.  I know that if I can be faithful in these areas, then God will open their eyes to many more opportunities down the road.

If you’re not making plans to attend the Orange Conference in Atlanta this Spring, then start making them now.  I’ll be there, and many more important people as well.  Come see if an Orange way of thinking can help you integrate strategy with your entire Next Generation ministries at your church!

Yesterday I started laying out how I have worked the 5 Elements of Orange into my ministry strategy.  Catchup on my earlier post: #1 Integrated Strategy. Please bear in mind, that I am the Children’s Ministry Pastor, and bear no overall job responsibility for the other Next Generation ministries at my church.  Currently I am responsible for birth through the 5th grade, and am trying my best to implement Orange from the bottom up.  

#2 Refine the Message

When you combine two influences you amplify what’s important

To refine the message means that you work as a team to craft core truths into engaging, relevant, and memorable experiences (that’s in the book!)  I can remember years ago, at another church; attempting to teach through the bible in a 2 year period.  I don’t know why I was attempting it, but nonetheless I was doing it.  I was rolling along, then I hit the story of Absalom’s Rebellion.  I have the coloring sheet of Absolom hanging from a tree by his hair, with a spear through his gut permanently seared into my memory.  This was not a highlight of my time there.

As I’ve matured as a teacher and a leader I’ve come to see the truth in the following statements:

• All scripture is equally inspired
• All scripture is not equally important
• All scripture is not equally applicable to every stage of life

Knowing this has released me to focus in on what I really want kids to learn.  At our church we are slowly transitioning into using the resources available through ReThink, and in the meantime I have found myself thankful that most curriculum developers are starting to see the value in refining the message.  The folks at Group Publishing, Elevate, and many others are working to refine the message that we teach kids.

At our church, we have been teaching in a memorable way for about 2 years.  How do I know?  Because kids actually remember what they’re learning!  I can remember moving to a more refined message for Early Childhood children this past year, and I had parents asking me, “What are you doing different?  My kids are repeating their main points all week long!”  How refreshing, and convicting at the same time, huh?

It is now my goal to see every word that I speak to our kids and families be easy to communicate and even easier to understand.  While at the same time enjoying the depth and creativity that scripture affords me as a teacher.

If you’re not making plans to attend the Orange Conference in Atlanta this Spring, then start making them now.  I’ll be there, and many more important people as well.  Come see if an Orange way of thinking can help you integrate strategy with your entire Next Generation ministries at your church!

This week I’ll be addressing the 5 elements of an Orange strategy.  These are explained in great detail in the “Think Orange” book that can be found at your friendly, neighborhood bookstore. I’m going to assume that you’ve read Think Orange, and that you are somewhat familiar with each idea.  With than in mind, my goal over the next five posts is to talk about myself.  That’s a novel blogger idea, huh?  I’m going to share about how I have been able to implement each element at my church (even if it’s only been an incremental change.)

Please bear in mind, that I am the Children’s Ministry Pastor, and bear no overall job responsibility for the other Next Generation ministries at my church.  Currently I am responsible for birth through the 5th grade, and am trying my best to implement Orange from the bottom up.

#1 Integrated Strategy

When you combine two influences you create synergy

An integrated strategy means that we are aligning leaders and parents to lead with the same end in mind. (I did not write that sentence, it’s in the book.)  The first step before we can align with parents is for our ministries to align.  For me working from the role of a Children’s Ministry Pastor, I’ve tried to work to integrate myself much more with the other ministry in my church that is closest to mine.  Being…can you guess it?  Junior High Ministry, or middle school ministry or whatever.  I know that each Summer I move my 5th grade students up and out of “Children’s Ministry” into a new and adventurous environment with other Jr. High kids.  Knowing that I have this natural interaction, I have worked to create a level of integration with my Jr. High pastor.

At our church we currently operate under the departmental model (again, it’s in the book), which means that every department is responsible for it’s own family programming.  Knowing this, I’ve worked to merge as much of the ministry focus for my 5th graders with the ministry focus of my 6th, 7th, and 8th grade leaders.  I’ve opened up my events to their leaders, I’ve offered every conceivable incentive to their department if they will assist with the transition, and I’ve had Jr. High leaders even lead my summer small groups for 5th graders.  We are a far way off from a true Orange Family Ministry Model as a church, but I’ve seen the benefits of integrated strategy work with just our Children’s Ministry working alongside Jr. High Ministry.

What have been the results? I’d say that about 80% of our 5th graders move into active Jr. High involvement.  We just aren’t losing large quantities of kids anymore when they leave our ministry.  And because the Jr. High ministry is small group based, and our Children’s Ministry is small group based; the kids have transitioned seamlessly.  And that other 20% that doesn’t move into the new areas of ministry?  I’ll save those special kids for another blog post. Catch my drift?

If you’re not making plans to attend the Orange Conference in Atlanta this Spring, then start making them now.  I’ll be there, and many more important people as well.  Come see if an Orange way of thinking can help you integrate strategy with your entire Next Generation ministries at your church!

You are going to The Orange Conference, right?  If not then click this link and get your self signed up!  If you are signed up, then feel free to use some of these Orange Badges!  Let’s litter the Internet with Orange Conference Registration buttons!

How do I add one to my blog or website? Below each badge is the html code you can use to embed the badge above it on your blog or website.

How to embed in your Wordpress Blog
1. Simply copy the html for the size badge you want
2. go to the widget section of your blog
3. Select a text widget
4. Paste the html code you copied into the text widget box
5. You should be good to go.

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All next week I’m going to be bringing you ORANGE related topics!  What do I mean by Orange?  Orange is a color and it’s a fruit…duh!  It’s also an idea.  It’s the idea of creating environments in our churches that combine the best of the family (red) with the best of the church (yellow.)  Get it?  Red + Yellow = Orange.  It’s my desire as a Children’s Pastor to work as hard as possible to bring together both entities of the church and the family to most positively impact the spiritual growth of a child.  Here is the idea in a nutshell:

Two combined influences make a greater impact than just two influences.

So this week I’ll be attending the Orange One Day Tour in Dallas and I’ve already registered for The Orange Conference in Atlanta in April.  I’m not sure there are spaces available in Dallas, but I know you can get registered for The Orange Conference TODAY! And then on Sunday through Thursday, me and many other bloggers will be tackling 5 Orange Ideas and giving away tons of free stuff.  Everyone likes free stuff, right?  Stay tuned for more on Sunday!